Thank You, Stuart Scott

Full disclosure:  I was not a Stuart Scott fan.

His style was not my style. In fact, when I started my career in sports broadcasting I remember wanting to be the anti-Stuart Scott. No catch phrases, no yelling...just telling people what happened in sports that day.

A decade of TV work later I still feel that way.  And yet, I now realize Stuart Scott had a remarkable impact on my career that I didn't fully realize...until today.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Stuart. By all accounts he was a true gentleman in a business that lacks them.  The closest I ever came was when I was Sports Director at WJBF in 2004.  We were looking for a new weekend sports anchor and I hired a fresh-out-of-college woman named Tara Miller. In the interest of MORE full disclosure, I didn't have the authority to hire anyone...but I definitely picked her tape out of the pile and recommended her.  If my memory serves me, she was a bartender at the time, waiting on her big break in TV. But she had graduated from Michigan State with a journalism degree and done an internship at ESPN.  Her resume tape began with a "fake" SportsCenter segment of her anchoring alongside Stuart Scott.

I hated that part.

The rest of her tape showed great potential so I wanted to hire her, and we did. During one of her first nights on the job we decided to put her resume tape in and watch it.  The first thing I said to her was "It's cool you know Stuart Scott, but don't try to be the next Stuart Scott".  She replied, "He told me the exact same thing."

Today I've heard that sentiment echoed by various people who shared the desk with Stuart over the years. To the casual viewer he came off as brash, possibly even self-centered. But those who knew him would tell you he was anything but. He didn't want to create more Stuart Scotts.  He wanted to encourage everyone to be themselves, whether on TV or off.

In February of 2005, shortly after hiring Tara, WJBF management asked me if I would be comfortable taking on a new role by co-anchoring a new 10pm newscast.  My boss at the time, Mark Rosen, said he wanted me to bring my sports approach to news.  So I did. He paired me with one of our reporters, Kimberely Scott. He also encouraged her to be herself.  So she did.  I remember a sales guy telling me that our show would result in "slash marks" in the ratings.  We received countless e-mails complaining of how "unprofessional" we were and promising the always-popular "I'll never watch again."

But when the ratings came in the show started beating older, more established, newscasts. A few years later another boss, Kathy Wideman, gave us a second show at 5:30.  We received the same negative response...and the same positive numbers.

I know what you're thinking: "John, what does this have to do with Stuart Scott?"  Here's what.  Stuart Scott blazed a trail. There was a time when ESPN was uncomfortable with his approach and I'm sure he got his fair share of negative response. But management stuck with him instead of overreacting to every phone call and/or e-mail. Because of that he became an icon of sports broadcasting.

His success in being himself encouraged other broadcast managers to be more patient after making a change

. A decade later, I'm guessing it indirectly influenced a local news station to let a sports guy be himself on a local newscast...for better or for worse.

I was never a Stuart Scott fan. My greatest personal influences will always be my parents. My greatest professional influences will always be Skip Caray and Larry Munson. 

But today I realized I also owe a debt of gratitude to Stuart Scott. And a thank you. May you rest in peace.