Shaqramento State or Shaq State? O'Neal becomes GM of Sacramento State basketball program
Shaquille O'Neal volunteers to become general manager of the Sacramento State men's basketball program. His son, Shaqir, recently joined coach Mike Bibby's team as a player.
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Rename the school Shaqramento State. Or perhaps Shaq State will do.
Sacramento State announced Tuesday that it hired outsized personality and hoops icon Shaquille O’Neal as general manager of its forlorn men's basketball program. OK, so maybe hired isn't an accurate term because O'Neal — whose net worth is estimated at $500 million — will do the job on a voluntary basis.
But Shaq nevertheless assumes a role that has become increasingly popular in the NCAA in the age of name, image and likeness, and the Lakers great will attempt to help turn around a program that finished 7-25 and last in the Big Sky Conference last season. Sac State has had all of two winning seasons in program history and has never made the NCAA tournament.
Shaq isn't the only addition. Earlier this month, the Hornets hired former Sacramento Kings star Mike Bibby as coach. One of Bibby's first moves was to add O'Neal's son, senior forward Shaqir O'Neal, a transfer from Florida A&M, where he averaged 6.7 points and 3.2 rebounds a game last season.
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Shaqir began his high school career at Crossroads in Santa Monica before transferring to a school in Georgia. He spent two seasons as a reserve at Texas Southern before transferring to Florida A&M a year ago.
Bibby has no college coaching experience but recently led his high school alma mater Phoenix Shadow Mountain to five state championships. He plans to go for the glamour in Sacramento. He made that clear at his news conference upon being hired April 1.
“I’m going to turn this around," he said. "I have a lot of NBA players who want to send their sons to me to play. We can get kids. We’re going to try to have that Deion [Sanders] impact. We’ll have superstars in the building, active NBA players stop by.”
Sacramento State will open a new basketball facility on campus in the fall, leaving behind the Nest, the decrepit current arena that seats only 1,012 people and is one of the oldest NCAA Division I venues.
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Transforming the Hornets into winners will be a daunting task for O'Neal, who already has a busy schedule. He is a longtime NBA analyst for TNT and oversees a business empire that according to a Times article in 2023 has included 155 Five Guys restaurants, 40 24-Hour Fitness gyms, 20 Big Chicken outlets, 17 Auntie Anne’s pretzel stands, nine Papa John’s pizzerias and at least one Krispy Kreme doughnut shop.
Shaq has appeared in commercials for Icy Hot, the General insurance, Buick, Frosted Flakes, the Carnival Cruise Line, Epson, Novex Biotech, Reebok, Google, Pepsi, Ring, Gold Bond, JCPenney, PointsBet sports betting and Tonka.
How extensive are O’Neal’s business holdings? He's hosted a Shaq Summit for several years to corral representatives from all of his brands and partnerships into one room for strategic planning.
How much time can O'Neal devote to Sacramento State? Serving as GM of a Division I athletics program involves more than glad-handing and bringing in talent via grins and a magnetic personality. The position gained prominence soon after NIL legislation was passed in 2021 that overturned the long-held NCAA stance preventing athletes from getting paid.
Sure, some GMs are prominent sports figures — witness Andrew Luck at Stanford and Stephen Curry at Davidson — but logging long days on campus would seem a key part of the job description.
Sacramento State, long considered a bottom-rung athletics program amid the far-flung California State University system, has ambitions. The football program hopes to build a new stadium and upgrade from the FCS to the FBS.
A basketball program can flip from perennial losers to winners more easily than football because it can take only a few standout players to change fortunes. Shaq knows that firsthand, along with Kobe Bryant spearheading the transformation of a middling Lakers period in the late 1990s into three consecutive NBA championships beginning in the 1999-2000 season.
Can he trigger something similar at Sacramento State? If so, calling the school Shaqramento State might indeed be appropriate.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
