Tim McGraw Narrates ESPN Films’ Shaquille O’Neal Documentary
Tim McGraw, who first hit the big screen in the football drama Friday Night Lights, will soon be featured on the small screen, sharing the story of long-lasting friendship between two legends of another sport.
As part of the SEC Network and ESPN Films documentary series, SEC Storied, McGraw will narrate Shaq & Dale, which details the enduring relationship between basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal and his former coach at Louisiana State University, Dale Brown. (Watch the documentary’s trailer below.) Brown’s 25-year career at LSU included the team’s first two appearances in the Final Four, and resulted in a total of 13 appearances in NCAA tournaments from 1978 to 1993. Shaq & Dale, directed by ESPN’s Sports Center co-anchor Hannah Storm, premieres April 13th, at 9:00 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.
McGraw, a Louisiana native and lifelong LSU fan, helps tell the story of how O’Neal, who was 13 and living on an army base in Germany, asked Brown for exercise tips. Since that day, O’Neal has received at least one letter or email from the coach every week — and many more of them during their three years together in Baton Rouge.
In 2014, McGraw’s buddy, fellow country superstar Kenny Chesney, teamed with filmmaker Shaun Silva to co-produce The Believer, an SEC Storied documentary on former Florida Gators and current South Carolina Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier. The coach and the country star have been friends for several years.
Other documentaries in the current SEC Storied series will focus on coach Bernadette Locke’s impact on the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball program in the early Nineties; Dominique Wilkins’ transition from a high school in North Carolina to the University of Georgia, and the 1985 Mississippi State Bulldogs baseball duo, Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro, dubbed “Thunder and Lightning.”