Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce didn’t threaten to quit over teammate Harrison Butker’s recent controversial college commencement speech, but fake news stories reporting as much are being taken out of context online.
“Breaking news,” a May 19 Facebook post said. “Travis Kelce takes a stand, ‘I will resign if Harrison Butker is on the team next season.’”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
We found no credible news stories or other sources to corroborate this claim, although wedid find several similar social media and blog posts that were clearly labeled as satire.
Among them: that Kelce “vows to quit Chiefs immediately if team doesn’t fire Harrison Butker.”
Kansas City head coach Andy Reid told reporters May 22 that no one with the team has complained about Butker’s remarks.
Kelce, meanwhile, called Butker a “great person and a great teammate” on a recent episode of his podcast. Kelce said Butker’s comments, which included encouraging women to be homemakers, were Butker’s opinions.
“I can’t say I agree with the majority of it, or just about any of it, outside of him loving his family and his kids. And I don’t think that I should judge him by his views, especially his religious views of how to go about life—that’s just not who I am.”
We rate claims that Kelce threatened to quit False.
