Does Travis Kelce deserve another turn as host of Saturday Night Live?
Former cast member Tim Meadows commended the Kansas City Chiefs tight end in an interview with People, saying he’d like to see Kelce handle hosting duties once again.
‘He hosted once, and he did a great job. He was really funny,’ the 63-year-old Meadows said. ‘I like him a lot. I think he’s really funny.
‘It’s like, those athletes, they come in, and you are surprised how good they can be,’ Meadows added.
Kelce hosted SNL in March of 2023 following the second of his three Super Bowl wins.v
Saturday Night Live is no stranger to athletes and coaches.
Marvin Hagler (1986), Michael Jordan (1991), Charles Barkley (1993), Derek Jeter (2001), Tom Brady (2005) and Ronda Rousey (2016) have all hosted the sketch show with varying degrees of success.
Kelce received largely positive reviews for his performance in which he portrayed an American Girl doll enthusiast and self-defense specialist Kurt Lightening.
‘From 1977 with football player Fran Tarkenton to tonight with two-time Super Bowl champ Travis Kelce, there is a substantial, if uneven, history of professional athletes hosting ‘Saturday Night Live,’ wrote AV Club’s Trae DeLellis in one review.
‘It feels like an odd combination considering that athletic completion and sketch comedy hardly utilize the same muscles. While Kelce may have entered Studio 8H as an underdog, he proved himself as one of the season’s most agile hosts.
‘With a game plan to lean into more provocative humor, from cuckholding to a game of Russian roulette, and giving the ball to a deep bench of performers with peculiar character-driven sketches, SNL scored one of its best episodes of the season.’
Chiefs fan and Happy Days star Henry Winkler described the episode as ‘funny’ on social media.
But the most important review may have come from Kelce’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift.
Comedy troop Please Don’t Destroy worked with both Kelce and Swift on SNL before they began dating and discussed her review of his performance on comedian Mike Birbiglia’s podcast.
‘We worked with both Taylor and Travis Kelce, like, before they got together,’ Ben Marshall explained.
‘We — and we can cut this out if you guys don’t want to say this — but she kind of told us that she watched his ‘SNL’ episode and saw him in our video, and was like, ‘Oh, this guy seems funny,’ he continued.
‘So, like, a little bit [we] brought them together,’ Marshall joked.
