Only months after Michael Vick was announced as the head coach at Norfolk State, BET announced it would chronicle his journey in a forthcoming docuseries. The series is set to be produced by SMAC Entertainment, a company co-founded by HBCU alumnus and Super Bowl Champion Michael Strahan. The series marks Vick's return to BET, as, in 2010, the network aired The Michael Vick Project, a ten-episode reality TV series that chronicled Vick's return to football after being imprisoned for two years due to his involvement in a dog-fighting ring.
SMAC Entertainment Senior Vice President of Non-Scripted Anthony Smith was on site at Lincoln Financial Field for Norfolk State's high-profile clash with Delaware State, and Genie Productions founder Chelsea Abrams obtained comments from Smith on behalf of ClutchPoints about the series in an exclusive interview.
Per Smith, the series is an extension of the already established relationship between Vick and SMAC Entertainment, as they've worked together on recent projects before he took the helm at Norfolk State.
“ So we've had a relationship with Michael for a while now. So we did a show with Michael at premiered since 2025, premiered in 2024 in September on The Evolution of the Black Quarterback. I've known Michael and his wife, Kijafa, for a while, but we really got to know them over the course of that two-and-a-half-year journey.”
Per Smith, Vick expressed his desire to coach during the production of the Prime Video series.
“One of the things that we talked about as we're traveling across the country, talking with people, is [the] next chapter of his life and the things that he was interested in doing in the foreseeable future. And one of those was coaching, and I'll never forget one of the people that we featured for Evolution of Black Quarterback was Deion Sanders.”
Vick's connection with Sanders in Colorado appears to be a key moment in his eventual coaching journey at Norfolk State, as Smith details in his comments.
“So Michael comes to Colorado, spends a day with Deion in Boulder, and they're talking and Michael's letting Deion know, ‘One of these days. I'd love to pursue a head coaching job, but I just don't know when that'll be.' And Deion flat-out told him, ‘When you have the opportunity, take it. Don't wait. Don't feel like you have to go up the ranks or wait; if the opportunity presents itself, take it.”
Once Vick secured his position at Norfolk State, he reached out to SMAC to tell the story.
“ He reached out after he took the job. [He] and his wife reached out to me, Michael Strahan, and Constance Schwartz-Morini, who is the co-founder of SMAC, and asked us if we were interested in telling this story. Like absolutely. We'd done it before with Deion when he was at Jackson State. Going through that experience, we knew what some of the pros [were], but also some of the difficulties, and the challenges of taking a job like that and starting from scratch in many ways what would present itself. But we also knew it was gonna be an amazing story [with] Michael going back home after so many years to where it all began. For him, being around his mother and his brother, and so many family friends, was gonna be more than just a football story. It's gonna be a homecoming.”
The new docuseries is set to showcase Vick's highly anticipated return to Virginia and his takeover of Norfolk State, a school rich in its athletic history but that hasn't had much success in football since its jump to Division I in 1997. The series is currently in production, as Vick and Norfolk State gear up to take on North Carolina Central University on Saturday.
