Shaq Gets a Degree to Go With His MVP

BATON ROUGE, La. —  Adorned in full rap and gown, a Staples Center-size member of the Class of 2000 sent his classmates into the world Friday with this solemn wisdom:

“From now on, LSU stands for ‘Love Shaq University,’ ” Shaquille O’Neal announced to several thousand students and parents at Louisiana State University’s Maravich Assembly Center. “Can . . . you . . . dig . . . it? Can . . . you . . . dig . . . it?”

OK, so it wasn’t the address of a valedictorian, but perhaps in his own way, O’Neal was just as accomplished.

He was here. At 28. Eight years after leaving school. Six months after winning an NBA championship and the league’s award as most valuable player.

The world was at his sneakers, but something was missing from his wall, from his resume and from his sense of self. He spent the last 18 months trying earn it. He came home Friday to receive it.

With a diploma-size smile, O’Neal received his bachelor of general studies degree, causing classmates to cheer and professors to embrace him like tenure.

During a time when newspapers are running photos of pro athletes wearing suits to court or jumpsuits to jail, today’s editions will feature a pro athlete wearing a mortarboard and a tassel.

“I always promised my parents that I would come back,” O’Neal said. “Well, I came back. It took a while. But I came back.”

“Fame and fortune--all that stuff is a fairy tale world,” O’Neal said. “I’m real world, bro. And in the real world, you get your education. You are nothing without it. I want kids to see that.”

They certainly saw him, perhaps the biggest man to ever fit into a size XXXL black gown, walking solemnly down the middle of the assembly center Friday morning, taking his place on the platform with hooded deans and doctors and chancellors.

Not to be outdone, O’Neal wore a handmade gold scarf reading: “Shaq Is Finished!!”

“He is making an enormous statement about the power of education,” said Charles Weems, past chairman of the LSU board of supervisors. “We get blinded by what is fleeting, and forget about what is permanent. Shaquille is reminding us today.”

This is not to say O’Neal was more worthy of praise than the 1,794 other students who graduated Friday. Each surely has a story worth telling and an achievement worth applauding.

But because O’Neal is a public figure, his story can reach further, and last longer and affect more.

It wasn’t easy. Ask anybody who has ever dropped out of school with a year remaining, then tried to go back several years later.

“I got real frustrated many, many times,” he said. “When I left, my mind got very, very lazy, especially being in Hollywood and in movies and stuff. I had to re-teach myself to study. Re-teach myself to read.”

The degree required an entire year’s worth of courses completed off-campus, most of them in the last two years, when he decided to study or sink.

The books arrived via express mail. The tests were taken on a computer. “Thank God for the Internet,” he said.

It required weekly meetings with a 70-year-old USC professor emeritus, Sam Armato, who tutored him across dinner tables and gave him new vocabulary words for his birthday.

“The world doesn’t believe this about Shaq, but he has an incredible mind--very curious, very logical,” said Armato, the father of O’Neal’s agent, Leonard Armato. “We’d be talking, and suddenly he would be taking notes.”

It required frequent phone calls from a tough LSU academic advisor who would get angry when O’Neal wanted to relax and enjoy his basketball success.

“He told me once that he couldn’t do some homework because he had to go receive his MVP award,” said Mike Mallet. “I said, ‘Fine. Then you’ll be a dumb MVP.”

It required, believe it or not, about $3,000 in out-of-state tuition. “Scholarship expired, bro,” O’Neal said.

After he finally finished his last course (agronomy, which he took this fall) it required missing Friday’s Laker game against Vancouver to attend the ceremony.

“When he first approached me with the idea about coming to commencement, he was worried that he might be fined for missing the game,” said Chancellor Mark Emmert. “I said, ‘I don’t think anybody will be inclined to fine you for completing your education.’ ”

In fact, Laker Coach Phil Jackson gave O’Neal permission last summer to miss the game.

Finally, after the general ceremony Friday morning, it required O’Neal to walk across a stage in the afternoon to receive his diploma.

After he received the diploma, he walked offstage and pulled it out of the envelope and showed his mother, who immediately gave him a hug and a kiss.

In the area of education, he is like few other basketball players.

Of nine players who left LSU for the NBA in the last 15 years, O’Neal is believed to be only the third to graduate.

Some estimate that only one-fourth of the current NBA players have their degrees.

Of course, why would they need them? They make lots of money. They are doing what they love. And best of all, they can work for the league’s “Stay in School” campaign and nobody knows the difference.

“Face it, Shaq could buy a degree,” Mallet said.

But he didn’t, which says as much about O’Neal as it does about the degree.

This year, counting the bonus from his new contract, O’Neal will make about $19.3 million,

One of his fellow graduates in the folding chairs, Daniel Carlin of Baton Rouge, hopes to make $25,000 in public relations. That is, if he can find a job.

“But I still think what Shaq is doing is neat,” he said. “He has a lot of money, he didn’t need to be here, it took him eight years and yet it still means something to him. That’s a great message.”

And you can’t beat the benefits.

“Money and fame are only a small piece of the pie,” O’Neal said. “You need an education to feel secure. I feel very secure. I can go get a real job now.”

Everyone laughed. It is hoped that everyone also listened.