Hoda Kotb is sharing her daughter’s reaction to the viral Super Bowl moment in which Travis Kelce had an intense moment with Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid. Kotb, who is mom to daughters Haley, 6, and Hope, 4, revealed during Monday’s episode of Today With Hoda and Jenna that her eldest had lots of questions, due in part to her newfound interest in the league sparked by the tight end’s relationship with Taylor Swift.
“One of the things they didn’t like happened on the sidelines and my daughter asked when Travis Kelce pushed his coach,” Kotb shared. “My daughter said, ‘Why did he do that?’ Like why did he push that older man?’” While the TODAY anchor explained to both of her daughters that Kelce was “frustrated he wasn’t in the game” after the Chiefs had fumbled the ball, “all a little kid saw was [a] strong guy pushing an older man.”
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Co-host Jenna Bush Hager agreed, saying that she was surprised herself to see the 34-year-old player grab his 65-year-old coach by the arm and yell at him during the viral moment. “I was the Haley of that situation, I kept asking [husband Henry Hager], ‘What’s happening here?’” she recalled. “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.”
Kelce and Reid both addressed the moment with the press after the Chiefs managed to bring home their second Super Bowl win in as many years, as they beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime. Kelce kept the tone light when asked about the moment, joking, “Oh, you guys saw that?” He would go on to add. “I’m gonna keep it between us unless my mic’d up tells the world, but I was just telling him how much I love him.”
Reid kept a similar tone in his own answer about the incident. “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 told ESPN later, “The part I love is he loves to play the game and he wants to help his team win. As much as he bumps into me, I get after him and we understand that. He just caught me off balance.”