BATON ROUGE — First he helped six kids find their way in life through exercise and weight loss in an ABC-TV reality series.
Now former LSU basketball great Shaquille O’Neal of the NBA’s Miami Heat is the star of one of the latest edition of ESPN’s “This is SportsCenter” commercials.
The premise of the commercial is that O’Neal, serving as a police officer, is in a tree on the ESPN compound rescuing a cat. The only thing is that he’s pretty familiar with the cat since it’s the mascot of his alma mater, LSU’s Mike The Tiger.
O’Neal brings the Tiger down to applause from those surrounding the tree by the ESPN employees. O’Neal’s role as a reserve police officer is appropriate since he has often stated he would like to go into the law enforcement profession on the conclusion of his basketball career and has worked as a reserve officer with the Miami sheriff’s office.
The spot can be seen on the ESPN family of networks or online at ESPN.com.
O’Neal will be in Baton Rouge on Sept. 7 for his annual Shaquille O’Neal golf event to benefit the LSU/Champs program.