January 6, 2015
“Boo-yah!” isn’t a phrase your high school English teachers want to see in your essay on the comparisons between Antigone and Julius Caesar. It’s not a word you’ll find in that mammoth Merriam-Webster’s on your high school English teacher’s bookshelf either. It wasn’t even part of common vernacular until Stuart Scott landed a spot on SportsCenter in 1993.
But that’s what Stuart Scott was all about. That man was as cool as the other side of the pillow. He exemplified swagger. His style was like none other, but slick catchphrases alone can’t measure what he meant to aspiring African Americans, athletes and journalists, such as myself. Stuart was a hero to me before I knew about journalism, before I really cared about sports.
In 2007, around the time I began watching SportsCenter, Stuart was first diagnosed with cancer, and after rediagnosis in 2011 and 2013, something wasn’t right. I’d heard stories about Stuart doing shows the day of chemotherapy, going through grueling workouts, never complaining once, and that inspired me. While watching the 2014 ESPYS, Stuart pulled on the heart strings of viewers across America with his passion for life, love for his family and an undying relentlessness to not give up, never give up. That’s why when I learned about his passing Sunday morning, it was incomprehensible.
Cooler than the other side of the pillow
— Stuart Scott
Watching Scott Van Pelt tear up, Hannah Storm struggle to compose herself, Rich Eisen run a highlight using Stuart’s catchphrases, I saw the effects Stuart had on the people around him. I didn’t deserve to be sad. I didn’t deserve to cry. I’d never even met the guy, but it didn’t seem fair that someone so genuine, so real, could get cancer.
That damned word. Cancer.
Just weeks ago it claimed the life of 59-year-old Post Dispatch sports writer Bryan Burwell and continues to claim lives every day. It takes fathers, husbands, friends and people just like these two men, but it allows us to see a perspective on life we otherwise wouldn’t. It allows us to sift through life searching for little pieces of gold among what may seem like a majority mud. Gold like the two iconic men we lost these past few weeks.
To Stuart and Bryan, you were ten-carat guys, and you will be missed. Farewell.
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