Travis Kelce says he has no plans to get an error fixed on the Super Bowl ring he received from the Kansas City Chiefs last week because he thinks it makes the ring “more exclusive.”
On the inside of the ring, which commemorates Kansas City’s Super Bowl LVIII championship, the score of each of the Chiefs’ postseason victories is listed, including the seeding of each opponent. The ring has the Miami Dolphins listed as a 7-seed when in fact they were the No. 6 seed in last season’s playoffs.
Jason Kelce pointed out the “major little goof” to his brother on their latest “New Heights” podcast, which was released Wednesday, and asked whether Travis Kelce had plans to get the error fixed.
“I don’t give a s—,” Travis Kelce said.
‘No, I like it that we didn’t give a f— about what seed Miami is. They were the seventh. Who cares? They could’ve done no seeds on the side of them. I would’ve been fine,” he said.
Travis Kelce added that the error makes the ring, the third he has received in his career with the Chiefs, “more unique.”
“Like oh yeah, we made it really detailed, and oops we screwed up. Just makes it more exclusive. We screwed up about something that means nothing,” he said.
The Chiefs made more than 400 rings to distribute for this championship, their second straight and third in the past five years. Each one contains 529 diamonds, 38 rubies and 14.8 carats’ worth of gems, according to the rings’ maker, Jostens.
Among the features: a display celebrating “Tom & Jerry,” the Chiefs’ name for the play on which they scored the touchdown in overtime that allowed them to beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22. The play, on which quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw a 3-yard scoring pass to Mecole Hardman, is diagrammed on the ring in coach Andy Reid’s writing.
Information from ESPN’s Adam Teicher was used in this report.
Kansas lawmakers approve plan to lure Chiefs from Missouri
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas is making a serious run at becoming the new home for the reigning Super Bowl champions with legislators approving a plan Tuesday for luring both the Chiefs and Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals away from Missouri.
Bipartisan legislative supermajorities OK’d the measure to authorize state bonds to help finance new stadiums and practice facilities for both teams on the Kansas side of the metropolitan area of 2.3 million residents, which is split by the border with Missouri. Three Super Bowl victories in five years — and player Travis Kelce‘s romance with pop icon Taylor Swift — have made the Chiefs perhaps the area’s most celebrated civic asset.
The plan from the Republican-controlled Legislature goes next to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. While she stopped short of promising to sign it, she said in a statement that “Kansas now has the opportunity to become a professional sports powerhouse.”
Both the Chiefs and the Royals said they look forward to considering Kansas options. The lease on the Missouri complex with the teams’ side-by-side stadiums runs through January 2031, but both have said they already should have been planning for the future.
“We’re excited about what happened here today,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney for the Chiefs who lives on the Kansas side, said at the Statehouse after the bill cleared the Legislature. “This is incredibly real.”
The approval capped a two-month push to capitalize on the refusal in April by voters on the Missouri side to continue a local sales tax used to finance the upkeep of the teams’ stadiums.
Backers of the plan brushed aside decades of research by economists concluding that government subsidies for professional sports stadiums are not worth the cost. They also overcame criticism that lawmakers were moving too quickly.
A spokeswoman for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson did not immediately respond to an email message seeking comment. But in Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas promised to “lay out a good offer” to keep both teams in town.
“Today was largely, in my opinion, about leverage,” Lucas said. “And the teams are in an exceptional leverage position.”
Some Kansas officials reached the same conclusion.
“I think the Chiefs and the Royals are using us,” said state Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Kansas City-area Democrat.
The votes on the Kansas stadium-financing plan were 84-38 in the state House and 27-8 in the Senate. Lawmakers from across the state — even western Kansas, far from any new stadium — supported the measure.
It would allow state bonds to cover up to 70% of each new stadium, paying them off over 30 years with revenues from sports betting, state lottery ticket sales and new sales and alcohol taxes collected from shopping and entertainment districts around the new stadiums.
House commerce committee chair Sean Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, said the Chiefs still are likely to spend $500 million to $700 million in private funds on a new stadium.
“There are no blank checks,” Tarwater told GOP colleagues during a briefing.
Legislators debated the plan during a one-day special session called by Kelly to have them consider reducing taxes after she vetoed three tax-cutting plans before legislators adjourned their regular annual session May 1.
Republican leaders had promised that the stadium proposal wouldn’t come up until the Legislature first approved a plan to cut income and property taxes by a total of $1.23 billion over the next three years. Many lawmakers argued that voters would be angry if the state helped finance new stadiums without cutting taxes.
