Countless of you are watching a cavalcade of condolences being shared about ESPN Sport Anchor Stuart Scott today, and are wondering why is his situation so tragic, other than the obvious nature of his death. One social media friend posted ‘I didn’t know who he was, I guess I should watch ESPN more to relate to men, LOL’. I have to admit, the LOL part pissed me off, and I wanted to understand why I was so upset with her.
I searched my own emotions, and came to the conclusion that there were three reasons why the level of support has been so high today for Stuart Scott.
Born in 1965, he is among the oldest Generation X black men, and those of us who are within a decade plus or minus him have a strong familiarity with his historical experiences. What most of you Gen Y’ers, Millennials and Gen Z kids don’t know and cannot feel is that we know a lot about history; we are the last generation that stayed home and watched reruns of 1930 movies like Shirley Temple and The Three Stooges, and we played outside, made things, and listened to The Bee Gees, The Spinners, Duran Duran, and Ice Cube. We remember writing, we remember when there were no personal computers—and we recall when they were introduced. We still remember pay phones and black and white TVs, we remember when racism was still calling you a nigger and not the “N” word, when South Africa was segregated and so was our political ceiling.
Now, throw in someone who was fine with being cool enough to tell the suits that he wasn’t going to change his jargon for fear of scaring off middle America, someone who was fine with being a black Greek, someone who could drop hip hop references mid segment as freely as We-Shall-Overcome-Negro speak, and it was like us being on TV. We were sure he had some baggage as we all do, we knew was that he was divorced. Even with this rather typical piece of life’s trials, never did you hear of it. He was that cat on TV with glasses AND an earring. And really, who these days speaks for us about non essential topics? Steve Harvey? Charles Barkley? What may be missing from the narrative is that sport is essential—not just to men, but to the progression of an aging republic with an insatiable appetite for blood. When the mundane crossed over into societal whispers, we would dial in to find out what Stu would say. He was brilliant enough to allow for other people not in the club to be able to relate to him. He made them feel welcome, and his idioms were a nod to his culture, while being an introduction for others. And he opened this genre of keeping it real/keeping it classy for the rest of us; it allowed white guys to be sillier and more free in their delivery, and it allowed for us to have more blacks on TV. He opened the door for more copycats, and he was fine with it.
In his acceptance speech for the ESPN Jimmy Valvano Perserverance Award, Scott told the world that he occasionally called his sister just to cry. He told everyone how much he hurt, and gave a physical description of the steps he took to stay alive. He was open, and honest. His vulnerability was further evident when he said these last words on stage to the audience: “have a great rest of your night and have a great rest of your life.”
He was in our age demo, and that always made us realize our own mortality. We all know people who have died, but we usually expect those people on TV to live ripe old ages; certainly they have some ‘Magic Johnson’ secret lab hookup to manage their illnesses. Death at 49 is just criminal, and yet, a dozen of my social media friends have made that journey earlier than that. We also see this illustrated dynamically, as we see this man decay and wither of in front of us. We see so much crap on TV, we become jaded to truth; but death has a way of separating the real from the Khardashian, leading the path back to our own longevity or lack thereof. At least a dozen of you social media friends have experienced cancer in the last 2 years; about half a dozen more have died. It is a nasty, evil disease that takes healthy people and wrecks their bodies while in many instances, allowing their minds to have full consciousness.
Being a father of two girls, we put ourselves in his situation, a man with no other reason to live than for his children–and knowing that this man and his girls will miss the expected treasures of existence: graduation, fights over dates, adulthood and everything associated with it; another Christmas. At the end of it all, just coming from a holiday season, we wonder how it felt to know that it was his last and to recognize that they all knew it. When he died, it was like part of us did too. You don’t need to be a sports fan to realize the loss; you simply need to be human.
