COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Travis Kelce is getting set to play in the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs. He’s a Cleveland Heights native who would have passed through Columbus on his way to playing at the University of Cincinnati.

So how did he never end up at Ohio State?

Kelce is a two-time Super Bowl champion seeking ring number three when the Chiefs play the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in Las Vegas. And Ohio State is an eight-time national champion that’s always in the conversation for a title. It would seem the two would be a match made in heaven.

“I don’t think major colleges really looked at him as a guy that could play at the Big Ten or the ACC or the SEC level,” recruiting analyst Steve Helwagen said.

Helwagen has covered Ohio State football for more than 30 years and said several factors kept the tight end from joining the Buckeyes.

“Travis, at 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, was considered a quarterback,” Helwagen said. “And he was not that highly rated.”

Kelce’s raw talent at Cleveland Heights

Kelce’s childhood coaches knew he had potential from the beginning. Mike Jones coached Kelce through his junior season at Cleveland Heights High School.

“He was the best player on the field, so we put him at quarterback,” Jones told WJW of Cleveland in 2021. “His first love was quarterback, but he wanted to catch the ball. We said if we could figure out how you can throw it and catch it yourself, we would.

“But that’s a tough thing to do.”

Kelce’s coach his senior season, Jeff Rotsky, also saw the raw talent.

“I’ve never seen a kid at 6-foot-6, 230 pounds at the time run, jump and have ball skills,” Rotsky said. “Even though he was our quarterback, I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Kelce passed for 1,523 yards through 10 games as a senior. On the ground, he averaged 101 yards.

And Rotsky said Kelce’s future could have taken him away from football.

“He’s the only athlete I have ever had who could have been Division I football, Division I basketball and Division I baseball,” Rotsky said. “That’s how good he was. And are you ready for this? He was a great hockey player growing up.”

Kelce not on Ohio State’s radar

The Buckeyes weren’t exactly looking for Kelce. They had other plans at quarterback when he was a senior in the fall of 2007.

That was when Ohio State finished the regular season with an 11-1 record and ended up in the national championship game for the second year in a row with an offense led by quarterback Todd Boeckman. Plus, the Buckeyes were chasing a top prospect in Terrelle Pryor.

“[Pryor] finally committed to Ohio State, so they were pretty well covered at the quarterback position,” Helwagen said. “It just so happens that had they all known that [Kelce] was going to turn out to be an All-Pro tight end that maybe they would have looked at him a little bit differently.”

Ending up at Cincinnati

The 2008 Cleveland Heights graduate did get a look from Cincinnati, thanks in part to his older brother, Jason, who was a walk-on for the Bearcats. It turned out to be Travis’s best option.

“Other than that, it was just MAC schools,” Helwagen said. “Akron, Eastern Michigan and Miami of Ohio were the only other schools that offered Travis Kelce coming out of high school.”

Kelce played at Cincinnati for three seasons, going 32-7 in his collegiate career. As a tight end, he made 59 catches for 875 yards and 10 touchdowns.

“He was at Cincinnati at the right time because Cincinnati became one of the top football programs not only in the Midwest but in the country,” Helwagen said.

After declaring for the draft, the Chiefs picked Kelce in the third round (63rd overall) in 2013. The rest, as they say, is history. Kelce is now considered to be one of the best tight ends to ever play in the NFL.

Meanwhile, college athletics has changed drastically since Kelce went to high school. The transfer portal makes it easier for players to switch schools, making Buckeyes fans wonder what would have happened if the current transfer rules were in place then.

“He was a decade ahead of his time,” Helwagen said. “If he’d had a great junior year like he did in Cincinnati, maybe he would have jumped off and come to an Ohio State or Michigan or another Big Ten school.”