Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions and Overtime are working together on a docuseries featuring this season’s Sacramento State men’s basketball team that will air on Roku, the entities confirmed to Front Office Sports. The series’s title is Fear Nothing: Sac State.
Whereas many sports docuseries feature teams that are established winners, Sacramento State is more of a startup, albeit one with some star power invested in it. Shaquille O’Neal is the program’s general manager, and Mike Bibby is the head coach.
Why did the fledgling program wish to be followed by a camera crew?
“Just to show people what we’re doing, and how we get stuff done. This is my first job. It helps the kids, too,” Bibby told FOS. “We’ve got a lot of high-profile kids on this team and we like to get that notoriety for them. We’ve got a lot of kids that have a lot of followers and people want to see what’s going on with them.”
One of those players is Mikey Williams, a former high-ranked recruit who was expected to be an NIL dynamo, but is now seeking to rebuild his basketball career after he was arrested on gun charges in San Diego in 2023. Williams played at UCF last season and transferred to Sac. State, where he averaged 17.1 points per game this past season as a redshirt sophomore.
Another intriguing dynamic: O’Neal and Bibby were on-court rivals. Bibby was on the Kings in the infamous 2002 Western Conference Finals in which O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and the Lakers overcame a 3-2 series deficit to reach the NBA Finals.
Bibby said that O’Neal helps with recruiting and fundraising—and that it blows his mind that the two are collaborating.
“I was a Laker-hater for my whole life,” Bibby said. “Never in my life did I think Shaq and I would be working to get something done together.”
The six-part docuseries debuts May 1 on Roku, with a new episode dropping weekly. In addition to Omaha and Overtime, it is executive-produced by Bibby, Network Studios, and Ben Sosenko.
“We’ve got great kids on the team,” Bibby said. “I want people to see the side of how I coach—how it’s tough love, I might yell at them a little bit—but on the back end, I would die for every single one of these kids. They’re like my kids.”
The team went 10-21 this season. Bibby said his long-term goal for the program is to “turn it around.”
“We got a great president in Dr. Luke Wood and a great AD in Mark Orr that are really helping me out a lot in helping me get this turned around—not just with basketball but everything with the school,” Bibby said. “That’s my long-term goal—to make this a basketball powerhouse where people want to come and play here.”
