ESPN doc doesn't get it: Scott stood for more, including white kids in South Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — One ESPN commercial and a single word brought back a flood of a golden age of sports in Arkansas.

"Boo-Yah!"

For anyone who understand the reference, they understand how to handle life. They get how important it is to remain "As cool as the other side of the pillow!" when the stressful moments of life arise.

It's all promotion for a new "30 for 30" documentary about forme SportsCenter Anchor Stuart Scott, a man who reached so many in my generation. A man who faced so much hate for doing so.

It was the 1990s at Warren Junior High and somehow a generation group much later classified as Xennials was trying to find its place in the world. Unfortunately, like no one had bothered to understand our generation group was a different animal than the Gen Xers that immediately preceded us and vastly unassociated with the Millennials who followed, the executives who tried to make decisions regarding pop culture also didn't understand us.

That is except for at this fledgling network called ESPN that was still trying to find its footing after over a decade of floundering for an identity much like us.

Then came a line of SportCenter anchors who, as time passed, loosened up their ties and began to reach what would become a key demographic — teenage boys. A varied line-up of Chris Berman, Dan Patrick, and Rich Eisen flooded the tiny televisions in our bedrooms with a Nintendo attached to the back.

They understood our desire to see sports highlights with a bit of flare. Before, all we had was the hope of plugging up the crack under our door with a towel to block out the light of the television showing "George Michael's Sports Machine" after our bedtimes followed by "This Week in Baseball," which tried to reach the youth by referring to itself as "TWIB."

Then came the 1990s SportsCenter. Every young man in Arkansas was glued each morning hoping to see the best highlights while trying to guess which segment of the show would include Razorbacks highlights.

That's when the catch phrases came. There was Dan Patrick's, which was on repeat verbally by all of us who hit the driveway in front of James Porter's house in a battle against whomever dared darken the rock turned concrete surface in the Cloverdale neighborhood.

Great shots or swings in momentum were often hit with a Patrick phrase.

"You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him!"
"En fuego!"

Of course, some opponent would respond with a big shot that required a patented Rich Eisen.

"From way downtown . . . Bang!"

Of course, when a player started dominating, it clearly called for a Dick Vitale.

"He's a diaper dandy babyyyy!"
"This is awesome baby!"

And when the action moved to the equally rocky surface of the Babe Ruth field that doubled as the high school baseball field for home run derby, there was the required Chris Berman catch phrase.

"Back, back, back, back, gone!"

These phrases punctuated our lives as latch key kids who came home to no one and ventured outside with some sort of ball, whether it be basketball, football or baseball and used them to bring color to our lives, whether it be alone for a little bit or once a friend finally arrived and jumped in with a basic phrase — "Ball!"

Then came the man who truly got and reflected us — Stewart Scott. He dressed differently than the other anchors and spoke differently also.

He talked like us, had a cadence like us and wore clothes that we appreciated. Scott was one of us.

What we didn't know is older people didn't see him the way we did. We had no idea he was black because that didn't matter to us, but history certainly shows people tried to peg him as such.

At the time, African-American anchors were more buttoned up and muted than their white co-horts. It was as if they were terrified to be themselves.

Whether it was a quest to show they could do the news in the same fashion as their white counterparts or were afraid to step out of line, much like so many of whatever color anchors executives ran out happened to be, they lost their ability to connect with our generation from behind the anchor desk.

Then came Scott. The storyline forced upon him is that he was the first to really reflect black culture in sports news on television. However, that was a group of people trying to box him into a narrative.

His rise to popularity had little to do with being black and free to speak how he felt comfortable in his own skin. Instead, he grew because he was one of us, a significantly larger culture group, speaking comfortably in his own skin.

Much like the young black men who lived primarily on the West side of town, Scott reflected a group of white teenagers ifron the East side of town also who hit the courts every day after football practice talking exactly how he was talking on SportsCenter that night or the next morning. He took our phrases like "Whack!" and "Dis" (a term for having disrespected someone) and we adopted his.

"Cool as the other side of the pillow" came from Scott having an apartment that lacked air conditioning and realizing if he flipped his pillow over, he could feel its coolness for a few fleeting moments.

