Kenny Chesney Reflects on Becoming Friends With Some of His Sports Heroes

Kenny Chesney‘s fans know that the singer loves sports, a passion that he’s had since childhood. Thanks to his job as one of country music’s biggest stars, Chesney has gotten to know a number of his personal heroes, and he reflected on that change in circumstances while speaking with Bobby Bones on The Bobby Bones Show.

Chesney credited his dad, who was a coach, for instilling a passion for sports in him and shared that he got to meet a number of notable figures in the industry when he worked on his Boys of Fall documentary in 2010. “I got to really know John Madden and Bobby Bowden,” he said. “I got to know Nick Saban and I got to know Brett Favre and I got to know all these people you would see on TV every Saturday and Sunday. Since then, over the years, so many of those people have come to shows.”

“We have these people we look up to and care about in all these sports figures, well they have the same respect for people because they love music also and that’s something that I learned and it was really interesting,” he continued. “You have these people that you really respect and look up to as a child and a young adult and you become friends with them.”

Along with sports figures, Chesney has also befriended some of his musical heroes over the years. “I have my musical heroes, Joe Walsh I had become friends,” he said. “We also lost a lot of people in COVID over the last year, but to think you are in high school just trying to learn guitar form Eddie Van Halen, just listening to all the licks on the records, and then becoming friends with someone like that.”

The Tennessee native also reflected on success in both industries, positing that having encouraging people around you is key. “Especially with a lot of people that I’ve mentioned, they had pretty humble beginnings,” Chesney said. “They worked really hard and they had a lot of wonderful people around them, and they learned really early on how to achieve something special with a group of people. That’s the way we did it. I have a wonderful family out there on the road and we all get to do it together. ..I think that’s the thing that’s most common with all those people is that they got to achieve a lot of great things together.”