“Boo-Yah” to the Carolina guy who popularized the word.
Stuart Scott went from a kid in Winston-Salem to a scared graduate of UNC to a transformative sports anchor who changed the game, as they say. He had been the host of Late Night with Roy for several years before cancer made it impossible.
After Scott died in 2015 at the age of 40, I gave the crack UNC marketing staff a way to make him live on at Carolina basketball games that no other school would dare copy.
“What if the fans yelled ‘Boo’ every time a Tar Heel launched a 3-pointer and when it goes in they yelled YAH!”? Everybody would know, or learn, that came from Scott. They didn’t like my idea, along with calling the student risers behind the home basket ROYsers.
ESPN’s 30 for 30 special on Scott debuted this week, a story that will make you laugh and wonder how he changed the sportscasting paradigm to one that made you cry over his tragic and early demise. It shows his ESPY speech that ended with “You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and the manner in which you live.”
Unlike his hip-hop style and clever analogies such as “cooler than the other side of the pillow,” the documentary turned on a dime from humorous and entertaining to proud and then sad about Scott’s fight for life.
When it launched ESPN2 in the early 1990s, ESPN wanted it to be edgier and more inventive than any other sports programming, and Scott fit that bill perfectly. His off-the-rack threads and delivery made him as loved by the athletes he covered on the courts and fields as the viewers. “Boo Yah” quotes the biggest stars as his friends all the way to Tiger Woods attending Stu’s funeral service.
Because he was Black and used a lot of street talk, Scott got hundreds of hate mail, answering each piece. He transcended every racial, gender and policy difference, making them all apolitical and had a lot to do with sports serving that important purpose today.
Catch “Boo-Yah” that now lives forever on the ESPN archives. It shows way more than we knew of Scott as a unique TV star. There is so much about the family and two daughters he raised, how he admittedly was nervous before every broadcast and so down to earth with fans who tuned in and came out to see him in person.
He always remembered where he came from, an inexperienced member of the media who had a degenerative illness in one eye and almost lost the other when he was hit by the point of a football while trying out for the Jets, which he took more seriously than all of his colleagues.
Make Boo-Yah must-see TV; as it will move you from laughter to tears about the short life of a very special Tar Heel.
Featured image via Associated Press/John Shearer
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
