KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) 鈥 Retired Eagles center Jason Kelce apologized during ESPN's pregame show Monday night after grabbing the phone of an unruly fan and spiking it to the ground before the Ohio State-Penn State game last weekend.
鈥淚n a heated moment, I decided to greet hate with hate,鈥 Kelce said before ESPN's broadcast of the Buccaneers-Chiefs game featuring his brother, Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce. 鈥淚 fell short this week.鈥
Jason Kelce was attending the Big Ten matchup between the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions in State College, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when the incident occurred. Video on showed him walking through a crowd near Beaver Stadium and fans asking for photos and fist bumps when one fan began to heckle him and appeared to shout an anti-gay slur directed toward his brother for dating Taylor Swift.
At that point, Kelce grabbed the fan's phone and threw it to the ground, then turned to confront the man dressed in Penn State attire. Kelce appeared to use the same anti-gay slur during the exchange before another fan stepped between them before the altercation could escalate.
鈥淚 think everybody has seen on social media what happened this week,鈥 Kelce said on the ESPN broadcast. "Listen, I鈥檓 not happy with anything that took place. I鈥檓 not proud of it. In a heated moment I chose to greet hate with hate and I just don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 a productive thing, I really don鈥檛. I don鈥檛 think it leads to discourse and it鈥檚 the right way to go about things. In that moment I fell down to a level that I shouldn鈥檛 have.
鈥淭he bottom line is, I try to live my life by the golden rule, that鈥檚 what I鈥檝e always been taught,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 try to treat people with common decency and respect, and I鈥檓 going to keep doing that moving forward.鈥
___
AP NFL:
