Travis Kelce Reacts To Kansas City Chiefs Kicker's Controversial Graduation Speech

Travis Kelce has weighed in on a controversial speech by his Kansas City Chiefs teammate Harrison Butker, who dismissively referenced Kelce’s girlfriend, megastar singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, and expressed bigoted views in remarks at Benedictine College earlier this month.

During Friday’s episode of his podcast, “New Heights,” the Chiefs tight end said that he believes Butker is “a great person and a great teammate,” and that he’s only seen him treat people with “nothing but respect and kindness.”

But Kelce distanced himself from Butker’s views, saying that the kicker’s beliefs “are his.”

“I can’t say I agree with the majority of it, or just about any of it, outside of just him loving his family and his kids,” Kelce said of his teammate’s speech.

At the same time, the tight end said that he doesn’t think he “should judge [Butker] by his views, especially his religious views.”

“I grew up in a beautiful upbringing of different social classes, different religions, different races and ethnicities, in Cleveland Heights… It showed me a broad spectrum, or just a broad view of a lot of different walks of life,” Kelce said. “I appreciated every single one of those people for different reasons, and I never once had to feel like I needed to judge them based off of their beliefs.”

Speaking to his brother and podcast co-host, retired Eagles center Jason Kelce, Travis explained how his own upbringing did not reflect Butker’s argument that being a homemaker is “one of the most important titles of all” for women.

“My household — my mother and my father both provided for our family,” Travis said. “Both my mother and my father made home what it was. So they were homemakers and they were providers, and they were unbelievable at being