It’s the audio from the Super Bowl that everybody wants to hear.
One of the most viral moments from the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs came during the first half when a frustrated Travis Kelce was seen angrily yelling at, and pushing, his head coach Andy Reid.
Of course the internet went wild over the exchange, with plenty of jokes about the star tight end’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
But all’s well that ends well, and after the game both Kelce and Reid addressed the sideline scuffle.
Directly after the game in a press conference, Reid noted that he held no hard feelings toward the tight end.
“Yeah, he caught me off balance. I wasn’t watching. It was a cheap shot. But that’s alright; he did well.
He was really just coming over to say, ‘Coach, just put me in. I’ll score, I’ll score.’ So that’s really what it was. Well, I love that. I mean, it’s not the first time, so listen, I appreciate it.”
Reid also said that Kelce’s passion comes from wanting to help his team:
“The part I love is that he loves to play the game and he wants to help his team win. It’s not a selfish thing, that’s not what it is, and I understand that.
So as much as he bumps into me, I get after him and we understand that.”
For his part, Kelce decided to keep the conversation between him and his coach private, joking that he was just telling Reid how much he loved him:
“I got the greatest coach this game has ever seen. He’s unbelievable at not only dialing up plays and having everybody prepared, but he’s one of the best leaders of men I’ve ever seen in my life.
He’s helped me a lot with that, with channeling that emotion, with channeling that passion and I owe my entire career to that guy and being able to kind of control how emotional I get.
I just love him, man.”
And it looks like the NFL decided that they’re going to keep the contents of the heated confrontation private too.
Inside the NFL, which airs on CW and releases mic’d up footage of many viral moments, discussed the video of the exchange, but muted the audio so we can’t hear what Kelce was saying to his coach.
We know that Kelce was wearing a microphone for the game, so the audio definitely exists somewhere. But the NFL apparently doesn’t want us to hear it.
Now, it could be because it was really just Kelce telling his coach to put him back in, and there’s not really any more to it.
But it seems the more likely explanation is that they’re trying to protect Kelce, who’s become the face of the NFL as his relationship with Taylor Swift plays out in public.
The viral moment is already embarrassing for such a major figure in the sport: To have the face of your league pushing his head coach during the biggest game of the year? Yeah, not a great look.
And you don’t want the Swifties to turn on Kelce and lose the bump in ratings that they’ve provided the NFL this season. Not only was the Super Bowl the most watched in history (despite the fact that the average NFL fan probably wasn’t thrilled about seeing the Chiefs in the big game for the 4th time in five years), but it was the second most-watched televised event in the United States, behind only the Apollo moon landing in 1961.
So yeah, you can see why the NFL wouldn’t want to do anything to cause viewers to turn on Kelce.
But still, it was the one moment of the game that everybody’s clamoring to hear the audio from – and I have a feeling that sooner or later it’s going to come out, whether the NFL wants it to or not.
