Travis Kelce Is Going for It

The collaborative nature of SNL appealed to Kelce, reminding him of the team environment he’s operated in his entire life. And, buoyed by his well-received performance on the show, he wants to explore more opportunities in scripted comedy. “I have more of an understanding of when somebody puts something on the table, how I can make it more fun, how I can make it more me, and how I can really push the direction that the show is going,” he says. “It made me more comfortable in having a role in the team and process.”

Eric Stonestreet, a star of Modern Family and a diehard Chiefs fan, believes Kelce “will have the ability to do much more than just commentate on football.”

“Can he be an actor? One hundred percent,” says Stonestreet, who has gotten to know Kelce through charity work in Kansas City. “Good performance starts with what Travis possesses naturally, which is an open heart.”

In our discussion of future plans, Kelce also mentioned that he’s interested in hosting a game show someday. Suffice it to say, he’s keeping his options open. Whatever his next move, there is broad consensus among those in his orbit that he will, as Stonestreet put it, “end up making more money off the field.”

Kelce’s base salary of $11.25 million this year ranks 54th among all players in the NFL, an example of how a player’s position heavily influences the market. Tight ends are generally a lower priority in team roster construction and are thus paid far less than players at premium positions. A top wide receiver, for instance, can fetch as much as $30 million per year. Ranked second in receiving touchdowns and third in receptions last season, he may have stats that rival an elite receiver, but he isn’t paid like one.

Obviously, no one should weep for Kelce, who’s earned nearly $65 million in his playing career. He isn’t crying poor either, but he admits that his associates bristle over his salary. “My managers and agents love to tell me how underpaid I am,” Kelce says. “Any time I talk about wanting more money, they’re just like, ‘Why don’t you go to the Chiefs and ask them?’” The Chiefs, constrained by the NFL’s salary cap, have parted with other key players who have gone on to make more money elsewhere. Last year, the team traded All-Pro wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who played in Kansas City for six seasons and won a Super Bowl with Kelce in 2020, to the Miami Dolphins, who promptly handed Hill a four-year contract extension worth $120 million.

“When I saw Tyreek go and get 30 [million] a year, in the back of my head, I was like, man, that’s two to three times what I’m making right now,” he says. “I’m like, the free market looks like fun until you go somewhere and you don’t win. I love winning. I love the situation I’m in.”

But it does cross his mind. “You see how much more money you could be making and, yeah, it hits you in the gut a little bit. It makes you think you’re being taken advantage of,” Kelce says. “I don’t know if I really pressed the gas if I would get what I’m quote-unquote worth,” he adds. “But I know I enjoy coming to that building every single day.”

We settle up for our coffees and head to a waiting black SUV parked behind the restaurant, but not before Kelce poses for a few photos with a table of 20-somethings. As we walk away, one of the diners shouts the chorus from “Fight for Your Right.”

The song is played after Chiefs touchdowns at Arrowhead and seemingly everywhere he goes. At the Chiefs’ victory parade in 2020, Kelce, wearing a WWE championship belt around his waist, capped a boozy and meandering speech by shouting the chorus. And in February, he sang it with Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show. He says he never knew all the lyrics prior to that.

“All I remember is just the screaming, ‘You gotta fight for your right,’” he tells me as we climb into the back seat of the SUV. Kelce struggled as he rehearsed the song, which made his publicist nervous, but ever the gamer, he nailed the duet with Fallon when the lights went on.