These days, Travis Kelce is best known as the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs—and perhaps also as pop star Taylor Swift’s latest boyfriend. Since his rise to fame, he’s also expanded into other forms of entertainment, such as the podcast he hosts with his brother Jason, “New Heights,” where the pair discuss sports-related topics and other matters in their personal lives on a weekly basis.

Though Travis has been an NFL player first and foremost in his career, he does, in fact, have a background in reality TV. In a recent conversation, Travis opened up about what he considered to be his biggest regret of his career thus far—his long-forgotten and short-lived dating show.

Travis’ Biggest Regret Was Being The Center Of A Reality TV Show

During a conversation on the podcast “Bussin’ With The Boys” last week, Travis was asked if there was anything about his past that he regretted in the present day. For the most part, Travis said he felt good about his past choices, noting that he was a criminal justice major and that therefore he knew “how to not go to jail.”

There was only one thing, however, that came to mind that he wished he could erase. As it turns out, Travis used to have a reality dating show called Catching Kelce, which, in hindsight, he wished he’d never done.

Looking back on the show now, Travis admitted that he had some regrets about his choice to do the dating show:

Travis went on to refer to the show as the “worst” decision he’d ever made. The premise of the show was similar to The Bachelor in that it involved several single female contestants vying for Travis’ affections—but, instead of giving out roses to contestants advancing from one round to the next, Travis gave them footballs instead. Though Travis did end up selecting one of the cast members, a woman named Maya Benberry, the two apparently only dated for a few months following the show’s end.

The season had an incredible number of contestants for a dating show, presenting 50 women for Travis to choose between. That said, it only ran for seven episodes in total, making it a rather brief stint in the TV landscape, and Travis pointed out he wasn’t upset about the fact that many people hadn’t watched the show. In the aforementioned podcast conversation, however, he did note that, immediately after Catching Kelce aired, he still had a “pretty solid” season in the NFL.

For the most part, Travis doesn’t bring up the 2016 show, preferring to put it behind him instead. That said, he did make a reference to it when he appeared as the host of SNL in 2023, where he joked about being the star of a show that nobody tuned in to watch.

Travis Looks At The Positives Of The Experience

Though Travis may look back on Catching Kelce as a mistake, it does seem like it was a meaningful learning experience for him. He made it clear that the reality TV show was not a reflection of his true personality or morals, citing that he wasn’t in a place in his life to actually be ready for a dating show.

That said, Travis spoke about the valuable skills he picked up from being the star of the show:

“I think that was probably the one thing I learned from Catching Kelce,” he added jokingly.

Since then, Travis has gone on to expand his reality TV experience. Most recently, he served as the host of the reboot of Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?, where he noted he began to get more comfortable as filming continued. Different from professional athletics, he pointed out, working in entertainment was a lot more waiting around and “getting the cameras ready” to shoot.

Another member of his family will also be stepping into the reality TV world—just recently, it was also announced that Travis’ mother, Donna, would be competing in the upcoming season of The Traitors.