Andy Reid wants you to know about this ‘unbelievable jam’ — and the story behind it
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Andy Reid partners with Jared’s Jams to debut a custom boysenberry flavor.
- Reid's long ties to Special Olympics reflect personal roots and deep activism.
- Fifth annual SOMO event highlights athlete stories, humor and community impact.
We’ve all witnessed Andy Reid the offensive genius, Andy Reid the taskmaster and Andy Reid the stoic.
You’ve also seen Andy Reid the humorist, Andy Reid the “forktarian” and Andy Reid the insurance pitchman.
Somehow, he’s all those things at once and plenty more.
But if you’ve observed him closely over time, you know one aspect of him drives all that and has bound it all together into the sum of becoming the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history — with a fine chance in the next few years to ascend to the summit.
Sure, the Chiefs coach might put on a “grisly facade,” former Mizzou and Chiefs center Mitch Morse said on Wednesday night at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. But …
“He’s a man of people,” said Morse, a special guest speaker on Wednesday at The 5th Annual Evening With Andy Reid on behalf of Special Olympics Missouri.
That essential aspect of Reid was illuminated in a whole new light over the course of the night.
Starting with the animated way he engaged his friend and new business partner Jared Niemeyer — a longtime Special Olympics athlete who along with his family founded “Jared’s Jams” in 2014.
Reid was introduced to Jared, and the Jams, about five years ago.
Safe to say he was smitten by the young man and his family.
To say nothing of how he felt about the product made in their FDA-approved kitchen in Edina, Missouri, and now shipped all over the country — including to Reid’s offseason California home stocked with the stuff.
“Unbelievable jam,” Reid said with Jared alongside after Reid called him to the stage to “get up here and hold my hand, doggone it.”
Thumping one hand into the other for emphasis, Reid added, “You slather it on some bread, and then you slather on a little peanut butter and you would think you’re in heaven.”
Just the same, Reid once offered a suggestion: Jared should expand the operation to add boysenberry to the selection.
Next thing you know, Jared and Co. created boysenberry jam … and came back with an offer.
“‘Hey, do you want to come work for me?’ ” Reid recalled Jared asking. “So I said, ‘Yeah, I’m in.’ So we’re sprouting this thing tonight.”
Presto, the 380 boxes of “Andy Reid’s Boysenberry Jam” on the audience tables were approved to be opened.
The moment was endearingly punctuated by Jared bestowing over Reid’s head a gold medal he’d won at a recent Special Olympics Missouri Summer Games.
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When I later spoke with Reid, he was beaming about the night.
That particularly included the part where he took questions from more than a dozen Special Olympic athletes.
He put each at ease with an arm around them as they spoke or by way of a nickname here or there, like when he called one smiling young lady “Sparkles.”
He raved about being “all in” with Jared and mentioned needing to make time one day for the three-hour drive to Edina to see how it all comes together.
And a couple hours after Jared had given him the gold, Reid still was wearing it.
A one-man ‘host family’
If it sounds like this is personal for Reid, it is on a number of levels.
Across the country from where he grew up in Los Angeles, Reid had in New England a learning-challenged cousin, Peter Leon.
Reid grew up feeling connected with and protective of Peter. And he was forever struck by the example of Peter’s family encouraging and challenging him — an approach that enabled Peter to work and ski and fish and live what Reid described as a normal life.
That led to Reid volunteering to be a “host family” for the Special Olympics when he was playing football at Brigham Young.
Never mind that he wasn’t yet married the first times around and initially constituted the entire host family himself.
His association with Special Olympics Missouri also is rooted in his relationship with Brian Neuner, who as the then-sports director at KOMU TV in Columbia knew Reid as an assistant coach at Mizzou from 1989-1991.
When he became Special Olympics Missouri’s chief development and marketing officer a few years ago, Neuner appealed to Reid to do some public-service announcements on behalf of the organization.
Next thing you know, here Reid is hosting the fifth annual event in his name.
That name helps explain why Morse, a man of people himself, was compelled to be part of Wednesday night.
And to eloquently share the piercing but ultimately inspiring tale of his family’s experience with the Special Olympics.
It’s a story I was moved and honored to get to write about in 2017, when then-Star photographer David Eulitt and I visited Morse’s hometown of Austin, Texas.
But Morse’s direct testimony and broader message Wednesday, particularly in the context of the Special Olympics, added an entirely different dimension to the poignant tale.
‘Competition is a form of celebration’
When Morse was 4 years old, his 4-month-old brother, Robbie, suffered a traumatic brain injury from being violently shaken by an agency babysitter.
“Bygones are bygones, but needless to say the Morse family changed a little bit,” he said.
His parents, Catherine and Kevin, “made sure I had as much of a normal childhood as anyone could possibly have,” he said. “The art of play was still alive and well for me as a child.”
