Country-music star Kenny Chesney believes the NFL lockout won't allow players to attend his tour stops in 10 league venues this summer. However, the NFL says players are in fact cleared to attend non-league events at the stadiums.
Players aren't allowed to contact team employees and coaches or use team facilities during the lockout, league spokesman Greg Aiello said Thursday. Chesney evidently understood the rule to mean that players were prohibited from attending non-NFL events at NFL stadiums, too.
"If you're in the NFL (players' union), you can't go to your stadium, you can't work out at your stadium, you can't talk to your coaches," Chesney told *The Star Tribune* this week.
Chesney played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa -- home to the Buccaneers -- last week, and said, "We had all baseball players there. We had a lot of Phillies, Red Sox and Yankees who were down there for spring training.
"But at West Palm (Beach), we had a ton of NFL players. I saw (guard Steve) Hutchinson from the Vikings. If we were to play the Dome up there (in Minnesota), he couldn't come to the show."
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath and others recently appeared in the music video for Chesney's hit song, "The Boys of Fall."
