On Sunday, January 4, 2015 2:44:01 PM UTC-6, Joe Coughlin wrote: > > Valvano worked for ESPN for less than three years before he died. He gave > a great ESPY Awards speech and was a memorable announcer, but I really > think you're going out of your way to blow up the achievements of Jimmy V > and to downplay those of Stu Scott. Scott was an ESPN guy for over 20 > years. He was the main anchor of Sportscenter with Rich Eisen, probably the > second best pairing on the flagship of the Worldwide Leader ever after > Patrick/Olbermann. > > I don't begrudge his friends from missing him or eulogizing him or for > ESPN for marking his importance in its history. >
This was what I wrote on Facebook when Joe wrote something similar to this on my wall: I do begrudge what is supposed to be a news organization taking the death > of one of it's members and treating it as if one of the titans of the field > has passed. On that Valvano tape, in the open, Olbermann says immediately > after teasing the death of Valvano, "The games continue." The awareness > that we're here because of sports, not because of you, ESPN. But ESPN now, > in oh so many ways, believes you're here because of ESPN. That ESPN is > essentially bigger than sports. I was only aware of the tribute through > Twitter, but if anyone actually watched SportsCenter, did they open with > any mention of the day in sports, or (my guess) did they just fade from > black to talk about Stewart Scott? There were two NFL playoff games, full > slate of NBA and college basketball. But that was irrelevant to the > editorial world of ESPN. This was the equivalent of a newspaper running a > full-front-page banner head for a local columnist who wrote for the paper > for 20 years. I'd mock that coverage, and I'll mock this. With that said, I didn't know at the time that the news broke in the *middle* of the Sunday morning SportsCenter, forcing Hannah Storm to slog through 59 hard-to-watch seconds to set up that package, which would be blown out of the water shortly thereafter by Rich Eisen's stunning, two-and-a-half-minute eulogy on NFL Network. That Eisen didn't just break down into a sobbing mess is amazing. Eisen's brilliant tribute during the Bengals/Colts package <http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/rich-eisen-fills-whole-highlight-package-with-stuart-sc-1677442800> that evening was utterly delightful. I still believe a 15-minute package is extraordinarily excessive given Scott's career. And while I haven't watched it, the idea of spending 13 minutes on NFL Countdown on a playoff Sunday further proves ESPN's egotistical navel gazing. On Sunday, January 4, 2015 2:59:44 PM UTC-6, PGage wrote: > > Scott was not one of my favorites at ESPN (and has never been a favorite > here), but I think some of this is a bit harsh. As noted here on the > Deadspin page (http://deadspin.com/espns-stuart-scott-dead-at-49-167735753) > - which has links to the 15 minute tribute that irked Joe, and some other > related stuff - while Scott was not the first black personality on ESPN, he > was one of the first, and became the highest profile. He was a pioneer > because more than most, he brought aspects of black culture to mainstream > TV, rather than only conforming to the mainstream. I agree with the > critique that he was too much of a kiss-ass to the super stars of his day, > which only underlined the fatal flaw of ESPN as a whole, which is that is > both covers and is a profit participant with big time sports. > > But Scott has been dying of cancer for seven years, and he lived those > last years with courage and class. I think we can spare 15 minutes on the > day he died for his co-workers to celebrate his life. > On Sunday, January 4, 2015 3:03:51 PM UTC-6, Joe Coughlin wrote: > >> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Jason Carpio <[email protected]> wrote: >> No sarcasm here. But Scott has been described as a pioneer. What was he a >> pioneer of in his field? > > He was someone who was able to bring a more urban flavor, hip hop as it's > been described by others, to the show. While he may not be your cup of tea, > it's wrong to say he was not influential. The rise of African-Americans on > ESPN after Scott as commentators and analysts is testament to this. I *deliberately* did not touch on the African-American perspective of him because I felt it was not germane to the argument I made (which was editorial-based). I said on my Facebook post that I'd come back to this, and I promise I will when time allows. On Sunday, January 4, 2015 5:04:01 PM UTC-6, Doug Fields wrote: > On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Joe Hass <[email protected]> wrote: >> “a man who did nothing but narrate sport highlights and host gameday >> programming.” > > No offense, but if that’s all you saw in Stuart Scott, you *clearly* > didn’t get it. He was a breath (a typhoon) of fresh air in the old-boy club > of sports reporting. With very few minor exceptions, before his arrival on > the national stage, the relevant faces and voices in sports were older, > whiter, stodgier men…often ex-athletes and coaches picking up a check on > their name recognition…all speaking in the same tired clichés to the same > white audience. I strongly disagree with the use of "sports reporting" when it comes to Scott. His Wikipedia page <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Scott> spends far more time on his hosting duties than the people he interviewed during his time at Bristol, which hardly qualifies as "reporting". Please feel free to correct me on this with things he did that would truly be reporting (think Jeremy Schaap as an example). On Monday, January 5, 2015 7:00:30 AM UTC-6, Doug Fields wrote: > I'm starting to get a bad taste in my mouth over the way this thread seems > to be turning into a competition between Stuart Scott and Jim > Valvano...both men deserved respect for the things they did, and the tragic > way they died...but this is a pretty good example of what Mr. Gage is > referring to when he talks about blowing up JimmyV and downplaying Scott. This is my bad. I wasn't trying to say Valvano deserved the length he got or Scott did not, and upon rereading it, I get how that comes out. Part of this came off the idea that Scott's death was announced prior to the start of SportsCenter, which I've now discovered was wrong. I chose Valvano because he comes closest to the idea of an ESPN personality dying in a non-unexpected way that would allow for a package to be completely prepared (Tom Mees, the biggest* ESPN personality to die since the network started, was an out-of-the-blue tragedy). * I think John Anderson comes close to nailing this, though I'll dismiss his failure to name Mees as a shameful lack of awareness: "There was the Mercury program, which gave us Chris Berman and Bob Ley, great pilots who went up there without teleprompters or whatever. Then along came the Apollo astronauts, like Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen and Stuart. They took us to the moon ... and left the rest of us to fly the space shuttle." The only thing I'd caveat was that Olbermann and Patrick were Apollo 11, and Eisen and Stuart were Apollo 17. -- -- TV or Not TV .... 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