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On Sunday, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce sparked backlash when he was caught screaming at and shoving his coach, Andy Reid, partway through the Super Bowl.
The Chiefs ended up winning the game for the second year in a row, however, it didn’t come easily to them — and the frustration was evident on Travis.
The team were down 3–0 against the San Francisco 49ers in the second quarter of the game, and when they lost the ball close to their rival’s end zone, Andy opted to take Travis out of play.
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But Travis was obviously furious with this decision, and stormed over to his 65-year-old coach for an angry confrontation. The sports star barged into Andy, knocking him off balance, and was then shown aggressively shouting in Andy’s face while Andy tried to avoid eye contact.
Ultimately, Travis’s teammate Jerick McKinnon ended up pulling him away from their coach, but Travis’s anger continued once he was at the sidelines, where he whacked his helmet against the bench.
And while both Andy and Travis brushed off the incident after the Chiefs’ win, social media users were quick to point out that this is far from the only time that Travis has exhibited troubling behavior during a game.
Just last month, Travis was once again called out by sports fans when he was caught throwing rival footballer Justin Tucker’s belongings across the field during a warmup.
Travis addressed this particular incident on his New Heights podcast after the game, where he admitted: “I gotta keep my fucking cool, man, because as a leader that’s not how you switch the momentum.”
And these antics go back years; in 2017, he was filmed pushing a Pittsburgh Steelers player to the ground after he dropped a pass. At the time, the defender was given a 15-yard penalty because of Travis’s actions.
But it seems as though Travis’s displays of aggression aren’t even just limited to when he is playing the sport, with comments that he made on the Season 2 premiere of his podcast in September resurfacing amid the Super Bowl drama.
On the pod, Travis and his brother, Jason Kelce reveal that they were both “kicked out of preschool” as kids. The conversation started when Travis asked his sibling if he’d taught his daughters “how to fight the Kelce way” yet.
"I have not taught them any fighting techniques," Jason said at the time, admitting that he is "trying to keep them from getting kicked out of preschool the way I was."
Jason then explained that he got into trouble when he and another student were messing around with sporks, and Jason ended up hitting his classmate hard in the forehead — leaving a mark.
When their dad, Ed Kelce, was confronted by a teacher over Jason’s behavior, Ed apparently asked them: "Why weren't you watching him?"
Travis then revealed why he was kicked out of preschool, with his anecdote being a little more extreme.
“I got kicked out of preschool because during playtime we were playing checkers and I was winning because I don’t fucking lose at checkers,” he recalled. “And if you win you stay on.”
"I kept winning and the teacher told me: ‘You know Travis, you have to share,’” Travis continued. “And I was like: ‘That's not how it rolls.’ And she said: ‘No, you have to share,’ and I said: ‘No I don’t,’ and threw the chair that I was sitting in at her.”
Travis laughed as he recounted the story, which even appeared to catch his brother off-guard as Jason exclaimed: “You threw a chair at a teacher?!”
While Travis did not clarify how old he was at the time, in his home state of Ohio, preschool is for children between the ages of three and five years old.
Sharing Travis’s old quotes on X, formerly known as Twitter, one person referenced his Super Bowl behavior as they wrote: “Everyone saying he's just a football player who’s passionate meanwhile he's been a brat with anger issues since he was in preschool.”
Others pointed out that Travis’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, once relentlessly mocked men who become aggressive when playing competitive sports in her “The Man” music video.
“Travis Kelce was literally acting like the guy from The Man MV yesterday... come on guys,” one person tweeted on Monday. Another shared a photo of Travis screaming at Andy and wrote: “Anyone downplaying this travis moment is a contributor to the laps of patriarchy ran around us every day. taylor herself literally highlighted this exact aggression in the man music video.”
Downplaying his behavior toward Andy after the game, Travis joked to reporters: “I was just telling him how much I love him.”
While Andy said: “He keeps me young. He tested that hip out; he caught me off-balance.”
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