Chicago Bears Head Coach Ben Johnson Once Stole Country Star Chase Rice’s Date – Kind Of: “I’m Still Mad”

Tribune Content Agency via Alamy/Evan Destefano

Worked out well for the coach…but not so much for the country star.

The Chicago Bears take on the Los Angeles Rams tonight in the NFC Divisional Round tonight, after a thrilling come from behind win against the Green Bay Packers last weekend.

It’s going to be frigid in Chicago for the game, but there’s no doubt the atmosphere at Soldier Field will be electric, complete with a halftime performance from country music star Chase Rice.

As it turns out though, Rice has a special connection to Chicago Bears, thanks to his longtime friendship with head coach Ben Johnson.

Johnson and Rice were high school teammates back at A.C. Reynolds High School in Asheville, North Carolina, and both went on to play football at the University of North Carolina after they graduated. Rice was a linebacker at UNC, but ultimately decided not to pursue an NFL career due to injury; Johnson was a walk-on quarterback and went to work as a software developer after college, but decided to return to football after getting hired as a graduate assistant at Boston College.

Obviously their careers took them in different directions, but Johnson and Rice have remained close friends – and naturally the country singer is a Bears fan himself. But Rice still does have one gripe with his longtime friend: He stole his date way back in middle school.

Johnson has been married to his wife, Jessica, since 2014, and the couple share three children together. The couple were high school sweethearts, before that, it seems that Chase Rice may have also had his eye on Jessica.

As Rice explained during an interview with US99 in Chicago, the coach’s future wife was his date to a middle school dance:

“Jessica was my eighth grade dance partner. It was Hawaiian themed.

I think I had the balls to do one slow dance, that was it. I wouldn’t say she was my girlfriend, but I took her to the dance, and I think I was in love with her. And then he swooped in not long after that dance, stole her forever.”

While Johnson was serving as offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions, Rice joked that he was “still mad” that Johnson stole his date from him:

But now he admits that it worked out better for Jessica anyway:

“I know the one person who got the best benefit of that is Jessica. Not only is he, I think, just a better human being than me, now he’s richer than me. Jessica chose wisely.”

Despite stealing his girl, Rice and Johnson have remained close friends, and the country star has nothing but praise for his former teammate:

“To see him come up through the ranks — I visited him down in Miami when he was the lowest guy on the totem pole there, and then he works his way up to tight ends coach down there and then tight ends coach in Detroit before he got the offensive coordinator job. It wasn’t surprising at all — it’s just, you never expect a guy to get a head coaching job. Those guys are always people you don’t know. But it’s really, really cool.

I’m really proud of him to be where he’s at. It’s very well deserved.”

I mean, having your choice between a future country star and a future NFL football coach is a pretty good position for Jessica to be in. Doesn’t seem like she really could have went wrong either way, but it sounds like it worked out well for everybody.