With the tax bill passed, the stadium plan gained support even from lawmakers who saw it as a handout for wealthy team owners. Some said failing to act risked pushing the teams to leave the Kansas City area, and a few said they had wanted the Chiefs in Kansas since childhood.
“It is amazing to me the speed with which we can solve problems when they’re oriented around wealth, when they’re oriented around business,” state Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from central Kansas, said.
Yet Probst voted for the bill.
“This is the system that we’re stuck in, so if we choose to opt out of that system, we will lose every time,” he said.
Economists who study pro sports teams have concluded in dozens of studies that a new stadium and shopping and entertainment area merely takes existing economic activity away from elsewhere in a community, resulting in little or no net gain.
“It could still help Kansas and maybe hurt Missouri by the same amount,” Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith college in central Massachusetts who has written multiple books about sports, said. “It’s a zero-sum game.”
A skeptical state Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Kansas City-area Republican, used a Christmas Eve metaphor to characterize supporters’ excitement before she voted no.
“There are visions of sugar plums,” Baumgardner said.
David Bakhtiari says he wants to play in NFL a couple more years
David Bakhtiari‘s past few seasons have been marked by setbacks to his left knee, but after his fifth surgical procedure to that knee, the All-Pro left tackle is optimistic about continuing his career.
Bakhtiari, who was released by the Green Bay Packers after 11 seasons in March, said in an interview on “The Adam Schefter Podcast” that he’s “really happy” with the progress from his latest surgery, a major procedure that took place in November — so much so that he hopes to play another couple of years.
“A lot of other people wanted me to just kind of grit through it, but no one experiences what you truly experience,” Bakhtiari said of his decision to have the fifth surgery in November. “Look, I’ve been gritting through it for three years. I’m in constant pain. I’m so happy now to be on the other side of it and get the actual surgery that I needed because my knee was not in a good place.”
Bakhtiari’s knee troubles began when he tore his ACL on Dec. 31, 2020. In the past three seasons, he played in only 13 of a possible 51 regular-season games.
He said that the surgery “had a lot of big question marks” going into it but that he feels “really good” now and credited his surgeon, Brian Cole, for doing a “phenomenal job.”
“My goal right now is just to make sure that I not only fully recover but I can withstand and play the game that I want to play but also play and be there for a team no matter what,” Bakhtiari said. “I’m not a reliever guy, I am your cornerstone guy. Someone that’s not only going to play in September but in December and into February and obviously hopefully for another couple of years.”
Before setbacks with the knee plagued his last three seasons with the Packers, he was a two-time first team All-Pro and three-time Pro Bowl selection.
“I don’t like other people writing my story … I couldn’t just put a period, close the book and leave it,” Bakhtiari said he recently told Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair of his career. “… I just got to kind of remind people. People have kind of forgotten the kind of player I was, the kind of player I am.”
Bakhtiari, 32, said that there’s been interest from teams but that he wants to make sure “there’s no question marks” before he signs with a team. He said he’s ahead of schedule but still needs to clear a couple more hurdles before he is comfortable returning to the field. A realistic timetable for signing with a team could be just before training camp next month, in the middle of the preseason in August or in the beginning of the season in September, Bakhtiari said.
He said that he’s comfortable learning a new playbook and won’t need much time to be ready to play but that he isn’t interesting in changing positions at this stage of his career.
“I am and love being a left tackle, but I do also want to win a Super Bowl. That’s something that is really, really big too. That’s one of the biggest things that’s kind of evaded me and has been extremely elusive to this point in my career.”
Although Bakhtiari wants to continue his career, he doesn’t expect that to mean a reunion with Aaron Rodgers or Jordan Love, the past two quarterbacks he has protected.
He noted that Rodgers’ New York Jets selected left tackle Olu Fashanu in the first round, signed All-Pro left tackle Tyron Smith in free agency and traded for right tackle Morgan Moses. And if the Packers “wanted me to protect Jordan, they wouldn’t have fired me.”
He does, however, expect both of his former quarterbacks to make the playoffs next season. Bakhtiari said he’s “expecting big things” from Rodgers as he returns from his Achilles injury and “for sure” the Jets will make the playoffs, which would snap a 13-season postseason drought.
“I don’t think it’s very wise for any betting man to say that Aaron Rodgers is not going to make the playoffs,” he said.
As for Love, Bakhtiari called him “a stud” and said he expects him to “get paid” via a lucrative contract extension from the Packers soon.
“He’s growing and ascending in this league, and I think he’s going to be a really good quarterback,” he said.