Here is the disingenuous part of it, his sports celebrity; there are at least two worlds in American sport; and Scott introduced America to the quiet world two decades ago. Yet, there is no reason for the separation other than the bigotry of America. For the sake of argument we will talk about the collisions with the English speaking space of the major sports; Baseball, Basketball, Football (and if you had to twist my arm I’d throw in Hockey, and if you’d break my legs I’d say Soccer). Add in their collegiate counterparts, and toss in Golf, Tennis, and Olympics to round it out, and there are a myriad of avenues to which women and minority men should be welcome in today’s modern sport. I am giving NASCAR, fishing, hunting, billiards, gambling, and bowling to the rednecks, X-games to the stoners; equestrian and all things cerebral to the snobs . Print media, social media, radio talk shows, TV Sportscasting, play by play, have thousands of working positions, hundreds at front line presence. With the maturation of the 24 hour sports cycle, these avenues have not produced that diversity kaleidoscope black people expected. Sure, there are a lot of black men (and some women) on those themed sports to which they have played–America likes to talk to a past hero/heroine–but these folk are only around as long as the season. Moreover, they tend to be flanked by people who have not been sports professionals, almost as if they need someone to do the real work while they shuck and jive their way through segments. BUT, if it weren’t for the fill ins, virtually no blacks and women would be around at all.
The 15 shows on three local radio sports networks in my LIBERAL BAY AREA have two black male co-hosts; one show has two white male co-hosts and the other has one white male co-host and another chime-in guy. The total number of talk show hosts in total on these shows number about 40.
Of the half dozen nationally syndicated shows run on these networks, none of them have blacks; yet there are about 10 on air personalities for these shows. The just-in-time TV sports specific pre-game/post-game shows fare much better both locally and nationally, averaging about 15-20% for baseball and as high as 50% in football and basketball.
Sport in America is the one area that allows for the most level playing field; it is about performance at the purest level. Politics and bigotry are existent, but one’s ability to have a 42” vertical, ability to hit a 32 foot shot, or run a 4.4 40 represents qualified measurements. The 90 mph fastball doesn’t care what school you attended, or what you think about abortion. Sport is also the gateway where people from divergent backgrounds coalesce to commune, celebrate, commiserate and complain. A rich doctor from the suburbs can sit next to an inner city janitor and share the same exuberance for a player or team. This meeting place is where friendships are made during halftime.. “You know, Leroy isn’t a bad guy…..Ted is alright….”
But sports talk is not about the issue of communicating who, what, when, where, and why the on the field actions went the way they did. Sports talk is not about the numbers and records and championship implications. Sports talk is not about educating the population. Sports talk is only about white men talking to other white men about black men. These are the modern day gigs for the male society gossip page. These ‘Dr. Lauras’ rant about the athlete’s ethics or lack thereof, their personality flaws, their intellect, their finances, and their performances off the field.
Unlike the on-the-field requirements of excellence, the other written, social, auditory, or visual media have no real standards. And it shows. Most of these hosts show no real talent to capture the imagination, show fairness in reporting, or add a new insight in the psyche of the organization of the athlete. They end up being highly paid automatons and tend to regurgitate similar themes to each other, or extend themselves to stand out by pushing the limits with gimmicky rudeness and matter-o-fact analysis. There is a lot of staying power in being a pompous ass, and there is safety in castigating a brash black wide receiver in Ocho-Cinco for abusing his wife, but no security in calling out a white Superbowl winning quarterback in Roethlisberger for being accused of raping under age women.
Most of all, they talk about the athlete’s ability to conform and fit in with their standards of societal interaction. Many of these hosts have had no interaction with non-white people until after college, and almost none of them were reared in inner city and/or impoverished areas that included the guys. They simply don’t understand them. When these athletes exercise community leadership and publicly complain about the realities of societal ills, typically these non black hosts are much harsher in their analysis of the black athlete. Scott not only gave us a fair shot, he provided a visual and oratorical alternative.
There is no alternative to wit; we have no new person on the inside who can tell it like it is; there is no go to person to get the scoop from the athlete in his words; there is no more cool; there is no one dropping the funny. ESPN is a machine, but the machine is fed on personality driver entertaining show hosts; they are the Saturday Night Live of Sports talk. And like SNL, when a superstar is gone, all you’re left with is a bunch of no names straining themselves to bring the funny.
I miss him terribly, already.
holowe 