BET’s upcoming docuseries follows Vick’s emotional first season coaching Norfolk State, highlighting HBCU culture, family, and a Philly homecoming game.
On the night before Halloween in Philadelphia, fans were dressed in green and red for a special homecoming game in quite a unique setting.
The Eagles‘ Lincoln Financial Field played host to an HBCU matchup featuring a Delaware State team coached by former star wide receiver DeSean Jackson and a Norfolk State team coached by former Pro Bowl quarterback and NFL legend Michael Vick. The game would also double as a picturesque, narrative-friendly setting for an upcoming BET docuseries produced by Michael Strahan and Constance Schwartz-Morini‘s SMAC Entertainment, chronicling the first season of Vick’s coaching journey on and off the field.
“It’s as much about what’s happening off the field as it’s a sports story,” FredAnthony Smith, SMAC’s senior vice president of non-scripted content, told Boardroom from the Linc not long before kickoff. “It’s Michael going back home. His mom is there, his brother’s there, his dad’s there. He has so many friends and family in the area. He had other offers on the table as far as coaching goes, but coaching at an HBCU, also coaching at home, ended up being huge factors.”
SMAC and Vick worked together last year on Amazon’s three-part docuseries Evolution of the Black Quarterback, and the week before he announced his position at Norfolk State, he reached out to Smith and the team to suggest they might have another show on our hands. After the announcement, Vick, Strahan, Schwartz-Morini, and Smith agreed that they should work together again, especially given the success of SMAC’s success with the Coach Prime series featuring Deion Sanders and his family during his first years as a coach at fellow HBCU Jackson State. Before they even put out a pitch to take to the market, Smith said, two networks reached out to see if they’d be interested in airing the show on their platform.
BET gave the best opportunity to tell the story the way Vick and his wife Kijafa wanted to tell it, and it was also a homecoming of sorts for the subject and the network. The Michael Vick Project was a 10-episode series in 2010 depicting Vick’s wild ups and downs from NFL superstar to suspended outcast and back.
“BET also understood that this is really a love letter to HBCUs and the HBCU culture,” Smith said. “They immediately got what we were trying to do.”
What SMAC is trying to do is not just produce a carbon copy of Coach Prime, but show more of Vick’s family and prioritize less of the actual Xs and Os of college football.
“Watching Michael and his family together, it is amazing,” Smith said. “Him and his wife, his mom, and his kids, they all had dinner together the other night. And watching it, you’re like, this is a sitcom. They’re all just kind of joking around. And Mike has obviously been through a lot of ups and downs in his life, but seeing the family unit together and how much they depend upon each other is really cool.”
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The episode they were filming in Philadelphia, however, would be more about what happens on the field. It’s not every day two HBCU teams get to play in an NFL stadium for a regular-season game. And to contest it in the building where Vick and Jackson teamed together makes it all the more special. BET and SMAC brought extra cameras to film that Thursday night game, Smith said, which ended in a 27-20 loss for Norfolk State, as the team struggled to a 1-11 season.
Building a team from scratch like Vick had to do, Smith said, isn’t easy. While talking to Jackson before the game, both admitted that they didn’t think coaching and building up a program would be this hard. And that process, along with the family aspect, is what Smith believes will make for compelling television. You’ll also see a more vulnerable side of Michael Vick, who Smith said is not afraid to cry.
“He’s not afraid to wear his emotions on his sleeve,” Smith said. “You’ll see a lot of him crying in the series. It’s a combination of Michael being a dynamic athlete, but also somebody who’s not afraid to be himself.”
Smith said SMAC loves to tell aspirational underdog stories, and Vick’s journey into coaching definitely checks both boxes. The show will air sometime in 2026, and if the game in Philadelphia is any indication, it should make for an entertaining watch.
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