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Jason Kelce has learned to keep his cool following the viral phone-smashing incident in early November.
The 37-year-old retired Philadelphia Eagles center was accosted by an angry fan on Thursday, November 21, after leaving a taping of the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show in Los Angeles. The man screamed at Jason, saying he was “nobody special” amid a slew of obscenities in a video obtained by TMZ.
The man seemed angry that the New Heights podcaster had bypassed the people seeking autographs to head right to his car. “You’re some s**t bag, f**king guy that thinks he’s on some pedestal,” he shouted at Jason, adding, “Don’t be a d**k!”
Jason tried to explain himself, saying, “I have a habit of not signing for people that follow where I’m going.” This, however, only seemed to make the yelling man even angrier. “You don’t love nothing but money. You don’t know these streets. F**k you, your love is fake,” he shouted, while another man could be heard yelling, “This is public information, Jason!”
The man insisted that they hadn’t followed him, but rather, they always stood outside there to get autographs from celebrities on Kimmel’s show. He name-dropped stars like Morgan Freeman and Harrison Ford as stars who took the time to stop for autographs.
The yelling continued even after Jason got into the waiting vehicle, seemingly prepared to leave. However, the ESPN personality remained calm as he chose to get out of the car and come speak to those looking for autographs, face to face.
Jason apologized to the man, saying he “didn’t mean anything” by skipping the autographs. He could be seen signing autographs for the crowd as the man who had been yelling took back what he said, said he was “ashamed” for the outburst, and praised Kelce.
The former NFL player had been on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to announce that he would be hosting a one-hour late night show on ESPN called They Call It Late Night with Jason Kelce. The show, which will be filmed in Philadelphia, is set to air its first episode at 1 a.m. ET on January 4.
This latest confrontation comes just weeks after Jason went viral for smashing a Penn State student’s cell phone after he yelled insults about his brother, Travis Kelce. “Kelce how does it feel that your brother is a f****t for dating Taylor Swift?” the student could be heard saying in social media videos of the incident.
Jason didn’t take kindly to someone insulting his brother, and responded by smashing the student’s phone while calling him the same slur. He later apologized for the behavior at the start of ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown on November 4.
“Listen, I am not happy with anything that took place. I’m not proud of it. In a heated moment, I chose to greet hate with hate. I just don’t think that is a productive thing… I try to treat people with common decency and respect. I’m going to keep doing that moving forward, even though I fell short this week,” he said.
Days after Jason’s public apology, Travis addressed the incident on the pair’s podcast. He came to his brother’s defense, saying, “The real situation is you had some clown come up to you and talk about your family, and you reacted in a way that was defending your family, and you might have used some words that you regret using.”
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