Daejon Love’s bizarre fake-NFL saga has now reached one of the loudest stages in sports media, and Travis and Jason Kelce had plenty to say about it on the season premiere of their “New Heights” podcast.
The brothers went through the whole thing piece by piece, from Love’s staged training clips to the contract-signing video that was supposed to help sell the act. Travis was cracking up while the footage rolled. Jason, meanwhile, kept getting hung up on the details, especially one obvious question: who was filming the thing?
Love’s scheme, according to federal prosecutors, stretched over years. He allegedly posed as a San Francisco 49ers wide receiver to scam women he met on dating apps, using fake workout footage, a staged contract signing, and even a custom helmet to make the story look real. Investigators eventually arrested him and an accomplice at the Boise Airport in Idaho.
The absurdity didn’t stop there. Love also dropped real NFL names such as Tyreek Hill to make the invented career sound more convincing, and the Kelces picked apart that layer of the story too.
Jason’s biggest gripe was how easily the whole thing could have been checked. “It’s hard to feel bad when it’s as easy as just Googling,” Jason said.
“Like, that’s what frustrates me! NFL guys are getting caught up in Ponzi schemes by, like, these very elaborate financial fraudsters, and like, some women are losing a bunch of money ’cause they don’t Google a guy’s name!
We just take the word for it?! Or he’s running the routes on a beach?!”
He didn’t leave it there. “It’s absolutely crazy that someone would do this,” Jason said.
“I mean we got to be smarter, women. I’m just going to put it out there.
We got to be smarter. We got to be able to sniff through this one.”
Jason also pointed to Manti Te’o as another example of how long these kinds of catfishing schemes have been around, treating Love’s case as part of a familiar pattern rather than a one-off stunt.
Love, 35, is still in federal custody after a judge agreed with prosecutors that he is a flight risk. He and his accomplice are both facing wire fraud and conspiracy charges, with each count carrying up to 20 years in prison.
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