Travis Kelce enters a new beard era as he joins Taylor Swift in Sydney. Fans rejoice

Taylor Swift and football fans have had a love-hate relationship with the forest on Travis Kelce’s face, the bushy beard he began growing out before Christmas. Turns out, it might have been his secret weapon.

But once the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, some folks couldn’t wait to bid the beard goodbye. Or at the very least, see it trimmed up again.

“I hope he shaves it off,” a Kelce fan tweeted last week. “He’s so much more handsome w/o the beard. Game is over. He can grow another next year for the playoff games & the super bowl.”

“Travis Kelce trimming his beard would be MY Super Bowl,” another fan tweeted this week.

“Travis Kelce would look much better if he shaved his beard. I hope some barber in Sydney offers their service,” tweeted another fan expecting Kelce to have a shave before jetting off to join Swift in Australia.

So when Kelce touched down in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday (it was Thursday in Australia), people zeroed in on the beard.

Video showing him getting off a private jet was grainy at best. But it was clear enough to reveal that the beard his brother had likened to Samson’s locks had been tamed.

“The amount of people on my TL rejoicing whether or not Travis Kelce having his beard shaved is absolutely hilarious,” one Swift fan tweeted.

People pay attention to these things now that Kelce, well, you know.

In October, People magazine flipped through the scrapbook of Kelce’s facial hair stylings. Swifties have produced TikTok after TikTok discussing the beard’s evolution. It has cycled through several eras, to borrow a phrase.

The Vanity Fair Era. Neatly and precisely trimmed.

The Preason Just a ‘Stache (or Young Andy Reid) Era.

The Postseason Geico Caveman Era.

Back in 2018 when Kelce and his brother, Jason, helped Old Spice launch its beard-grooming products, GQ declared the Ohio brothers “two of the finest examples of groomedness on the gridiron.”

Jason’s beard is voluminous. But during a Super Bowl week episode of their “New Heights” podcast, he asked his brother: “Dude, what is going on with your beard right now … it’s long … it’s going bigger.”

Kelce revealed he hadn’t trimmed it since before Christmas.

“Is this your playoff beard … an ode to your hockey roots?” Jason asked.

Kelce got philosophical, saying that when he looked at himself in the mirror, the beard made him feel …

“Rugged?” Jason said.

“I feel the power of it,” Kelce said.

“You think it gives you power like Samson, from the Bible, his hair?” Jason asked.

“I’ve been playing way better since I’ve been growing it,” Kelce said.

The beard came up again in a podcast after the Chiefs won, when Kelce said he didn’t know what he was going to do with it.

Jason suggested auctioning the whiskers for charity.

Kelce said he might keep it.

“I might just shave it off and put it in a Ziploc bag and keep it with all my other Super Bowl memorabilia,” he said.

The Baggie Era?