Travis and Jason Kelce—probably the most famous brothers to play recently in the NFL—discussed how weed-related suspensions can haunt players for years to come in a recent podcast. But for Travis it changed the course of his career, sending him on a path as a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.

In a recent podcast New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce, they discussed the year-long suspension that haunted Travis after he tested positive for THC in 2010 while playing for when Travis played college football for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. In 2013, the Dallas Cowboys passed on him in an interview while scouting for talent, he explained in the podcast.

After testing positive for THC in a drug test, was suspended the entire 2010 season for what the Bearcats called a “violation of team rules,” which was in fact failing a drug test for cannabis. When he tested positive, Travis was in New Orleans for the 2010 Sugar Bowl with Cincinnati. Not only was he judged and ridiculed for supposedly being immature for smoking pot, but it ended up having serious consequences at the NFL’s annual combine where they scout out new talent for future NFL stars. 

USA Today reported that while future Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid had faith in him, regardless of the failed drug test and subsequent suspension, “America’s Team”—the Dallas Cowboys—declined to accept him at the annual NFL combine in 2013, instead recruiting someone else. He recalled the course of events that year on the podcast, as his brother Jason pressed him for more details.

“At the combine, I had some bad interviews,” Travis said. “The Cowboys, they were kind of pressing me about having this red flag of missing a year—smoking weed. I don’t know if I was having a bad morning, I basically was just, I don’t even know if I want to say this.”

While Travis seemed reluctant to discuss it, Jason encouraged his brother to elaborate.

“It ended really fast,” Travis added. “I basically just said, ‘If you guys think I’m gonna be that kind of guy or you’re questioning if I’m still that person after everything that I’ve battled through to get to where I am now from missing a season, then you guys probably go somewhere else and pick somebody else.’ That is exactly what they did.”

So who did the Cowboys recruit instead of Kelce? The Cowboys ended up drafting tight end Gavin Escobar in the second round. He spent five seasons in the league, catching just 30 passes for 333 yards and eight touchdowns. In 2023, Travis caught 984 receiving yards, with 1,138 receiving yards in 2022.

Escobar ended up being the 47th overall pick in 2013, while Kelce fell to 63, the first selection of the third round, by the Kansas City Chiefs.

The episode was shared March 2 on social media.

Kelce’s Suspension Changed the Course of His Career

The brothers have discussed the 2010 suspension several times before. In an earlier podcast in December 2023, episode 231 of Bussin’ With the Boys, Travis mentioned his 2010 suspension and explained that it actually led him from switching positions as quarterback to tight end.

“What it did was it really kicked me into the tight end room,” Travis said. “I was still playing QB then. It was like, ‘Alright, you can come walk on the team, but we don’t need a quarterback. You can just be an athlete on scout team for a year, we’ll figure it out.’”

The tight end acknowledged how much things have changed. Travis in particular has opened up before about how common pot is for NFL players, and how they typically get away with it despite drug tests.

In June 2023, Travis estimated that up to 80% of players in the NFL smoke pot. “If you just stop [smoking weed] in the middle of July, you’re fine,” he said. “A lot of guys stop a week before and they still pass [drug tests] because everybody’s working out in the heat and sweating their tail off. Nobody’s really getting hit for it anymore.”

Former tight end Martellus Bennett estimated that closer to “89 percent” of NFL players smoke pot, and former running back Ricky Williams, who was also suspended for smoking pot, suggested “at least 80%” of players did the same. Williams, Marshawn Lynch, Tiki Barber, Calvin Johnson, and others have also invested in pot-related companies.

This aligns with what is seen in other pro sports leagues like the NBA and MMA organizations like the UFC. 

Jason also recently announced his retirement from the NFL after playing for 13 seasons.

The post Travis Kelce: Cowboys Passed On Me Over Pot-Related Suspension appeared first on High Times.

The post Travis Kelce: Cowboys Passed On Me Over Pot-Related Suspension appeared first on Paradise Found.

More than 123 million people tuned in to watch the Kansas City Chiefs (and Taylor Swift) claim yet another Super Bowl triumph on Sunday, making it the most-watched television program in history.

That’s useful grist for recently published research examining how watching the same thing can bring people together. 

It is known as the “theory of the collective mind,” which refers to the human ability to take in a collective perspective. 

Garriy Shteynberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, published the research on the theory last year, and recently expounded upon the scholarship in a piece published last month.

“Theory of mind research has traditionally focused on the ascription of mental states to a single individual. Here, we introduce a theory of collective mind: the ascription of a unified mental state to a group of agents with convergent experiences. Rather than differentiation between one’s personal perspective and that of another agent, a theory of collective mind requires perspectival unification across agents,” Shteynberg and his colleagues wrote in the study’s abstract last year.

“We review recent scholarship across the cognitive sciences concerning the conceptual foundations of collective mind representations and their empirical induction through the synchronous arrival of shared information. Research suggests that representations of a collective mind cause psychological amplification of co-attended stimuli, create relational bonds, and increase cooperation, among co-attendees.”

In his piece last month, Shteynberg noted the relevance of such research, given the increased polarization and decline in institutional trust in the United States. 

“Only about 1 in 4 Americans said that they had trust in the nation’s institutions in 2023 – with big business (1 in 7), television news (1 in 7) and Congress (1 in 12) scraping the very bottom,” he wrote.

