LAS VEGAS — No matter how big Travis Kelce gets — and he and his new love Taylor Swift are approaching Prince Harry and Meghan Markle status — he’ll always be a kid from Cleveland Heights who appreciates his roots.
It’s why the Chiefs tight end gives his hometown a shoutout whenever he can, and why he and his brother Jason, a fellow future Pro Football Hall of Famer who just retired from the Eagles after 13 seasons, named their wildly popular podcast “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.”
The brothers will both be immortalized with bronze busts just down the road in Canton someday, but they’ll always credit Cleveland Heights, along with their mom and dad Donna and Ed, for molding them into the men they’ve become.
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“That’s one of the things I’m most proud of as well,” Kelce said Wednesday when asked about his hometown by cleveland.com at the Chiefs’ availability leading up to Super Bowl 58 on Sunday against the 49ers. “Coming from Cleveland Heights, it’s a beautiful city. It’s a melting pot of all different ethnicities and social classes. And it’s really shaped my understanding of accepting people and not only that but enjoying everyone else’s cultures growing up.
“I have so many friends of different races and their families are from different social classes and stuff and it’s just given me a good understanding of who I am and how to accept everybody for who they are. And I can’t think Cleveland Heights enough for that, and outside of that it’s given me the desire and the love for life because of how happy I was as a kid. It’s just that the school system and the community, and the families in that community — that means everything.”
Kelce’s immense popularity, which has skyrocketed since becoming “Tayvis” this fall, has put Cleveland in the spotlight, and specifically the east side suburb of Cleveland Heights. A 2008 graduate of Cleveland Heights High, where he played football — as a quarterback — as well as basketball and baseball, Kelce loves the attention his hometown is getting.
“I love showcasing Cleveland Heights for what it is, and I couldn’t be more proud to be from there, to shine a light back home,” he said. “It means everything that Cleveland Heights gets the respect and gets the credit they deserve for what they do for the kids and the families in the community.”
Does that mean he’s been working hard to bring Swift’s wildly popular The Eras Tour to Cleveland Browns Stadium?
“I haven’t even thought about it,” he said with a smile. “No.”
Wrapping up his 11th season on Sunday night here, Kelce declined to speculate when cleveland.com asked him how long his NFL road is.
“I’ll tell you what, I know I’ve got one more game in me,” he said. “I don’t know how this road is going to go after this. I think I’d be silly to tell you that I’m going to retire after this year. I’m always thinking about what’s next. I love this game so frickin’ much, I’d be silly to stop anytime soon, and I know I’m going to miss the heck out of it when I do stop playing. But I know I’m fired up for this game on Sunday.”
Having flirted with the entertainment industry over the years, Kelce, 34, isn’t sure what comes after football.
“Not yet,” he said. “I don’t even know the exact field I want to get into. I know I want to do something still with the game of football, but I love all sports, and I love going to events. I love all types of music. I’m still dabbling in areas that I don’t know if I’m going to love it or not. So I think that’s the plan over the offseasons that I’ve had in the NFL is figure out exactly what I love and what I can latch onto as a career from that point on. I wish there was a clearcut vision but there’s never a clearcut vision with me.”
He all but ruled out trying to become the next Andy Reid.
“They put in a lot, a lot of hours, he said. “I love this game, but I love playing the game more than I would love calling a game or coaching the tight end room. But I’ll forever be a coach from the stands, from the sidelines, from afar. I love to pass the knowledge. I love to pass the baton to younger generations. That’s why when George Kittle and Greg Olsen came to me about Tight End U, and being that voice for the tight ends year-in and year-out and helping everybody progress, I was all for it. I’m forever going to try and be that mentor for guys under me because I had unbelievable mentors and coaches throughout my life.”
A two-time Super Bowl winner with the Chiefs and nine-time Pro Bowler, Kelce has seen his definition of success change over the years. It’s why he delivered from the heart one of the most powerful pregame speeches on Saturday night that some in the Chiefs organization have ever heard. Reid invited Kelce, Patrick Mahomes and star defensive tackle Chris Jones to speak, and Kelce’s talk moved some teammates to tears, according to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated. One coach told him it’s “not even close. The best talk/speech I’ve ever heard.”
“I used to lose sleep over the success or the lack of success I would have early on, whether it was drops or just not being ready for the moment, not having any success in the pass game in certain games,” Kelce said Wednesday. “I used to have that desire to say, ‘Man, I want to be the best. I want to be known as the one that had the most yards, the one that had the most catches, the one that had the most touchdowns and the most Super Bowls.’
“And you’ve got to be so fortunate to even go to the playoffs let alone get plays drawn up for you and things like that. So I’ve rechanneled that to being the best teammate that I possibly can day-in, day-ou,t and at the end of the year, let the chips fall where they may and see who’s the best team out there. I enjoy having team success a lot more than I enjoy having individual success week to week.”
He hopes to give Cleveland one more big reason to be proud of him on Sunday night.
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