Travis Kelce Talks Taylor Swift’s Support And Life Beyond The NFL
During a stop on The Stephen A. Smith Show on Wednesday, Jan. 15, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce was asked if Taylor Swift was trying to talk him into retiring since football can be pretty rough.
“She’s fully encouraging me to enjoy playing this game,” Kelce told Stephen A. Smith. “She loves coming to Arrowhead [Stadium] and coming to the games and cheering for me, so I got all the support in the world to keep chasing these dreams.”
Earlier in the interview, Kelce said he wasn’t even thinking about retirement. Right now, his focus is all on the playoffs, which start Saturday, Jan. 18, when the Chiefs face the Houston Texans at Arrowhead Stadium.
“I love everything that I’m doing in this building,” Kelce said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not having that extreme success on the field as I have individually, man. I’m excited for these next couple games to play up at Arrowhead, to finish this season off.”
He did admit he’ll “reevaluate” his career, like he always does. “And I’ll probably tell myself how much I love this thing,” he continued. “It’s something you have to keep in perspective, man. I never want to get to the point where I’m not helping this team win or I’m hurting this team more than I’m helping this team. As long as I’m coming out here playing good football and enjoying coming into the building every day with my guys, you’ll see me in a Chiefs uniform.”
Even though he’s not leaving the NFL anytime soon, Travis Kelce is already making big moves outside of football.
In 2022, he started a podcast called New Heights with his brother, Jason Kelce. By March 2024, Travis signed on to host a reboot of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? A month later, it was revealed that the show’s title had changed to Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity? and it premiered on Amazon Prime on October 16, 2024.
Then in May 2024, Travis announced on Instagram that he’d been cast in a new Ryan Murphy FX horror series Grotesquerie. “Steppin into a new world with one of the legends!” he captioned a clip of himself with co-star Niecy Nash.
Adam Sandler also confirmed that Kelce would appear in the sequel to Happy Gilmore.
On top of all that, Travis launched his music festival, Kelce Jam, in 2023, with stars like Machine Gun Kelly headlining in Kansas City. When the festival returned in spring 2024, the lineup included big names like Diplo, 2 Chainz, and Lil Wayne.