Jason Kelce’s uncouth introduction to ESPN’s Monday Night Football audience was applauded by two key viewers: brother Travis and his girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
During this week’s episode of their podcast, New Heights, the Kelce brothers reviewed the elder sibling’s Monday Night Countdown debut – an entrance that began with the revelation that Jason failed to bring proper attire to Santa Clara for the Jets-49ers game.
‘You went up to the Bay Area for your first Monday Night Countdown appearance and forgot to pack a shirt for Jason,’ Travis said. ‘Luckily enough, there was a Lululemon around and he got to explain himself within the first 30 seconds of his ESPN debut.’
Jason then shuffled through his mental rolodex: ‘What did I say? I said something about t**s.’
Fortunately, Travis remembered the ‘great quote,’ which left him and Swift ‘dying laughing.’
Jason Kelce, ESPN analyst, looks on before the New York Jets play the San Francisco 49ers
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce attend the men’s final of the US Open in Flushing, Queens
‘It fits my belly now I’ve lost a little bit of weight but my t**s are still struggling,’ Kelce told host Scott Van Pelt about his new, ill-fitting shirt.
Suffice to say, Travis approved.
‘It was the perfect thing to open everybody up to what they were going to experience for the next 18 weeks,’ he told Jason on New Heights.
The word wasn’t bleeped on the ESPN broadcast, not that it needed to be. It’s not among the famed ‘seven dirty words’ and certainly has other meanings and applications, ranging from ornithology to a mathematical theorem on the structure of finitely generated linear groups.
‘T**s is a funny word, because I think it’s allowable,’ Jason said. ‘It’s not against the rules, but it’s definitely something you wouldn’t typically say in a broadcast. It’s like one of those words that don’t belong on a broadcast.’
Again, Jason consulted his mental rolodex to think of a similar term before coming up with ‘grundle.’
‘It’s a weird word to pull out of you’re a**,’ he said.
Travis went on to say that ‘t**s was the most perfect word you could have used for that situation.’
He then made the same observation that Jason made about his shirt on ESPN: ‘Those buttons were holding on by a thread.’
‘Tight up top,’ Jason agreed.
‘Looked like a stretchy shirt, but it looked like you might have needed to go a size up,’ Travis countered.
The problem, as Jason explained, is that he’s lost bell fat since retiring from the NFL, but the former Eagles center still has a thick chest.
‘My belly was swimming, so going to a 3X would have been hard,’ Jason said.
As for his first episode on MNF, Jason felt insecure at first, but ultimately thinks the broadcast was a success.
‘It’s like anything you do your first time,’ he said. ‘I did not feel prepared, I felt very nervous, I didn’t know what to expect. Then you realize you were prepared, that ESPN did a great job of setting everything up.’
Travis agreed, saying Jason and the ESPN crew ‘meshed so well.’
