If watching someone crease their Jordans gives you a panic attack, you may want to avert your eyes from any replays of the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory over the New Orleans Saints this week. America’s Sweetheart Travis Kelce pulled up to the game having doubled up on classic Air Jordans, wearing one pair to the arena while carrying another elite pair of spiked Js in hand. In doing so, he didn’t just pull off a sneaker flex—he may have been offering a glimpse of some future business endeavors.
Let it be said first, though, that Travis Kelce is a legit sneakerhead. His bonafides as a sneaker guy go way back to his first days in the NFL, with the football star/Mr. Taylor Swift counting the legendary Nike Air Mag as one of his first major purchases after joining the league. He signed with Nike in that same year, 2013, and has remained a face of the brand’s football branch since then. However, Kelce and the Swoosh are in a contract year. Their deal expires at the end of the 2024 season, and lately the star has been seen stepping out on the field in some shoes that ever-so-slightly skirt the sponsorship’s dress code.
David Eulitt/Getty Images
Throughout the preseason Kelce could be spotted at Chiefs practices in spiked Air Jordan silhouettes. This isn’t technically a full-on break from the company he’s been with since day one, mind you—however, Jordan athletes and Nike athletes play on separate courts, so to speak. While it’s not uncommon for athletes signed with the Swoosh to wear Jordans out in public, performance kicks tend to be kept a bit more kosher to contracts, especially in sports outside of basketball. You generally don’t see guys lacing up cleated Jordans unless they’re signed to the brand, with MLB stars Mookie Betts and Aaron Judge among the select few to don them. The shift may be Kelce indicating he’s ready for a change of scenery, or it could just be a high-profile athlete taking advantage of the sort of leeway high-profile athletes tend to get in situations like these. In either case, Kelce’s leaning into his Jordan era in style. Before taking the field, he made his tunnel walk in another classic pair—the Air Jordan 8 ‘Playoffs,’ the silhouette Michael Jordan secured his first threepeat in. But it was the other pair of kicks he carried into the locker room with him that turned heads.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
The Air Jordan 11 ‘Concord’ is the grail, period. It’s the most popular colorway of the most hallowed Jordan silhouette of all time, designer Tinker Hatfield’s masterpiece and one of the cornerstones of modern sneaker lore. Retros of this colorway are kept pretty sparse, the last couple appearing in 2018 and, more notably, 2011—a release that caused mall riots the likes of which the sneaker world had never seen. Putting on Concords for so much as a coffee run is a flex in and of itself. Playing in a rare spiked pair as a defending Super Bowl champion? That’s the sort of move you can only make when you’re on top of the world, which…if we’re being honest, Kelce kind of is these days. The dude is inescapable, genuinely transcending the sport of football and becoming something of a cultural institution. If there’s ever been a time for him to play in a pair of Concords, now is it.
