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Travis Kelce has responded after his older brother Jason smashed a man’s phone and repeated a homophobic slur after a fan used the same slur to insult Travis.
On November 2, Jason was at Penn State University’s Beaver Stadium for ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast as they took on Ohio State University. A viral video on X/Twitter showed a man yelling: “Hey, Kelce. How does it feel your brother’s a f***** dating Taylor Swift?” Kelce angrily grabbed the fan’s phone and smashed it to the ground, saying: “Who’s the f***** now?”
In the latest episode of the brothers’ New Heights podcast, Travis discussed the incident himself for the first time. “You had some f***ing clown come up to you talking about your family,” the Kansas City Chiefs tight end said. “You reacted in a way that was defending your family and you might have used some words that you regret using.”
The retired Philadelphia Eagles center did apologize for his behavior before the Chiefs played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on November 4, which Travis called “sincere.”
“I think everybody’s seen on social media everything that took place this week,” Jason said on ESPN before the game. “Listen, I’m not happy with anything that took place. I’m not proud of it. In a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate and I just don’t think that’s a productive thing, I really don’t. I don’t think it leads to discourse and it’s the right way to go about things. In that moment I fell down to a level that I shouldn’t have.”
“The bottom line is, I try to live my life by the golden rule, that’s what I’ve always been taught,” he said. “I try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I’m going to keep doing that moving forward.”
During the podcast, Travis admitted the incident is “weighing on him” as the videos continue to circulate on social media.
Jason said that after talking about it one more time he wanted to “stop talking about this really stupid situation.”
The retired NFL player admitted he should have stayed quiet and kept walking to avoid giving the man any kind of attention.
He said his biggest regret from the situation was repeating the slur that the fan had used. “It’s dehumanizing and it got under my skin and it elicited a reaction. In the heat of the moment, I thought, ‘Hey, what can I say back to him? I’m gonna throw this s*** right back into his face. F*** him,’” Jason said.
Many fans defended Jason for his response; however, PHLY Sports host Jon Marks suggested that the former athlete went too far.
“Kelce has to realize that his profile is bigger than it ever was as a player,” Marks’s post began, alongside the video of the fan’s phone being crushed. “He’s making big $$$ across multiple platforms and his brother might marry the biggest pop star ever. He can’t be spiking people’s phones. He needs security to deal with this s***.”
