There are so many reasons for me, a woman who knows nothing about football, to tune into the 2024 Super Bowl. Taylor Swift’s boyfriend will be there. Taylor Swift herself will probably be there with at least seven of her famous friends. Usher, widely known as the sexiest man on Earth, is performing at halftime. But among all these shiny guest appearances, I am mainly looking out for one goofy bearded guy: Jason Kelce.
For the uninitiated — which, to be clear, included me until very recently — Jason is Travis Kelce’s older brother. (Travis Kelce, if somehow you do not know this, is a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs and currently dating Taylor Swift.) Let me put it this way: Jason does for Travis what Blake Lively, Tree Paine, and Jack Antonoff have done for Swift, all wrapped into one beefy midwestern package. Also helping his case: Jason has a really normal-seeming wife, Kylie Kelce, who is always just a little bit annoyed at him. A nice thing about Kylie is that she has never once been rumored to travel around stadiums in a janitor cart.
As brothers, Jason and Travis’s whole deal is that they both play football and are really, really close. Once a week, they get together to talk about everything going on in their lives for a 90-minute podcast episode. This is how we have learned most of what we know about Travis’s relationship with Swift and also how Etsy promotes its holiday sales.
Because of this, Jason is an under-sung MVP in the vast realm of Traylor lore. Of course, he’s got things going for him outside of his relationship with his brother — a football career, which I’m told is pretty successful; a cool wife and their three kids. But it is really his intensely fraternal dynamic with Travis that is most endearing, and that makes Jason a show-stealing side character in an exhausting relationship that has taken over my life and brain.
Jason also happens to be a welcome addition to Travis’s ever-growing cheerleading posse. Athletically, he has been threatening to retire for a few years now, and after his team, the Philadelphia Eagles, was eliminated from the playoffs in January, he seems closer than ever to hanging up his big green helmet. This is bittersweet for Eagles fans but thrilling for people like me, who are really enjoying seeing Jason support his brother from the sidelines. Travis has only played two games since the Eagles were eliminated, but Jason and his boundless brotherly love were at both of them. Remember when Travis made heart hands at Taylor? Jason was busy taking his shirt off and pole-vaulting into the crowd, beer in hand. This sounds violently fratty on paper, but in reality was giving more of a lovable doofus vibe, and the look on his wife’s face confirmed as much.
My colleague Olivia Craighead, who has been known to theorize that Jason is the better Kelce, directed me to a video from one of Jason’s several trips outside the box, where he lifted up a little girl so she could wave at Taylor Swift. “He has just the right mix of football-bro and girl-dad energy,” she offered. We are both sorry to use the phrase girl-dad energy, but unfortunately it’s true.
At the most recent game, Jason wore both a graphic tee and a Hawaiian print shirt, his thought process presumably being that wearing two shirts makes up for being shirtless the week prior. That math checks out to me. He gave his brother at least four consecutive bear hugs after the game, visibly choking up while congratulating him:
It is unclear whether Jason will attend the Super Bowl this year, let alone whether he will be emotional, running around shirtless, or (most likely) both. I’m not telling you to ignore all those other celebrities, but just know I will have eyes peeled for Jason Kelce: benevolent wife guy, almost-in-law to Taylor Swift, and the only tolerable girl dad. What’s not to like?