Dan Le Batard: Travis Kelce Reached Out to Co-Host About Podcast Advice

Travis Kelce was already enormously famous before this season began for being one of the best tight ends in National Football League (NFL) history, but his fame skyrocketed this season because of his relationship with singer Taylor Swift and because of his enthusiastic embrace of a public image.

In a Friday appearance on the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, sportswriter and former radio host Dan Le Batard—host of the podcast The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz—outlined how Kelce reached out to Jon Stugotz, his co-host, looking for media advice.

Le Batard brought up the anecdote when noting how many agents Kelce employs.

"Four agents is a lot by any player's standard," Le Batard said. "Adding Creative Artists Agency on top of your agents, that is aggressive. You don't really need to be giving up these percentages of your money unless you are being management aggressive of, 'I'm going to be ambitious with my career post-football, at the end of football.' Travis Kelce went to Stugotz a long time ago trying to figure out the podcast game."

Torre interrupted Le Batard briefly to corroborate that he had heard this as well, calling it "f****** insane that this is real."

Newsweek reached out to Le Batard, Torre and Kelce by email for comment.

Le Batard concurred and brought up the example of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who was a mediocre football player at the University of Miami before he became an A-list celebrity.

"[The Rock] had learned from wrestling that you can have charisma and work ethic and turn it into something," he said. "Travis Kelce, with the help of these people, has figured out a way to get into the space in football where they have a hugely popular sport, but the only guys who get the marketing are the old white quarterbacks. So what can we do about that? Well, we can be aggressive about taking a tight end and making sure we manage around his charisma, because he wants to be famous outside of football."

Kelce does seem to have a feel for the spotlight. In 2016, his ill-fated reality show Catching Kelce drew a number of negative reviews, and when he was teased about it by his sister-in-law Kylie Kelce on an episode of the New Heights podcast that he hosts alongside his brother Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles, Travis quipped, "What a time. Let's all forget about it."

Still, Catching Kelce showed a willingness to dabble in the entertainment world, and New Heights gives the Kelce brothers (both of whom are in their mid-30s and likely looking at the end of their football careers) a chance to move beyond football in the media space. New Heights is now one of the five most popular podcasts on Spotify and a top-10 podcast on the Apple Charts with 1.81 million subscribers on YouTube.

"He was doing reality television, so they just did it better and smarter," Le Batard said to Torre on Friday. "They took a guy who has great talent, a champion and charisma, and they found the ingredients. You can say that this was orchestrated. It was by design. It was smart. It got Travis Kelce what agents are paid to get them: The things they want."

For his part, Stugotz predicted that the focus on off-field activities could cost Kelce some popularity with Chiefs fans.

"I don't care—you're a Hall of Famer in my book, it doesn't matter. You're one of the great tight ends to ever play football in my book. It doesn't matter," Stugotz said in November during an episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. "But if you don't think Chiefs fans are going to turn on you, you have another thing coming. That's all I'm saying."