Setting the Example

Instead of chasing women during his NBA road trips, Shaquille O’Neal has been up to something far more unusual in his hotel rooms.

Shaquille O'Neal was back at the [Inglewood CA] Forum today -- not for an NBA game, but to pick up his MBA.

The Miami Heat center was perhaps the most famous and certainly the tallest of the 2,200 people receiving degrees from the University of Phoenix yesterday afternoon.

O'Neal, who now plays for the Miami Heat, spent more than a year taking classes and doing online work for a master's degree in business administration. After a decade in the NBA, he says he wants to start thinking about what he is going to do after basketball.

"It's just something to have on my résumé [for] when I go back into reality," O'Neal said. "Someday I might have to put down a basketball and have a regular 9-to-5 like everybody else."

I guess the air isn’t so thin up there after all.

Comments

[bleedingbrain]

Shaq is cool.

[Scott Ferguson]

Shaq is an awesome man in every respect. :)

[Jason Bontrager]

After 10 years in the NBA, why on Earth would he need to get a 9-5 job? Shouldn't he be insanely rich by now?

Bully on him for pursuing the degree though.

[baldilocks]

There are plenty of people--athletes in particular--that make tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in their lifetimes, but end up broke--via ignorance. If nothing else, shelling out a few thousand dollars on MBA course and doing a little studying has helped to prevent that fate for Shaq. (the 9-5 stuff is a rhetorical device known as hyperbole.)

[Francis W. Porretto]

Shaq has long impressed me as an athlete who refused to let his fame and the adulation of his fans swell his head. That's probably due in large measure to his upbringing -- his father was a career drill instructor, and quite an impressive man in his own right.

[Glenmore]

IIRC, Shaquille made a promise to his mother when he left LSU early to go pro, that he would 'get his degree'(BA), and he did, and came back to Baton Rouge to receive it. He spoke, and spoke well, on the value of education, calling on kids to prepare for the world almost all of them would face, rather than the dream of NBA or rap wealth.
It sounds like his MBA is a continuation on that same path. And I suspect University of Phoenix was more academically rigorous than LSU, at least for star athletes.

[StinKerr]

I have no doubt that he'll do very well in applying that BA to his business and charity interests. It's going to be tough for the bean counters to snow him. That's a good thing.

[birdwoman]

Whether or not he uses the degree, the fact that he's pursuing education shows that he's a well balanced Renaissance kind of dude. Cool.

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