Thanks to his size, speed, and athleticism, Shaquille O’Neal grew up playing multiple sports and dominated in all of them. But football was the first love of the former NBA star. O’Neal grew up idolizing former Dallas Cowboys defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones and would even tell people that Ed Jones was his father. Now, Shaq believes that if he still played football, his fans would call him ‘Black Kelce.’ Unfortunately, his football dreams never materialized, thanks to one of the worst contracts in sports history.

“Football was my thing,” O’Neal said during his recent appearance on Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast. “Then my father came in the house one day and smacked me in the back of the head with a paper and said, ‘You need to fucking stop playing football and focus on basketball. When I opened up the paper, Jon Koncak had just signed $15 million for 3 years. I’m like, ‘First of all, who is Jon Koncak?’

“No disrespect to Jon. He was in the NBA. He was a good player, but I was doing the things in high school that he was doing in the pros. I was like, ‘Shit, if this dude is making $15 million for 3 years, my dream was to make $8 million for 10 years.’ So I started playing basketball.”

O’Neal was referring to Jon Koncak’s 1989 contract extension, who also went by the nickname ‘Jon Contract.’ However, Shaq was a little off on the actual contract numbers, as the Atlanta Hawks signed Koncak to a six-year, $13.2 million contract extension that year after drafting him 5th overall in the 1985 NBA draft.

At the same time, however, that deal was labeled as one of the ten worst contracts in NBA history, considering Koncak had averaged just 4.7 points and 6.1 rebounds the previous season. Still, that contract extension was enough to make Shaq question his choice of pursuing football as his professional career.

Because of his height, O’Neal was often told that he would make a great offensive lineman in the NFL. However, the four-time NBA Champion played tight end because of his exceptional hands and foot speed, and because he liked to punish opponents.

“I actually started out playing football,” O’Neal said back in 2023 during an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show. “I was a hell of a tight end. As you know, I have wonderful hands; my hands are impeccable, and I like to punish people.”

But his height became one of the major reasons why O’Neal would have missed out if he had continued playing football. To put that into perspective, O’Neal is 7’1” and there aren’t really a lot of tall players playing tight end in the NFL. “There wasn’t really a lot of tall guys playing,” he had acknowledged. In a hypothetical world, had O’Neal played tight end at a professional level, he would have spent more time on the injury list than on the gridiron.

And apparently, injury was another reason besides money that made him drop out of football. During his junior year in high school, O’Neal was hit by a player in the knee after scoring a touchdown. That particular injury made him rethink his options, and rather than continue risking further injuries, he began focusing more seriously on basketball.

Fast forward to 1989, Shaq was a freshman at LSU, the same year when the Hawks gave Koncak his six-year deal. From there, Shaq went on to spend three years at LSU from 1989 to 1992 before the Orlando Magic selected O’Neal with the 1st overall pick in the 1992 NBA draft. But he never left football. In fact, even after becoming a professional basketball player, his football background influenced his playing style.

“I used my football pain experience when I was playing basketball,” O’Neal told the Kelce brothers. “When I turned with the elbows up, I’m trying to knock your teeth out of your mouth. People always go back to Hack-a-Shaq and say, ‘Oh, well, he got fouled a lot.’ I never felt it. That’s because of my football prowess and my football experience.”

That said, while Shaquille O’Neal never became a professional football player, he went on to record a Hall of Fame NBA career. Even so, he remained a longtime NFL fan and closely follows the Cowboys.

When Shaquille O’Neal revealed the reason he follows the Cowboys

Shaquille O’Neal has been a longtime Cowboys fan and has grown up watching the legends like Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, and Deion Sanders. Still, none of these Cowboys legends were O’Neal’s favorite football players. In fact, O’Neal has always been a fan of Ed “Too Tall” Jones.

“Growing up, I used to make myself feel good,” he said in 2025 during his appearance on Tommy Talks podcast. “I used to tell people that ‘Too Tall’ Jones is my father. That was my motivation. So I’ve always been a Cowboys fan.”

Height wasn’t the only thing O’Neal and “Too Tall” Jones had in common. In fact, while O’Neal was a football player before becoming a professional basketball star, Jones was a basketball player before eventually becoming a professional defensive end.

Jones attended Tennessee State on a basketball scholarship. A couple of years later, however, he chose football as his long-term career. And while he was relatively new to the sport, that didn’t stop him from helping TSU win national championships in 1971 and 1973 before the Cowboys selected him with the first overall pick in the 1974 NFL Draft, just like O’Neal, who later became a first overall pick himself, albeit in a different sport.