Travis Kelce is our Dec/Jan cover star 🏈! The Kansas City Chiefs tight end was famous for several years, thanks to his Hall of Fame résumé, his symbiotic relationship with quarterback Patrick Mahomes, but that was just football famous. This year, after winning the Super Bowl, after hosting "Saturday Night Live," after starring in all the commercials, Kelce became inescapable. And that was before—you know. “Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it,”Kelce says about Taylor Swift. When it comes to football, Kelce keeps his own counsel about his round-the-clock physical anguish. “That’s the only thing I’ve never really been open about,” he says, “the discomfort. The pain. The lingering injuries—the 10 surgeries I’ve had that I still feel every single surgery to this day.” Kansas City longtime tight ends coach, Tom Melvin, says Kelce undersells the pain because the alternative is not playing, and the man will not miss games. “He has phenomenal pain tolerance. He’s played through things that other athletes I’ve coached through the years have not been able to push through. Mentally tough—way off the charts.” Still, he’s grossly underpaid. His $14 million salary, though near the top among tight ends, is half what the league’s star receivers make, and Kelce often functions as a receiver. Nothing to be done, he says flatly. The Chiefs know, he says, that he would play for free. They know he loves his city, his quarterback. “Unfortunately, in this business, things gotta get ugly, they gotta get unpleasant [if you want more money], and I’m a pleasant son of a buck.”
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