"It's your world kid. The rest of us are just paying rent."
"Break 'em off something proper kid!
And of course, "Boo-Yah!" which was the most overused phrase in South Arkansas among teenage boys other than maybe "Cool beans!" which had no clear origin, but worked its way into the lexicon nonetheless.

For once in our life, someone who could speak like and to us was behind the desk. It wasn't the condescending garbage always put out when our elders attempted to put on entertainment that would bring us in.

Scott was our friend who happened to talk to us through the television about the same things we wanted to talk about in the way we wanted to talk, so we religiously made sure to turn on the television during SportsCenter to make sure he was watching highlights along with us of Arkansas and Kentucky basketball, Arkansas and LSU football and Ken Griffy, Jr. when baseball rolled around.

We had no idea that behind the scenes he was being treated terribly by our elders. Sure, we should have known they were hating on him and calling him names for being different because that's how they treated us.

We would have had his back, and in a way through the ratings, we did. We turned him into a cultural phenomenon they couldn't ignore.

When he first started, Scott faced a reaction almost everyone from our generation knows.

"You suck!" one news director reportedly told him. "You will never make it in this business."

Fortunately for the sports world and the young men at Warren Jr. High School at the time, he responded in the same manner we eventually would when faced with our own battle against the previous generations telling us we weren't buttoned up enough to function in their society.

"Your view of reality, your world is not the world," Scott defiantly said.

Because of him, we got to class early. Because of him, I also got my first paddling.

In the 1990s SportsCenter was so big, it was the talk of not only nearly every boy, but also many girls in a time when teenage girls openly displaying a love of sports, especially to the point of sitting around watching highlights in a non-YouTube world, were ridiculed.

At Warren Jr. High, in Coach Jimmy Shipp's first period class, it was cause to arrive as early as allowed. There was no pausing in the hall to talk nor delaying to throw something into the locker because there was only so much time to make sure your friends saw the same big highlight you did and to talk out whatever the big upset of the night might happen to be.

However, the second the bell rang, it was time to shut up.

I was able to do that. My friend who sat behind me, Jerry Nutt, was able to do that. My other friend in front of me, Kevein Lassister, was not.

He would keep talking about highlights, especially if Arkansas had a big game, during Coach Shipp's attempts to call roll. That is why one day, when he turned to ask me to borrow a pencil, Coach Shipp assumed it was more SportCenter talk, and we were whisked into the hallway for licks that implied a promise to stop talking about whatever Scott was covering that morning during his history class.

Message received.

Still, Scott set the table perfectly for pro wrestlers who had been considered carnival acts to make their way into mainstream pop culture with their phrases. Before long, just like happened with Scott from the beginning, young men were spouting the key phrases of Stone Cold, the NWO, DeGeneration X, and the Rock.

Scott traveled with us through the miracle of television to college, and, much like what happened with former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, some of his biggest haters evolved into his biggest fans.

Then, as he finally peaked and was living his best life as a member of the ESPN Monday Night Football team, he felt a pain in his stomach. Little did we know that he had developed cancer.

For some, it wasn't until he was speaking at the Jimmy V Foundation as its most honored recipient that they realized the weight of the situation. In a blink of an eye, an icon who had shaped so much of our youth was gone.

In a world of Seinfeld, Bill Cosby, George Bush, Johnny Carson and Isiah Thomas, we were a generation brought up on Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, Arsenio Hall and of course Scott. We lived in a world that was a mix of hip-hop and grunge that TV executives rarely understood.

Yet, when Scott got his shot at ESPN, however begrudgingly it happened, there was a certain flawed understanding. They tried to bury him in an awful ESPN 2 concept that was supposed to be aimed toward us featuring old men water skiing and X Games.

However, Scott shined and we lifted him to where he belonged, on SportsCenter either bidding us good night or greeting us in the early morning. There are times when we go into difficult situations and suddenly we hear his voice.

"He's as tight as a ring on a fat guy's finger!"

And suddenly we loosen up. Then, hopefully, we recall another Scott phrase.

"Don't downgrade your dream to fit your reality. Upgrade your conviction to match your destiny."

If you get it, then you get it. It's the only thing the "30 for 30" documentary on Scott missed.

Scott's words weren't just for the African American community. He was hated only partially because he was black.

He was fully hated for being one of us. That included the white kids in South Arkansas hoping to catch a "Boo-yah" on a Razorbacks highlight.

And we loved him for it.

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