ESPN Anchor Stuart Scott’s Daughters Reflect On His Legendary Career

Late in his life, former ESPN anchor Stuart Scott was broadly acclaimed by sports activities media critics for his pioneering type, and missed by followers who loved his presence on “SportsCenter,” the community’s nightly highlights present.

Two voices hardly ever heard within the dialog round Scott are featured in a brand new movie launched Sunday by ESPN: His daughters.

The featured brief, titled “Fight Like Hell,” options Syndi and Taelor Scott’s reflections on their father’s life and legacy.

“You can see a style develop – like his voice sounded a little more nasally at the beginning,” Taelor Scott says. “I think that it was amazing how he was able to transform that just through dogged genuineness into something that people thought was pretty cool.”

A local of North Carolina, Scott labored at WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, Florida as a sports activities reporter and sports activities anchor from 1990-93. He by no means strayed removed from his Southern roots whilst his profession took him to ESPN’s hallowed halls in Bristol, Connecticut.

After changing Keith Olbermann on Sports Night, Scott grew to become a fixture on ESPN’s SportsMiddle, the place he was teamed with fellow anchors Steve Levy, Kenny Mayne, Dan Patrick, and Rich Eisen.

In 2002, Scott was named studio host for the NBA on ESPN, and have become the lead host in 2008. Along the way in which, he made a reputation for himself as few others might.

Wrote The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis:

“Scott was proof that a SportsCenter anchor could talk about what interested them, no matter what they looked like. Scott reused bits of slang he’d heard growing up in North Carolina (“boo-yah!”). He traded Dan (Patrick) and Keith (Olbermann)’s wryness for Boomer (Chris Berman)’s boundless sports love. To the SportsCenter reference bible, Scott added Shakespeare, Southern Baptist preachers (“The Lord stated you bought to stand up!”), and Pookie and Nuck-Nuck.”

Both of Scott’s daughters are too younger to have appreciated that cultural influence in real-time. To them, Scott was a unique sort of position mannequin.

“I have so much more awe and respect for his refusal to hold back on aspects of his personality that communicate to people I’m black, and that’s something that’s really inspiring to me,” Sydni Scott says in “Fight Like Hell.”

Scott was identified with appendiceal most cancers in 2007 and twice fought the illness into remission earlier than his demise in Jan. 2015 at age 49. His memoir, Every Day I Fight, revealed three days earlier than his demise.

Nine years later, Scott’s legacy lives on — not solely within the numerous broadcasters he impressed just by being his genuine self on-air, however via his household.