Former NFL LB confirms country star’s wild football story

SportsLuke Combs performs during the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on Thursday, June 12, 2025, in Manchester, Tenn.Amy Harris/Invision/APAs it turns out, Luke Combs and Brandon Spikes faced off in high school.Well, to be fair, it wasn’t much of a competition.Spikes, a former NFL linebacker, recently joined “Bussin’ With the Boys,” and the guys wanted to confirm a high school football story relayed to them by the country music star.Combs, 36, and Spikes, 39, both from North Carolina, played each other.“He looked as old as he does now at 18,” Combs recalled.“We had a really good running back that year. I think he was going to Western Carolina. Our coach is like, ‘We’re running straight at this dude.’“It set the tone for the game, but not in the way we had hoped. He absolutely annihilated our running back. Fullback folded (like a) piece of paper, gone. Running back, folded. (Spikes) gets over top of him, grabs a dreadlock and rips it out of his head, from his helmet, and wraps it around his wrist like a bracelet and wears it the rest of the game.”Spikes simply nodded and said, “That was a true story.”Spikes, who went on two win two national championships, played in the NFL with the New England Patriots and Buffalo Bills from 2010 to 2016.Meanwhile, Combs has won 6 CMA awards.Mark Heim is a senior writer who provides sports, news and trending content. He co-hosts a daily sports radio show on WNSP-FM 105.5 in Mobile. Heim has been recognized with awards for his writing, headlines and...