The former NFL quarterback who turned down Taylor Swift years before Travis Kelce won her heart: “She wasn't my type”

C olin Kaepernick ’s mother once envisioned a romance between her son and Taylor Swift , the former quarterback revealed tin his new memoir. The 38-year-old explained that his mother believed he and Swift would have been a good match while he was playing in the NFL, but the quarterback ultimately did not pursue the idea as he explained that Swift simply was not his type.

“When I was in the NFL, she told me that I should ask out Taylor Swift because we would be perfect together,” Kaepernick wrote about his mother, Tessa , in his book, Perilous Fight . He stressed that his comments were not intended as a slight toward Swift, but he nevertheless made his position clear, writing that the now-36-year-old pop star “was not my type.” Kaepernick , who played for the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 through 2016 as a quarterback before eventually leaving the NFL , did not reveal precisely when his mother suggested he pursue Swift . His romantic life was also elsewhere by the time his playing career ended as he was in a relationship with radio host Nessa Diab , with whom he welcomed a child in 2022. His partner later revealed in 2025 that the pair had married years earlier. Meanwhile Swift ’s relationship with Travis Kelce began in the summer of 2023 before the pair became engaged in August 2025 – finally marrying in July the following year at Madison Square Garden . Kaepernick ’s mother’s earlier suggestion a striking footnote in their eventual love story but the memoir goes deeper than the Swift anecdote, using his experiences to discuss how he believes his mother viewed race and relationships while he was growing up. He recalled his mother encouraging him to ask a white classmate named Lindsay to a school dance and Kaepernick contrasted that experience with the reaction after he attended homecoming with a black classmate named Crystal . “When I got the official portrait from that night,” Kaepernick writes. “Featuring me and Crystal posed up in that classic, airbrushed frame, my mother hid it away in the back of a drawer. In her mind, Crystal was just a phase. Lindsay was the kind of girl I should want.”

Did national anthem protest cost Kaepernick his career?

Kaepernick ’s memoir also chronicles the events surrounding the end of his NFL career as he became a national figure in 2016 after kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality. After leaving the 49ers , Kaepernick was not signed as a free agent during the 2017 offseason, and his career reached a cold ending as no team ever acquired the veteran quarterback. He later filed a grievance against the league by alleging collusion on the part of the league, before reaching a settlement with the league in 2019 – 12 months prior to the global Black Lives Matter protests. Kaepernick has continued to suggest that he remains capable of playing quarterback and when asked recently about a potential return joked, “We got the cleats by the door. We’ll be out the door.”