Will Compton, Dean Blandino Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

Will Compton presumably knows Travis Kelce well enough to have earned a wedding invite. Dean Blandino, evidently, knows him better.

The former Tennessee Titans and Washington Commanders linebacker had him on his podcast, attended Tight End University alongside him most summers since Kelce co-founded the event with George Kittle and Greg Olsen in 2021, and posed for a photo with Taylor Swift at last year’s edition in Nashville. Blandino is Fox’s on-air officiating analyst, a face more associated with replay reviews than tight end camps, and someone Compton says he can’t recall ever running into at TEU.

Only one of them made the guest list for Kelce and Swift’s wedding at Madison Square Garden.

Compton, who co-hosts Bussin’ With the Boys with Taylor Lewan, was called by Dave Portnoy during Monday morning’s episode of Wake Up Barstool and admitted he’d initially brushed off the lack of an invite. That changed once the wedding photos started circulating and a shot of Blandino, whose show-stopping outfit turned heads, started making the rounds.

“Turns out, all these photos I keep seeing, I see Dean Blandino got an invite. Is that real?” Compton said, before Portnoy confirmed it for him. “…As I’ve been seeing these photos of everybody else at that wedding, I’m kinda flabbergasted why we didn’t get the invite.”

Blandino turned up at the Madison Square Garden ceremony in a black three-piece morning suit, joined by a guest list stacked with Fox, ESPN and Prime Video talent that Awful Announcing suggested may hint at where Kelce lands once he retires and moves into broadcasting.

While Compton and Lewan don’t have a multi-millionaire network gig to offer, they’ve hosted Kelce on Bussin’ With the Boys for years, including the July 2024 episode where Kelce first opened up at length about Swift, That same show is where Kelce revealed he’d turned down Netflix’s pitch to star in Receiver, the Quarterback follow-up, telling Compton and Lewan he was “way over the reality sh*t.” And it’s where he admitted last summer that he’d like to call an NFL game one day, even after struggling through the table reads for his Saturday Night Live hosting gig, joking that pronouncing player names correctly “is where I would get f*cking ruined.”

None of that history earned Compton a seat inside Madison Square Garden. According to NBC News, roughly 1,100 guests were invited to the wedding, with another 100 or so at an intimate gathering the night before. Compton wasn’t at either one, and as of Monday, he’s still trying to figure out why.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann