Travis Kelce, Tyson Fury and the gentle rise of the sporting dad bod

a Shortly after helping Kansas City win this year’s Super Bowl, Travis Kelce jetted off to the Bahamas for a little R&R. As he soaked up the sun and surf with his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, paps zoomed in on the Chiefs star and snapped some pics. But the thing that stood out most in those pics wasn’t one of the world’s most famous women. It was Kelce’s dad bod, which is either a strike against the body positivity movement or an abomination to exercise.

Have we reached the end of the era where we saw shirtless photos of Cristiano Ronaldo and other sporting heroes who may have looked perfect in a Howard Schatz coffee table book? These days, sports fans seem hungry for heroes who look a little more like them. Male fans in particular seem to have a soft spot for average sports figures: athletes who aren’t all muscle. Someone with a soft, round torso and sympathy for those who consider lawn care a valid form of exercise. Someone who, when he achieves the impossible, makes you say, “He and I aren’t so different.” Think Roger Federer in 2009, post-marriage and twin daughters, who continues to fascinate as he continues to light penOr Kelce in the Bahamas, who is just a little over his 250 pounds.

It’s only since Clemson University student Mackenzie Pearson dubbed this phenotype a “dad bod” that the term has become synonymous with unpretentious men. “Few things are worse than taking a picture in a swimsuit with a guy who is insanely fit,” Pearson wrote in a 2015 essay titled Why Girls Love the Dad Bod. “We’re insecure enough as it is.” At the time, she had to consider her college friends’ preference for younger men with paunches. “Girls tend to imagine a future with boys early on,” Pearson continued. “We know what we’re getting into if he’s got the exact same body type at 22 as he did at 45.”

She was supported by a 2021 Dating.com survey in which 75 percent of single respondents said they preferred the soft, round male physique to a more muscular build. Further research suggests that women don’t necessarily find such men physically attractive, but rather value their “evolutionary” fitness traits. In a recent Psychology Today article, Bucknell University professor Joel Wade argues that “women find a man they perceive as having lower testosterone more attractive because he is perceived as less aggressive and as having qualities that make him a better partner — and a better father.” It goes a long way toward explaining the photos that circulated in January of the super-fit San Francisco 49ers backfield brothers Christian McCaffery and Kyle Juszczyk practicing their golf swings on the practice field half-naked came and went without much fuss.

Before Travis’ beach body became fodder for sports talk, many female fans were convinced that his big brother, Jason, the heavier former Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman, was the bigger catch. For many, the highlight was Kansas City’s playoff win at Buffalo last January a shirtless Jason bursting out of the family’s luxury suite and cheering his brother on in the freezing weather. And the kicker was Jason going all out Barrel Man on a night when he and his wife Swift met for the first time. Her impression? “She was totally into you,” Travis told Jason on their New Heights podcast. The moment was more confirmation of the dad bod, the latter form that wins the day.

Then there’s the appeal for the athletes themselves. Hard bodies like those of NFL star receiver Odell Beckham Jr. or even the Rock might seem appealing in the pages of a magazine. But in practice, they’re ridiculously high-maintenance. Last year, comedian Eric André decided to be shredded as a stunt for his Adult Swim chat show, working out with three trainers to slim himself down to a muscular 173 pounds. The process nearly killed him. “If you see a middle-aged person with abs, you know they’re either psychotic or unemployed,” he told Men’s healthrecalling the blissful day he returned to his dad bod. “I went to Portugal and I drank my weight in wine. When I got back, I stepped on the scale and undid all my six months of work.”

LeBron James reportedly spends upwards of $1.5 million a year to keep his body in tip-top shape. No one doubts that it’s money well spent for the Los Angeles Lakers great, who at 39 is still a world champion. But it’s harder to justify when the NBA’s reigning MVP Nikola Jokic, who no one would describe as chiseled, is dominating the league. Luka Doncic, a similarly beefy NBA figure and perennial All-Star, is obsessed with his “recovery beer.” For the truly transcendent athlete, the dad bod is the ultimate trophy; it shows that they’ll have their cake and eat it too.

For two decades, the Manning brothers, Tom Brady and Drew Brees were the dad bod quarterbacks who set the NFL standard. After the Chiefs swept to last year’s AFC championship to punch their ticket to the Super Bowl, social media watchers pointed out that the team’s quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, one of the greatest players of all time, had a beer belly. In baseball, New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, nicknamed The Polar Bear, holds the line for a round and proud standard that goes back to rounded Hall of Famers like Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. DJ Burns, the big and responsible pivot man for NC State, was the breakout star of this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

On the links, Spaniard Jon Rahm recalls the days before Tiger Woods forced everyone to the gym, when the average touring pro had a body like Colin Montgomerie’s. And Tyson Fury became the world heavyweight champion while admitting he was far from sculpted. “I’ve been training for 20-plus years and I still don’t have a good body,” he told the Ny Breaking last year. “I’ve been in training camp for the last 12 weeks and living like a monk and I still don’t have a good body … Even though I don’t look like a guy who can run long distances or 20 miles, I am a guy who can.” (Fury raises a good point: even if these athletes don’t look fit, they’re far fitter than most of us will ever be.)

But even as dad bods have become more prominent in sports, it’s hard to say they’ve been fully embraced. And a significant portion of the coverage surrounding Travis Kelce’s dad bod wasn’t kind. To some, it was more evidence of an uneven standard of beauty that allows men to not obsess over their bodies while vilifying women for doing so (consider how often female athletes are called out on social media for not having bodies that legions of trolls deem acceptable). To others, it was a sin against sports, with an athlete’s body type seen as affecting his stamina and endurance. The NFL, which is just as likely to reward a player for meeting his fitness goals as it is to fire him for falling short, judges male body types more harshly than any other sport.

Many consider an athlete’s fitness a measure of his dedication. Media and fans don’t hesitate to voice their opinions. (“Nature punishes those who do not strive for the optimum,” argues a rebuttal to Pearson’s essay from a men’s fitness outlet called strength athlete“Do we really want to give people an excuse to not be fit and strive for mediocrity?) Longitudinal analyses found that the average male Olympian is 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs 170 pounds.

The net effect is that people become comfortable judging athletes’ bodies—to the point that they mock bodies that deviate from the “norm” in ways that would be frowned upon in any other arena. Even Kelce, arguably the best to play his position in NFL history, isn’t immune to body shaming; as the goalposts for the masculine ideal continue to shift, even as Kelce, despite all the dad bod incentives, continues to be a ridiculously fit human specimen. “It can often be underestimated how painful and damaging this is for men,” psychologist Carly Sober told news.com.au.

It’s no surprise that Kelce is taking the right path: He’s focused more on having fun than on what people say about him. “It’s March!” he told his brother on their podcast earlier this year when asked about his weight. He’s undoubtedly back in shape as the new NFL season approaches, especially since he’s paid $17 million a year to do so. Whether he can escape the “dad bod” label remains to be seen. Either way, he’s setting a good example by not worrying about whether the label sticks in the first place.