Travis Kelce Defends Harrison Butker After Controversial Grad Speech, 'Great Person' | TMZ Sports
Travis Kelce is coming to Harrison Butker's defense ... insisting the Kansas City Chiefs kicker is both "a great person and a great teammate."
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00:00Welcome to TMZ Sports. I'm Mike Babcock with my guy as always Mojo Mutadi. Mojo, we're
00:11going to start with the opinion that fans have wanted for weeks. Ever since Harrison
00:19Bucker, the chief standout kicker, gave that commencement speech at Benedictine College
00:23in Kansas and he name dropped Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, people have been dying
00:30for Travis's opinion. Now this week we heard from Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid.
00:36Both men had Harrison Buckers back. But what would Travis Kelsey say? Well Mojo, we don't
00:42have to wonder anymore because a new episode of Travis's New Heights podcast dropped this
00:49morning and Jason and Travis, they talked about Harrison Bucker and if you were looking
00:55for Travis to blast his kicker, you're going to be mistaken. I've known him for seven plus
01:01years probably, eight plus years. Yeah. And I cherish him as a teammate. I think Pat said
01:08it best where he is every bit of a great person and a great teammate. He's treated friends
01:15and family that I've introduced to him with nothing but respect and kindness. Um, and
01:19that's how he treats everyone. Yeah. When it comes down to his views and what he said
01:23at the St. Benedict's, uh, commencement speech, you know, those are his, I can't say I agree
01:30with the majority of it or just about any of it outside of just, um, him loving his
01:36family and his kids. And I don't think that I should judge him by his views, especially
01:41his religious views, uh, of, of how to go about life. That's just not who I am. Travis
01:47didn't just say, those are his views, Babcock. Travis said, those are his views. He, he threw
01:56it physically as far away from him as he possibly could with his hands. I mean, look, this is
02:04what you'd want to hear from a teammate though. Like this is how, uh, your, your, your team
02:09public relations department would advise everyone on the team to, to handle this, um,
02:15to not condemn a teammate, to not stir up controversy, to not give a sports writers
02:22any inkling that there could possibly be any dissension whatsoever inside of the lock room,
02:30you know, problems that might carry into next season and be something that they keep asking
02:35you about for months on end that they could potentially blame future losses on. That's
02:40not what anybody wants. So even if you hated Harrison speech for the most part, you're
02:47going to keep it to yourself. But I mean, Travis was a lot more passionate about this
02:53than Patrick Mahomes was. He very clearly iterated several times how those are Harrison's
03:00views, not his own. He even went as far to say that he probably doesn't agree with a
03:07single one of them outside of of course, the family con comments. So, I mean, that's, that's
03:13saying a lot. And to be honest with you, Babcock, I mean, I got to think Travis probably didn't
03:18appreciate getting roped into this.
03:21I mean, obviously there were some controversial comments made, but when you are literally
03:26name dropped, your girlfriend is literally named job. That's more or less a buddy pulling
03:32you into their own situation and in some ways their own mess. So I'm sure Travis didn't
03:37appreciate that part of it. Maybe that's why you felt a little bit stronger of a response.
03:43But at the end of the day, I don't think he could have handled this any better, but he
03:47absolutely drew the line a lot harder than just about anybody else on that team we've
03:51heard from.
03:52Yeah, I, yeah, no, I, and I don't disagree, Mojo. I mean, look, the, I think the easier
03:55thing would have been probably for him to, uh, like a lot of Taylor Swift fans, especially
04:02we're looking for Travis to come out and really take an aggressive stance against Harrison.
04:06I think obviously that did not happen here. Uh, certainly I do think that Harrison Bucker
04:12is probably shocked that this speech became as big as it did. Benedictine college is a
04:16small college. It's not even a university. It's a small college in Kansas. I don't think
04:20anybody expected that this speech would blow up the way it did, but here we are still talking
04:25about it, uh, like two weeks later, Mojo. So, uh, that's what happened. Now, another
04:29piece of business relating to this speech, Mojo, you might've remember, uh, shortly after
04:33Harrison delivered his speech, a city of Kansas city employee tweeted from the actual Kansas
04:41city account. Just a reminder that Harrison Bucker lives in the city of Lee's summit.
04:46Lee's summit is a town next to Kansas city, but not Kansas city. Shortly after that tweet
04:52was sent, it was deleted and instead a, an apology was put up in its place. We apologize
04:58for our previous tweet. It was shared in error. So Mojo was very clear that, uh, that was
05:03an unapproved message and Kansas city was not happy about that message being sent. Uh,
05:09we now know that Kansas city has actually fired the employee who sent that message.
05:15So, uh, the employee no longer has a job. I know a lot of people were hoping that Harrison
05:21Bucker would be the guy who was unemployed. Don't hold your breath. That's not happening.
05:25Harrison Bucker is going to be on the Kansas city chiefs next season. No matter how many
05:29people wish that weren't.