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Kenny Chesney’s New Sports Movie

countdown | September 13, 2014

A few years ago, Kenny Chesney added “sports documentarian” to his list of credits when he produced “The Boys of Fall” He followed that with “The Color Orange: The Condredge Holloway Story.” This year, Kenny went outside his comfort zone, as he produced “The Believer: The Life & Career of Steve Spurrier.” Kenny talked about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton.

How’d this come about? (K) ESPN came to us and knew that Steve & I were friends. He’s such a unique figure in college sports, and very polarizing figure. So I jumped at the chance to do it, but very surprised he wanted to do it. He’s usually not that forthcoming. He likes to stay to himself, just by the way he is perceived in the media. But I say this in the film, I used to love to hate Steve Spurrier, growing up in Tennessee when he was in Florida. But I learned to love the guy I used to love to hate. Because he is a different person than the one you see in the media.

What did you learn about him? That he’s very humble. Steve Spurrier & I share a similar background. We’re both from East Tennessee. He grew up in Johnson City, where I went to college, and come from similar beginnings. He achieved a lot, was passionate about something, took a dream and followed it. The thing I love about my success is I’ve been able to meet some really wonderful people in the world of sports who have inspired me, and Steve is one of those people. The reason we met is he loves music as much as I love sports. Steve loves country music, and he’s good friends with Darius Rucker. He really loves country music. I’d met him several times at shows, and he came on stage a couple years ago. It’s part of the open of the film, we got 20,000 people singing Happy Birthday to him on stage. So I met him, but in a show environment. I didn’t realize how spiritual he was. His father was a pastor. And people don’t realize how humble a person he is, and that was the biggest surprise of making a film about someone I respect, so I’m glad I made it.”

Last week, we got to speak with Darius Rucker, who is a friend of both Kenny Chesney and Steve Spurrier. We asked Darius if he’s seen Kenny’s film: “Yes I saw it, I thought it was great, I thought he really captured who Coach Spurrier is, he’s a friend of mine, he’s a really good guy, and the thing I say about him is he’s a lot funnier than you think, and I think they captured that in the documentary.”