Great Scott!!

Sad to report that Stuart Scott, the iconic sportscaster from ESPN, died the other day. Tributes and high praises are pouring in from all over the sports world, be they the fellow sportscasters who worked with him, the superstar athletes who he interviewed or who showed up on the highlights shows he announced, and all the fans from ESPN, who watched in amazement as he re-invented the art form of talking about sports on television.

It is especially sad that Scott had to die so young (he was only 49). Sad because he had so much more he could have done with his sports broadcasting, sports commenting and sports announcing skills. And you knew there could be so much more because you knew how much he had already done in his twenty plus years at ESPN.

Stuart Scott drew a lot of those high praises for his announcing style that pundits said added a hip-hop element to the sports announcing world. While he DID do that, he was so much MORE than being a hip-hop sports announcer with a lot of snazzy catch phrases. He was a stone cold innovator!

Scott came up in the business just as ESPN was starting its re-invention of sports reporting, and he, as much as anyone, was a major force in that transformation. Scott added an enthusiasm about those sports he was reporting and commenting on that was so contagious that he had sports audiences that couldn’t wait until each night’s show and its highlights. He (and fellow announcer Chris Berman, let’s give him some credit too) became major innovators in a new kind of sports journalism. They were sportscasters who were as much entertainment stars as they were revealers of scores and explainers of sports action.

Scott and Berman did things in a way that had not really been seen up to that time. Sportscasters had read scores and explained sports related news before, but they had never done it so expressively. They had never done it with such enthusiasm. Or with such a powerful enunciation of some of the words. In other words, Scott and Berman reinvented the concept of doing sports with the same PUNCTUATION MARKS that the sports action seemed to cry out for, but no one had ever seen fit to do before. They injected their very personal joy at seeing such great accomplishments into their voices.

NEVER before had there been a catch phrase to emphasize the sheer PUNCTUATION of an outstanding athletic play than Scott’s famous “BOO-YAH!!” (BOO-YOW?) There could be a play that “brought the house down” with its intensity, and Scott’s BOO-YAH comment over the highlight was JUST AS INTENSE. Scott and Berman seemingly invented the punctuation mark of narrating sports highlights, but Scott seemed to get the concept even more than his cohort. Scott got that the fans loved hearing the punctuation marks, but he also delivered the rest of the sentences with the authority of someone who really knew what he was talking about.

It wasn’t just the idea of sports highlights all the time that got the American sports fans to flock to ESPN. It was strongly because of the personalities of the broadcasters. And none shined brighter than Stuart Scott. Because, as much as the sports world LIKED all of the other announcers, they LOVED listening to the man who also invented the phrase, “he was as cool as the other side of the pillow.” Because, you have to BE cool to come up with a phrase that IS cool. People like cool.

But, you also have to have credibility with your audience to last 20 years, because if you aren’t doing the rest of your job well, your act will end up getting old real fast. He wasn’t just cool, he was also really good at his job. And the people out there in the audience just wanted to go along for the ride with him.

But Scott dying was not just a tragedy because we lost such an announcing genius. He was also taking America along for the journey as they watched and rooted for their favorite sportscaster as he was battling the cancer that was attacking his body. And he was doing some amazing motivational speaking to all of the other people who were fighting cancer. Stuart Scott’s speech at the ESPY Awards about fighting cancer and finding the important things in life is one of the more poignant speeches ever given (rivaling the famous speeches of Lou Gehrig, Jim Valvano and Gale Sayers’ speech about Brian Piccolo).

So, we are left to be sad that we, the sports world, have lost this brilliant innovator that brought so much of the fun and excitement of sports into our lives.

And the rest of the world can be sad that it has lost itself one of the really good people.