Hoda Kotb’s daughter didn’t understand why Travis Kelce lost his cool with Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid during Super Bowl LVIII.
“One of the things they didn’t like happened on the sidelines and my daughter asked when Travis Kelce pushed his coach,” Kotb, 59, said during the Monday, February 12 episode of Today With Hoda and Jenna. “My daughter said, ‘Why did he do that?’ Like why did he push that older man?’”
While Kotb’s oldest daughter Haley, 6, asked the question, the talk show host explained to both her daughters that Kelce, 34 was “frustrated he wasn’t in the game” after the Chiefs fumbled the ball. (Kotb is also the mother of 3-year-old daughter Hope.)
“But all a little kid saw was [a] strong guy pushing an older man,” Kotb noted to which cohost Jenna Bush Hager agreed.
Bush Hager, 42, shared that she had a similar reaction as Haley when she saw the tense interaction between Reid, 65, and Kelce.
“I was the Haley of that situation, I kept asking [husband] Henry, ‘What’s happening here?’” she explained. “You want to be a team and part of being a team is you respect the coach. It’s sportsmanship. And I was trying to teach my kids that.”
The cohosts shared that their daughters became interested in watching Kelce and his team play this season because of the tight end’s romance with Taylor Swift. They noted that neither of their kids had seen that kind of emotion during a game before.
“Yeah, and it’s weird because I don’t think so many young girls have been into football until this game,” Kotb said. “I don’t know that my daughters would’ve been watching it.”
Kelce had a few words with Reid after he was briefly benched following Isiah Pacheco’s fumble. Kelce grabbed Reid by the arm and yelled at him which led the intense moment to go viral. Despite the kerfuffle, the Chiefs brought home their second championship in a row, beating the San Francisco 49ers 25-22.
During post-game press, both Kelce and Reid were asked about the moment. Kelce hinted he wanted to keep the duo’s conversation to himself.
“Oh, you guys saw that?” he joked during a postgame interview. “I’m gonna keep it between us unless my mic’d up [content] tells the world, but I was just telling him how much I love him.”
Reid, for his part, also gave a light-hearted answer about the interaction. “He keeps me young,” the coach said of Kelce. “He caught me off balance. Normally I’d give him a little bit [back], but I didn’t have [my] feet under me.”
He later confirmed that Kelce did want to go back into the game and promised Reid he would score if given the chance.
“The part I love is he loves to play the game and he wants to help his team win,” Reid said to ESPN. “As much as he bumps into me, I get after him and we understand that. He just caught me off balance.”
