Former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce will be taking the helm of Drew University’s inaugural football team as head coach next fall.
The sudden career move comes not long after Kelce announced his retirement from the National Football League after 13 seasons with the Eagles.
According to Kelce’s representatives, the football star is looking to continue his involvement in the sport and offer hands-on support to the football community from a more directorial position.
“He is excited to bring football to the Drew community and showcase a lot of hidden talents among Ranger athletics and the players he will bring in,” said Kris Kelce, Jason Kelce’s agent.
Kelce already has a game plan for how he will go about building the Drew Rangers’ football program from the ground up, starting with a handful of his starting players.
Inspired by his own personal trajectory through the sport, Kelce shared that he plans to build the team roster around a specific kind of athlete: those who repeatedly promised to retire before finally retiring, then unretired shortly after.
Electing to focus on this specific sports journey instead of just prowess on the football field, Kelce has already begun to recruit several unretired-retired athletes from a range of sports.
Next year’s prospective student-athletes include swimming legends Michael Phelps and Dara Torres, soccer star Pelé, NFL icon Tom Brady and NBA giant Michael Jordan.
When asked how he would feel about returning to college athletics at his age, Phelps said he was not worried about it affecting his experience on campus.
“I mean, I figure it’s just like all the people who come back as fifth years on their teams,” Phelps said. “We’re all just here to have fun and perform to the best of our abilities in our sport, so it really doesn’t matter if student-athletes in their mid-20s who’ve been here for half a decade decide to come back for another year of college with their teenage teammates.”
The Landmark Conference introduced football in its sports lineup for the first time this past season, with six schools debuting brand-new programs.
Drew was one of four schools in the conference this year to abstain from forming a football team, alongside Elizabethtown College, Goucher College and the University of Scranton.
Betty James is a professor majoring in swim and minoring in the extrapolation of various languages and their functional structures, specifically French and English.
