While Travis Kelce was part of retirement rumors throughout the 2025 season, it wasn’t the first time the Kansas City Chiefs tight end considered calling it quits on football. Speaking about this decision on his New Heights podcast, the 36-year-old was in conversation with his elder brother, Jason Kelce, and the University of Cincinnati head coach, Jerrod Calhoun. Here, the younger Kelce shared how his recruitment visit to West Virginia University nearly pushed him to make a drastic decision.

“You guys treat me like family, like I had never been treated before. I was Jason’s little brother in Cincinnati, didn’t even give me this much attention,” Travis Kelce said about his trip to WVU in 2007. “I came back from the Western Virginia trip, and I told my dad, ‘I think I want to really like, give myself a chance at playing Division One college basketball, and play for Coach Huggins.’ He looked at me and said, ‘You are a man of your word. You want to be like these kids who commit to a university and then decommit. And now the integrity of your word doesn’t mean anything.'”

Kelce was visiting the Bob Huggins-coached West Virginia University, where Jerrod Calhoun was an assistant coach. However, after already committing to play football at the University of Cincinnati like his elder brother, Jason had to honor his word and move forward with his football career. Hence, the Chiefs’ tight end didn’t have a chance to try his hand at basketball after receiving a few significant offers, like WVU.

However, Travis Kelce has always expressed his desire to play for Bob Huggins. Be it these recent comments or a statement from December 2023, Kelce has been open about his love for basketball.

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“I fell in love with how Coach Huggins ran his program and knew he was kind of a coach that I would respect and want to play for,” Kelce said, as per WDTV.

Despite uncertainties about a basketball career, Travis Kelce chose football. However, interestingly, he was once kicked out of his college after failing a drug test.

“I got kicked out of college because of it,” Kelce said. “I partied a little too much down there, got hit with a drug test and from that point on, I realized I gotta tighten the f—- up.”

Earlier, he was also playing quarterback besides tight end; this slip-up suspended him from the team. It was his brother Jason who spoke to the coaches to keep Travis on the team, and they agreed, but this incident led him to take up the tight end role. And that decision became one of the most impactful in NFL history.

Now, years later, the Chiefs’ GM Brett Veach is emphasizing how important that choice has been for the franchise while helping Kelce grow into an absolute legend of the game.

Brett Veach shares an irreplaceable aspect of tight end Travis Kelce

After being drafted by the Chiefs in the third round of the 2013 NFL draft, Travis Kelce has grown into a franchise cornerstone by being an integral part of Kansas City’s three Super Bowl trophies. So far in his 13-year career, Kelce has recorded 1,080 receptions for 13,002 yards and 82 receiving touchdowns. He also has 10 carries for 16 yards and two rushing TDs.

He holds the record, among others, for most career touchdowns in Chiefs history. However, alongside his on-field brilliance, GM Brett Veach highlighted another aspect of Kelce’s game that has made him a franchise and NFL legend.

“It’s a business, and it’s cutthroat, but just uplifting people around you,” Veach said of Kelce. “You could go in there with an attitude of, ‘We’re in this together, and we’re going to uplift each other.’ He puts a smile on someone’s face every single day. It doesn’t matter if you win a game by three touchdowns or if you lose a game.”

These comments highlight that Travis Kelce’s contribution to the Chiefs is more than just his stats and further add to his legacy as one of the greatest tight ends in NFL history. However, if his father had not held him to his word all those years ago, and his brother hadn’t saved him from suspension, Chiefs fans might never have witnessed this historic NFL career.