Shaquille O’Neal has stated in the past that he chose to go to Louisiana State University because of their then-head coach Dale Brown, but it turns out that was not the case. O’Neal recently appeared on The OGs Show, where he shared the real reason he went to LSU.
“I went to the game and they had so many of the beautiful, curly-haired, blue-eyed, green-eyed girls at the stadium,” O’Neal said. “It was like ‘Shaq, Shaq, Shaq.’ It was one girl named Madison, she was so goddamn fine.”
“She was a senior, she was 24,” O’Neal continued. “I was like, ‘Damn, you’re so beautiful’. And she’s like, ‘Yeah, you come here. I’ll tutor you.’ I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do with you’. Madison, if you’re watching this, I love you.”
“I went to a football game, right? 40,000. I’m going, I’m a shy kid, I’m just sitting there,” O’Neal added. “And then the lights go off. The light come on, ‘If you want the seven-foot All-American from San Antonio to come to LSU, make some noise.’ And then the light came on, the crowd went crazy. I’m like, ‘Damn, these mother******* did all that? Oh man, oh damn (looking at the girls)’ … I’m like, ‘Man I’m about to sign to LSU, give me the papers I’m signing to LSU.’ And that’s why I went to LSU.”
Well, that was quite the revelation. Considering O’Neal was just 16 years old when he attended this football game in Baton Rouge in 1988, I suppose something like this could have influenced him. The age difference between him and Madison does raise some eyebrows, but it’s unclear if anything happened there.
O’Neal would sign his national letter of intent to attend LSU that very same month and the rest was history. In his three seasons there, he averaged 21.6 points, 13.5 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 1.2 steals, and 4.6 blocks per game.
O’Neal was named SEC Player of the Year twice during his time at LSU and received the Adolph Rupp Trophy in 1991 as well. Team success was the only thing that eluded the big man in those three seasons, as the second round was the farthest he ever went in the NCAA Tournament.
Shaquille O’Neal Decided Against Going To UNC Because All The Girls Went After Rick Fox
Girls/women appear to have played a very big role in Shaq’s decision-making process when it came to which college he’d go to. Earlier this year on The Big Podcast with Shaq, O’Neal admitted he didn’t go to the University of North Carolina because all the girls went to Rick Fox.
“So I went to North Carolina… I didn’t like Rick Fox,” O’Neal said. “… He took me to one of those parties, I’m like, all the girls went to him.”
Well, while O’Neal might have been disappointed about playing second-fiddle to Fox when it came to women if he had gone to UNC, he would have had more team success there. They made the Final Four in 1991 and could well have won it all if they had the dominant big man among their ranks.
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