Along the way, he never heard them complain and came to see them as all the more admirable because of how they reacted.
“It was such a blessing to have an example of chemistry and teamwork in a domestic setting …” he said. “My brother was never our cross to bear. He was our blessing, a blessing to change the trajectory of our family for the better.”
The Special Olympics became part of that, too.
The first event he remembers Robbie participating in was bowling.
Mitch wasn’t able to attend, but he can still picture the elated faces of his parents as they described Robbie’s joy in putting the ball on the roller and watching it “matriculate down the lane” — a term he surely derived from the Chiefs’ lore of Hank Stram’s mic-d up Super Bowl IV chatter.
The moment at the alley, he said, “was pure. It was beautiful.”
Despite what he called his “selfish” apprehensions, he experienced that “electric” sensation himself starting with watching Robbie in a Special Olympics track and field event.
Great as the opportunities are for Special Olympics athletes, Morse over time came to realize “something that isn’t discussed often enough” around families with children of different abilities: the vital chance for those families to find a sense of community paralleling what the athletes are feeling.
As he thought about the meaning of it all, he made another powerful point.
“Competition is a form of celebration,” he said. “Whether you’re competing against yourself or against others, it’s a unique experience. An experience often accompanied by immense highs and devastating lows. Special Olympics is a true celebration of athletes with all sorts of abilities. It’s pure (and) not encumbered by ego or entitlement.
“Special Olympics embodies all that is beautiful in sport, leaving everything else to the wayside.”
A different sort of Q and A
That embodiment was evident as Reid took questions from some of the athletes in attendance at the event also joined by current Chiefs’ defensive end George Karlaftis — another Special Olympics supporter, as demonstrated with his “My Cause My Cleats” choice last season.
(Those cleats and accompanying game-worn jersey were auctioned off for around $20,000 on Wednesday).
The range of the questions Reid occasionally gently helped coax out largely were light. But the way he answered also was revealing in ways that he wouldn’t necessarily impart with news media.
A sampling:
*Q: What was the funniest thing he’d ever seen or heard on the field during a game?
A: Reid smiled and said he wasn’t sure he could repeat some of them. But he promptly recalled an event when he was coaching in Philadelphia. An equipment manager had such a potbelly that his pants kind of got lost under the belly. “I can relate,” Reid said.
In this case, though, when a player’s chinstrap broke and the equipment manager ran over to fix it, well … “His pants fell down,” Reid said. “That might be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on the field.”
*Q: What part of the season does he look forward to the most?
A: “Well, the beginning is always good, and then if you do good, the ending’s always good,” he said. Then he pointed straight to training camp at Missouri Western in St. Joseph: “We get stuck in a dorm,” Reid said, “but we’re in there and we’re all doing everything together. We’re eating together. Everybody’s talking and camaraderie is unbelievable together.”
*Q: What’s his favorite road city for food?
A: “Ooh. Well … Buffalo is known for their wings, and there’s this old couple that owns a restaurant there. And they love the Bills, but they love to feed me. So when I get there … (they) put this big spread in my room of Buffalo wings. About 10 different flavors of Buffalo wings. It’s unbelievable. Little macaroni and cheese, just the basics.”
*Q: Who would win a quarterback battle between Peyton Manning and Patrick Mahomes?
A: With a polite pause for effect and then a big grin, Reid simply said, “Patrick.”
*Q: What was his most lasting memory of his time at Missouri?
A: The Fifth Down loss to Colorado in 1990. When former CU running back Eric Bieniemy was on his staff, Reid added, “I reminded him about it just about every day: You know, we really won the game (and) that they cheated.”
*Q: Why did he choose to coach football instead of another sport?
A: “Compared to other sports, there’s nothing like football,” he said. “It’s truly a team sport. So you need all the guys kind of dancing the same dance, or it just doesn’t happen.” He added that “probably the thing I enjoy most” is guiding a team that on paper that might not be the most talented but wins because it plays well together.
*Q: What’s his favorite part of being part of a team?
A: “Being part of the team …” he said. “I’m privileged and lucky to be a part, humbled to be a part. … I just feel very fortunate to be one out of 32 guys in the whole world that gets to do what I do.”
And very much one of one who does it the way he does — a man of many ways and means but most of all a man of people.
For further information or to offer support for Special Olympics Missouri, its website is SOMOcampus.org.
Jared’s Jams website is jaredsjams.com.
SOMO also is teaming up Mahomes’ 15 and the Mahomies Foundation to raise funds to send its athletes to the 2026 Special Olympics USA Games in Minneapolis: https://support.somo.org/campaign/694709/donate.
This story was originally published June 6, 2025 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Andy Reid wants you to know about this ‘unbelievable jam’ — and the story behind it."