Chesney finds real meaning of football

McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

He has recorded dozens of songs written by other people, but none has touched Kenny Chesney like “The Boys of Fall,” his most recent No. 1 single.

The song, co-written by Casey Beathard and Dave Turnbull, is an ode to football, especially high school football teams, the men who coach them and the small towns that embrace them.

“It has been one of the best journeys of my life,” Chesney said during a telephone interview last week, “to be able to spend a major part of the last year interviewing all kinds of people who have touched a lot of lives on and off the field.”

That journey was the making of the documentary “The Boys of Fall,” inspired by the video to the song. The documentary first aired on ESPN in August. It has been available on DVD at Walmart since mid-November.

Chesney interviewed players and coaches such as Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Joe Namath, Bill Parcells, Texas coach Mack Brown and Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel, all of whom discuss the game and what it has meant to them

For Chesney, football was a lifestyle, almost a religion, as it is in so many small towns. A lyric from the song goes: “In little towns like mine, that’s all they got / Newspaper clippings fill the coffee shops.”

“I grew up in an area where the town leans on the football team,” said Chesney, who was raised in Luttrell, Tenn., and played football at Gibbs High School. “The video sent me on a path,” he said, “and the more I worked on it, I almost became obsessed with it.”