Stop the presses!

Guaranteed: There will be some new revelatory tidbit about Travis Kelce unearthed today. And tomorrow and the next day. People Magazine, BuzzFeed, Page Six, social media were made for that. In a culture mesmerized by celebrity, Kelce has become a primary Person of Interest, and therefore fully exempt from too-much-information grumbling.

His even more prominent girlfriend, his brother of equally elite status in pro football, his star turns on television and pod-casting, his fashion sense and philanthropy—all grist for the rumor and gossip mills.

And still there remain some factoids, consequential or not, to be dug up, even after the exhaustive piece in The Athletic that quoted former college teammates, coaches and roommates to describe what Kelce is really like, chronicling the animal-house existence of him and his brother Jason during their time together at the University of Cincinnati. (“So much beer,” it reported.)

So, in the spirit of flogging a hot topic to death, and with the understanding that there always is more that could be known, herewith some tangential nuggets not yet widely disseminated.

There is, on the Cincinnati campus, a 98-year-old building named Swift Hall. (No relation.) Among the university’s notable graduates are President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, baseball’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and trumpeter/bandleader Al Hirt. Not to mention Marge Schott, who once owned the major league Cincinnati Reds and once had her name on the school’s baseball stadium until her racist public remarks and comments supporting policies of the Nazi Party surfaced.

Basketball superstar Oscar Robertson and baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax competed for the university. The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, taught there late in his life.

In the belief that inquiring minds might not want to know—but ought to—there also is this about the Kelce boys’ college: The athletic nickname is Bearcats, and the burning question is: What is a bearcat?

There is such a thing as a Binturong, which is neither a bear nor a cat—at home in the rainforests of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Palawan Island—that loosely qualifies in appearance to what could be part bear, part cat. And the word “bearcat” is said to be a simple translation of the Chinese word for panda—xiongmao.

Closer to a University of Cincinnati sports connection is the 1914 tale of the school’s football game against the Kentucky Wildcats, in which a Cincinnati gridder named Leonard (Teddy) Baehr—who was either a linebacker, fullback or lineman, depending on the source—excelled. A Cincinnati cheerleader named Norman Lyon supposedly raised an in-game chant, “Come on, Baehr-cat!” and the crowd joined in.

Or the nickname might be traced to a newspaper cartoon, which appeared after that game, depicting a bedraggled Kentucky Wildcat trying to escape a frightening creature labeled “Cincinnati Bear Cat.” (Might the cartoon have been inspired by the Baehr-cat chant?)

Or another, older origin story credits Cincinnati sports editor Jack Ryder declaring the team “played like bearcats” after a 1910 football loss. Which sounds like Ryder meant the moniker as an insult.

None of this has anything to do with Taylor Swift, who did not attend college but is known to be a cat lover—regular cats—and, during a University of Cincinnati game this fall, the school’s bearcat mascot donned a flowing blonde wig in a poor imitation of Swift (while wearing Kelce’s old No. 18 U. of Cincinnati jersey).

No need to keep your eyes peeled regarding more of this sort of thing popping up, though you can rest assured there will be much, much more to surface, whether Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs continue to progress through the playoffs or not.

A bit much, maybe. But par for the course in these boldface-name-soaked times. And bearable.

 

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