“While institutional trust is decreasing, political polarization is increasing. The majority of Republicans (72%) and Democrats (64%) think of each other as more immoral than other Americans – a nearly 30% rise from 2016 to 2022. When compared with similar democracies, the United States has exhibited the largest increase in animus toward the opposing political party over the past 40 years.”

In a context in which we can’t agree on anything where, Shteynberg wonders, does that leave us? 

“When public trust and political consensus disappear, what remains? This question has occupied my research for the past 20 years, both as a scholar trained in social anthropology, organizational science and social cognition and as a professor of psychology,” he said.

“Researchers don’t have all the answers, but it seems that even in the absence of public trust and agreement, people can share experiences. Whether watching a spelling bee or a football game, ‘we’ still exist if ‘we’ can witness it together.”

Shteynberg goes on to explain that he and his colleagues have been driven to explore the “foundation of collective mind,” saying that what they study in the lab “is shared attention, instances when people experience the world with others.”

Those lab experiments, he says, underscore the value of “shared experiences,” saying they “amplify psychological and behavioral reactions to the world” in adults.

“My colleagues and I find that compared with attending to the world alone, or at different times than others, synchronous attention with others yields stronger memories, deeper emotions and firmer motivations. Studies show that seeing words together renders them more memorable, watching sad movies together makes them sadder, and focusing together on shared goals increases efforts toward their pursuit. Sharing attention to the behavior of others yields more imitation of that behavior,” he says.

“Critically, those experiencing something with you need not be physically present. Although in some experiments participants sit side by side, in other studies participants believe they are attending together from different lab rooms or even across the nation. Irrespective of the location, the sense that ‘we are attending’ to something together at the same time – as compared with in solitude or on your own schedule – amplifies the experience.”

Shteynberg highlights two examples of disparate sizes –– watching a movie in a theater or watching the Super Bowl –– as important instances of shared experiences with Americans, who are increasingly isolated in a society that conducts more and more business online.

“Before the advent of the internet, Americans shared attention broadly – they watched the same nightly news together, even if they did not always agree whether it was good or bad. Today, with people’s attention divided into media silos, there are more obstacles than ever to sharing attention with those with whom you disagree,” he says. “And yet, even when we can no longer agree on what ‘we’ believe, sharing attention to the basic sights and sounds of our world connects us. These moments can be relatively small, like watching a movie in the theater, or large, like watching the Super Bowl. However, remembering that we are sharing such experiences with Americans of all political persuasions is important.”

The post ‘Collective Mind’: Researchers Examine Social Effects of Watching the Same Thing Together appeared first on High Times.

The post ‘Collective Mind’: Researchers Examine Social Effects of Watching the Same Thing Together appeared first on Paradise Found.

Smoking pot might get you suspended from a team—but you can still win the Super Bowl twice, Kansas City Chiefs tight end and Super Bowl LVII champion Travis Kelce said in so many words during his monologue on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) Sunday evening.

With a second Super Bowl title under his belt, Kelce became the 34th athlete to host SNL, joining the ranks of athletes such as Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Ronda Rousey, ESPN reports. The Kelce family attended the taping of SNL at Studio 8H in Manhattan. 

Philadelphia Eagles center and Kelce’s brother Jason joined for one of the skits on SNL. The brothers were one of the top topics of Super Bowl week in Glendale, Arizona—given that they had to play against each other. Both brothers began the game with one Super Bowl ring, but younger brother Travis was the one who walked out with a second ring in a 38-35 nailbiter.

“Jason and I have actually been playing football together since we were little kids, and he was always better than me at everything,” Kelce said during his monologue. “In high school, he was an honor student. And I got kicked off the team because I failed French. And English too. But, French sounds way better. And then when we were in college, I actually got kicked off the team because I tested positive for marijuana. So it just goes to show you if you smoke weed and you’re bad at school, you can win the Super Bowl twice.” 

Kelce said that his mother drove both him and his brother home after Super Bowl LVII, which led to an uncomfortable ride.

Kelce has been smoking pot for awhile, since his days playing in college. In 2010, Kelce was suspended for a full year from playing with University of Cincinnati Bearcats after he tested positive for THC. “I got kicked off the team for having a little too much fun off the field,” he said, as reported by The Kansas City Star. He nearly “quit football” over the ordeal, but the incident doesn’t appear to have impacted his view of cannabis. 

But fortunately, Kelce didn’t stray from his path to the Super Bowl and kept playing despite the setback of missing a full year. The Enquirer reported in 2021 that the Bearcats transformed Kelce into a tight end. The rest is history.

Pot and the NFL

Numerous former National Football League (NFL) players have spoken to High Times about the benefits of pot such as Ricky Williams, Eben Britton, Kyle Turley, Jake Plummer, and the list goes on. Many of them have invested in cannabis brands.

Things are slowly changing regarding cannabis in the NFL. Since April 18, 2021, NFL players no longer have to stress about testing positive for cannabis in random drug tests from the league. 

It is a new era in the NFL thanks to a new collective bargaining agreement that was negotiated last year and that established a new drug policy for the league. 

The NFL announced in a press release on Feb. 1 that it would be providing $1 million to two different researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and University of Regina (UR) in Canada. Both research groups will be focusing on how cannabinoids can aid in general pain management, with a few other goal studies as well.

Players like the Kelce brothers won’t have to worry so much about testing positive for pot nowadays.

The post On SNL Monologue, Super Bowl Winner Travis Kelce Praises Pot appeared first on High Times.

The post On SNL Monologue, Super Bowl Winner Travis Kelce Praises Pot appeared first on Paradise Found.