ESPN Anchor and Personality Stuart Scott Dies at 49

It’s been widely reported today that ESPN “SportsCenter” anchor and personality Stuart Scott has died at 49 after a seven-year battle with stomach cancer. And the news hit me hard, even though I knew as a long-time viewer of ESPN that Scott wasn’t doing particularly well.

For those who don’t follow sports as I do, Scott was a new kind of anchor when he first took to ESPN in 1993. He came up with numerous catchphrases like “Booyah!” and “He’s as cool as the other side of the pillow.” And while he wasn’t the first well-known African-American sports anchor in the Western world, Scott often seemed like the coolest, getting athletes like the intensely private Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods to actually reveal a little of who they were without getting them upset in the process (a very neat trick indeed).

Basically, Scott was the type of guy other men wanted to be like. He had class, he was smart, he understood sports, he spoke and dressed well, and he related to everyone.

In other words, Scott was a very good person. It came across in how he spoke to people. He didn’t see Jordan and Woods as wealthy, privileged athletes so much but as people who’d had to struggle to get where they were — people who were still vulnerable, who still wanted others to know that their money didn’t define them — and that changed sports journalism.

I know that’s a very big statement to make, so let me unpack it a little.

First, the explosion of salaries at the major league level in the 1980s and beyond for major league baseball, the NFL and the NBA all tended to make the average viewer feel like he or she had no frame of reference for the players anymore, save on the field. This wasn’t as much of a problem for the players in the 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970s because while the best made very good money, most of the rest still had to drive garbage trucks in the offseason. (Or whatever they did instead of driving garbage trucks.)

In other words, while Scott celebrated the amazing feats of athleticism that sports can and do provide, Scott also provided a deeper human element to help balance it out.

So while others may speak of Scott’s hipness, freshness, and ability to relate to the younger set — and while that is certainly all true — I think most are missing the point.

Scott was, first and foremost, a caring human being, as this story discussed within ESPN’s lengthy obituary for him illustrates in full measure:

“NBA Countdown” anchor Sage Steele remembers the day last year when her family moved from Connecticut to Arizona to be closer to her show in Los Angeles: “The moving trucks were at my house, and Stuart was there with his girlfriend Kristin to say goodbye to us, and my 10-year-old son Nicholas had to say goodbye to his best friend across the street, and he came back sobbing, sobbing, leaving his best friend in the world. … Stuart said, ‘I got it.’ And he took Nicholas aside and just sat down with him and described his moving away as a kid, losing his best friend as a 10-year-old boy and how he handled it. He spent 20 minutes sitting there with Nicholas, helping him feel better.

“Stuart spent three hours at our house that day, in pain and hardly able to stand, but he did it. And he sat there for my kid.”

Not everyone does that. Most particularly when he’s gravely ill, weak, and in pain.

Yes, Stuart Scott loved sports. Loved them with a passion. But he also loved life itself — and somehow that showed through during every sportscast he ever did.

May his loved ones be comforted by his memory.