Travis was at his brother Jason's side when Jason experienced the family's first Super Bowl title. (Courtesy of Ed Kelce)
A Cleveland Heights sibling rivalry layered in brotherly love
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Editor's note: Tony Grossi is a Cleveland Browns analyst for TheLandOnDemand.com and 850 ESPN Cleveland. He has covered the Browns since 1984.
Ed Kelce put it like this:
“I’ve got a boy who’s gonna get another Super Bowl ring. I also got a boy who’s gonna lose the Super Bowl.”
Such is the Kelce family dilemma this week in Super Bowl 57 in Glendale, AZ.
The thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat. They will experience both.
The father, Ed, and the mother, Donna, of the Cleveland Heights Kelce boys – Jason and Travis -- will be there this week sharing a truly unique experience. Never before have two brothers on opposing teams competed against each other in the Super Bowl.
And it’s not like either is sweating out game day inactive lists or striving to contribute as eager backups. Both are at the pinnacle of their sport, each named the very best at his position in voting recently conducted by the NFL Players Association. Both are incredibly respected by their teammates and extremely integral to their team’s outcome. Both are on divergent paths to Canton.
Travis, the younger at 33, always was the more decorated athlete, certainly the more physically gifted athlete, the quarterback at Cleveland Heights High School, a three-sport star, highly recruited, drafted higher, and when his career with the Kansas City Chiefs is over, possibly the most prolific tight end in NFL history.
Jason, 35, was a plugger, whose interests in music learning the baritone saxophone and playing in jazz ensembles kept him out of the weight room and left him lightly recruited. College coaches questioned his commitment to football.Jason had to walk on at University of Cincinnati and was advised early by the strength coach to make a position switch from tight end and linebacker to interior offensive line. It was brilliant foresight.As the stalwart center of the Philadelphia Eagles, Jason doesn’t have the gaudy offensive statistics of his younger brother but has seven All-Pro selections to Travis’ five.
And truth be told, Jason has been Travis’ hero their entire athletic careers, and with good reason.
“Travis just wanted to follow and be exactly like his older brother,” Donna said in an appearance on The Really Big Show on 850 ESPN Cleveland last week.
‘Straightened his ass out’
Because of their ages and a year of eligibility lost due to a flunked French class by Travis, the brothers actually played as teammates at Cleveland Heights only one football season.
Jeff Rotski, now the coach at Villa Angela-St. Joseph, coached against Jason with Maple Heights before coaching Travis his senior year at Cleveland Heights.
“Jason was a different animal,” Rotski said on RBS. “He was the dirtiest, nastiest … Our kids were horrified of him. He was feared and revered. When I saw him making the move to lineman, I thought if he could put the weight on, he is going to change how the position is played.”
While Jason walked on at Cincinnati and made the position switch recommended by strength and conditioning coach Paul Longo to guard, Travis was excelling as a quarterback at Heights, excelling on the basketball court and excelling on the baseball diamond.
Travis annoyed the recruiters at Cincinnati by declining to attend a football camp and turned them off. Jason worked behind the scenes and hand-delivered Travis’ senior DVD to Longo, who showed it to head coach Brian Kelly, who promptly instructed his recruiting coordinator to extend an offer to Travis. During his senior basketball season, Travis grew weary of the recruiting pitches and one day out of the blue announced to his father, “Screw it, I’m going to Cincinnati with Jason.”
It turned out they only played one year together there, too. After Travis was redshirted as a freshman with a broken foot, he long-snapped and played part-time as a specialty Wildcat quarterback. One of his father’s favorite photos shows Jason clearing a path to the end zone for Travis on a Wildcat run to the end zone in their first game together at Cincinnati.
At the Sugar Bowl at the conclusion of that season, Travis tested positive for marijuana and was suspended by the NCAA. A few months later, he tested positive again in a test administered by Cincinnati on campus. New coach Butch Jones, who succeeded the Notre Dame-bound Kelly, responded by throwing Travis off the team and rescinding his scholarship.
“That was the bigger wakeup call,” Ed Kelce said.
Travis’ college football career was at a crossroads. His big brother came to his rescue.“Jason went to Butch and said ‘I’m vouching for him. Let him work his ass off a year. Make him sit down and watch was going on out there,’” Ed Kelce said.“Travis then moved into not just the same house as Jason, he and Jason shared a room in that house. And Travis straightened his ass out.”
Rotski said, “Jason has been an unbelievable role model for him. But the growth I’ve seen in Travis, and the things he’s done on and off the field is what I’m most proud of.”
Bragging rights forever
Like most kids from their generation, the Kelce brothers couldn’t root for the Browns in their formative years as football fans. Jason was 8 and Travis 6 when owner Art Modell moved the old Browns to Baltimore. By the time the expansion Browns were born, Jason was rooting for the Steelers and Travis for the Cowboys, and then the Packers.
Ed said that the boys would have enjoyed being drafted by the Browns, but it was not to be. Jason went in the sixth round in 2011 to the Eagles. The Browns used their second pick in the fifth round that year on lineman Jason Pinkston and didn’t have a pick in the sixth. Travis was taken at the top of the third round in 2013 by the Chiefs. The Browns didn’t have a second-round pick as a result of taking Josh Gordon in the supplemental draft the previous season.
By the time Travis was a rookie, Jason’s career with the Eagles was uncertain. A coaching change brought Oregon’s Chip Kelly to Philadelphia. Ed talked to his son about preparing for a possible move to another team.
“He said, ‘If I’m not playing football here, I’ll get a job. This is where I live. Philadelphia is my home and I’m staying here,’” Ed related.
Jason’s commitment to Philadelphia paid off. In his sixth season, the Eagles won the Super Bowl over the New England Patriots behind coach Doug Pederson. At the parade two days later, Jason’s “ball-busting” humor and loyalty to the Eagles’ organization was on display when he delivered a passionate, off-the-cuff, rip-roaring speech about the team’s underdog mentality. Bedecked in a unique-to-Philadelphia Mummer’s costume he borrowed from a friend, Jason’s speech instantly went viral.
“That was a great day for him,” Ed said. “Everybody’s riding in the bus [on the parade route]. He’s walking, having a beer with people along the way, interacting, riding on a policeman’s bicycle. He was three sheets to the wind when he got up there, so look out. It is what it is.”
Two years later, Travis earned his Super Bowl ring when the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers. In the network player introductions, Travis continued his tradition by stating he was “Travis Kelce, Cleveland Heights, Ohio,” and afterward he shouted out his trademark tribute to the 1986 Beastie Boys hit Fight For Your Right (To Party).
So now they oppose each other for what Jason termed on Monday as “the ultimate bragging rights.”
One brother will leave Arizona with a second Super Bowl ring, the other with a bitter defeat. It is the culmination of a lifelong sibling rivalry tightly wrapped in brotherly love.
“This will be something that they’ll be able to hold over each other forever,” Donna said.
