With reports of Jason Kelce’s pending retirement swirling after a Hall of Fame career, it’s a proper time to reflect on a player who’s been a staple of Sunday broadcasts and Wednesday podcasts. And, since you can’t talk about Jason without bringing up his similarly gifted brother, it’s been a minute to consider Travis Kelce as well.
No one has done this better than The Athletic’s Justin Williams. Williams rounded up a bunch of the brothers’ former teammates at the University of Cincinnati to fill out the backstory behind the NFL’s favorite siblings. It’s exactly as rowdy and occasionally ludicrous as you’d expect. Real guys being dudes stuff. The reporter got to some of the biggest names from one of the finest eras of Bearcat football — Isaiah Pead! Zach Collaros! Tony Pike! Butch Jones! — and they all have Kelce stories to share.
This is 1,000 percent an article worth paying for over at The Athletic. And in that spirit I’m not going to give away too much. But there’s just too many great stories here *not* to share. Here are six of the best.
1
Jason Kelce once brought a special water bottle to St. Patrick's Day practice. Filled with Irish whiskey.
I don’t want to bury the lede here. This is incredible. Stupid and cocksure and, if we’re being honest, at least slightly impressive. Jason Kelce once got through a St. Patrick’s Day practice with his own special water bottle … filled with Jameson.
Tom DeTemple (Cincinnati long snapper, 2007-11): I think it was St. Patrick’s Day. We’re getting ready for spring practice and he goes and gets a Gatorade bottle and fills it up with Jameson. He puts a thing of tape around it and gives it to one of the water girls and says: “Do not give this to anybody but me.”
This man was running sprints and doing drills while filled with fine Irish party liquor.
2
Jason once launched a teammate's helmet into the stands during a heated practice drill
Tom DeTemple (Cincinnati long snapper, 2007-11): You see this big scuffle go down and all of a sudden you just see somebody’s helmet get ripped off, and Jason starts spinning around with the helmet in his hand and shot-putted it 15 rows deep into the stadium.
Craig Carey (Cincinnati linebacker, 2005-09): He absolutely chucked that helmet.
Reuben Johnson (Cincinnati cornerback, 2009-11): That was kind of the lion roaring. That set the tone.
3
Travis (and his roomate) went three days without power because he's bad at paying bills
Zach Collaros (Cincinnati quarterback, 2007-11): For some reason, my dumbass left the bills up to him, so I would pay him cash to pay the bills. One day we came home and the lights were all off. I’m like, “Yo, man. What’s going on?” He was like: “Yeah, I forgot.” We just didn’t have electricity for like three nights.
4
There is zero shyness to Travis's game
Sherry Murray (Cincinnati football office administrator, 2010-present): We always had the women’s Football 101, which was a fundraiser for breast cancer, and we would do a player fashion show as part of it. Travis, when it was his turn, he decided to strip at the top of the runway and walked down in his underwear, those compression shorts. So of course all 300 of these middle-aged women are hooting and hollering and carrying on. We decided that might be a good time to end the fashion show portion of this program.
5
Jason threatened to murder his quarterback after LeBron James left Cleveland, because the Kelces are the most Ohio people on earth
Collaros: When LeBron switched (from Cleveland to Miami), they wanted to kill me. Kill me. Jason and Travis were Cavs fans. When (LeBron) said, “I’m taking my talents to South Beach,” I started chirping them so hard. I remember Jason’s exact quote: “If you say another f—ing word, I’m going to kill you.”
6
Jason once punched a hole through his own walls so he could better yell at his little brother for smoking pot
Travis was suspended for a full season after a drug test came back positive for marijuana. In that span, he moved into his brother’s house, which looked and smelled exactly as gross as you’d expect a college rental shared by the Kelce brothers to be. One day, Jason and friends came home to a house that smelled like weed and, well, I can’t do the story justice.
DeTemple: One time we went out and got some food and came back and the house smelled like weed. We’re all kind of looking around like, “Who’s smoking in here?”
Collaros: Travis was coming up from the basement and he just kind of looked down the hallway like, “Oh [expletive],” and then ran … Jason took the top of the metal garbage can and he just threw it at Travis, like he was Oscar the Grouch.
Evan Davis: Travis went in and locked himself in their bedroom and then in their bathroom, so part of the hallway wall was on the other side of the bathroom. So Jason punched through it, missed the studs and went straight through both pieces of drywall into the bathroom.
Parmenter: It was a gaping hole. You could fit an average-sized person through it.
Collaros: I was just like, “Jesus Christ, dude! Did you just break your hand?” He’s like, “Nah, I’m good,” and then sits down and starts eating a Chipotle burrito.
DeTemple: He was like, “Yeah, I [expletive]d him out,” and that was it.
Again, the whole oral history is incredible, and there’s a lot — A LOT — I left out. Go read it.
