Stuart Scott: The Voice of the Game

“Boo-yah!” “He must be butter, ‘cause he’s on a roll!” “As cool as the other side of the pillow!”

Between ESPN’s SportsCenter and any NFL or NBA programming on the station, you’ve probably seen a lot of Stuart Scott. If not, you’ve definitely heard him. Scott joined ESPN in 1993, just in time for the release of ESPN2. He has been the main host on ESPN and ABC since 2008. What sets Scott apart from the rest is his personality that radiates from the screen.

He’s animated and throws out catchphrases like “Boo-yah!” at exciting points in any game. He’s known for what ESPN calls “his unique style and vocabulary.” Scott’s style has changed sports talk completely. Instead of just giving the play-by-play, Scott brings forward an exciting voice to the face of sports. His spirited personality comes through in his conversational, yet galvanizing commentary.

“When my five-year-old was two, she would say ‘Daddy, can I have another one candy?’ when she would want some more candy. So, my favorite catch phrase – if someone hit two home runs in a game – I would say, ‘another one home run, Daddy.’ It’s my favorite because it involves my daughter, and it’s nice when I can get her on TV,” Scott told The Harvard Crimson.

Don’t take Scott as someone who just wants to play around on camera just because he likes to add some witty catchphrases to his copy. He takes his job as a journalist very seriously and promises to give just as much information as he gives entertainment.

“I’ll give you ‘Boo-yah! ‘and ‘Don’t hate the playa, hate the game,’ but I will also give you more stats and information than anyone else who sits in that ‘Sportscenter’ chair. I guarantee you that. In my mind, if I can continue to do that then I can say whatever is off-the-wall and crazy because I’m backing it up. I think this emphasis on stats and information and doing our own writing is what makes ‘Sportscenter’ better than FOX and CNNSI. You will learn more watching ‘Sportscenter’ than any other highlight show,” Scott said with The Harvard Crimson.

However, Scott hasn’t just stayed with anchoring sports shows. He landed a role as himself in the movie Just Wright, starring Queen Latifah and Common. He calls the movie “authentic,” which Scott finds to be a rare aspect of a movie about sports. “With any great sports movie, it’s not the sport. It’s the emotion. It’s the passion. It’s how it makes you feel inside and [Just Wright] is a perfect example of that,” Scott said in a Fox Searchlight Pictures interview about the film.

In his job, Scott has had the opportunity to interview some big names in sports and otherwise. He has interviewed Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Sammy Sosa. However, outside the field, he’s also spoken with President Obama and the former President Bill Clinton. Besides his position as an anchor for ESPN, Scott has stirred up some attention by his second cancer diagnosis. That’s right – he survived once and intends to survive a second go at this battle. “When we talk about fighting cancer as a community effort, it’s more than that. It’s a family of 28 million cancer survivors, their loved ones, people who care about them, and we are not a small, but very large army,” Scott said in an interview at the 2011 LIVESTRONG challenge in Philadelphia.

Between rounds of chemotherapy, continuing his work as an anchor and raising his two daughter, Stuart Scott has decided to fight relentlessly. The anchor told the Orlando Sentinel: “To me, it’s like a football game. I’m facing this, this wants to win. You can try, but I’m just gonna come harder than you. I’m gonna come harder than you all day long.”

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-Geneva Toddy