Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
Jason Kelce has been in the news lately, and for reasons he would prefer not to be. As just about everyone has most likely seen, Kelce was involved in an incident with a fan outside of the Ohio State-Penn State football game. After being yelled at with vulgarities, Kelce took the cell phone the fan was filming him with and smashed it on the ground.
Kelce addressed the situation on Monday Night Football during the pregame show. He said, in part, “I’m not happy with anything that took place, I’m not proud of it. In a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate, and I just don’t think that that’s a productive thing. I really don’t. I don’t think it leads to discourse, and it’s the right way to go about things.
“And in that moment, I fell down to a level that I shouldn’t have, so I think the bottom line is I want to live my life, I try to live my life by ‘the golden rule.’ That’s what I’ve always been taught. I try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I’m gonna keep doing that moving forward even though I fell short this week. I’m gonna do that moving forward and continue to do that.”
Kelce makes regular appearances on 94WIP in Philadelphia with hosts Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie and is scheduled to join them later in the week. In response to the words Kelce spoke the previous night on ESPN, DeCamara said, “I was proud of Jason, and I don’t say that to sound like an authority figure. I mean as a Philadelphian and as someone who cares about Jason and as someone who, Jason is part of our show and he’s a massive part of the Philadelphia sports community, and he’s a great human. I was really proud of how he handled it last night.”
The show played the audio of what Kelce said after being set up by host Scott Van Pelt. Afterwards, DeCamara said to Ritchie, “I was incredibly impressed. What are your thoughts?”
“I thought it was really well said,” Ritchie started out. “You know, he didn’t come out and have to sacrifice too much pride while saying how sorry he was. I do feel contrition. It came across, and it sounded good while contrition was coming across. It was strong, it was just a great job.”
DeCamara added, “You know what was big? Didn’t read off a piece of paper. That was Jason Kelce. He was thoughtful. He was searching for the words…and he owned it. You know, he didn’t talk extensively about the guy, who obviously is a total jerk. The only real reference is ‘hate with hate’. So, he’s referencing that guy had hate, which clearly, he did. Clearly, he did. But I thought it was exceptionally well handled…I really, really, really liked and appreciated how Jason handled that last line.”
DeCamara reminded the audience Kelce would be in the studio with them on Thursday. Kelce joins the show each week from 7:30 a.m. ET to 8:30 a.m. ET.
