by Stuart Scott
Larry Stogner read my words that night on television—the first day of my internship. And I was hooked. This was what I wanted to do.
Today I see Larry Stogner every year at the Jimmy V golf tournament, and I always make it a point to tell him how indebted I am to him. I was just some black kid in the newsroom; he didn’t have to take an interest, but he did. And he imparted what was for me a lifelong lesson: the importance of writing.
I tell young people all the time that it doesn’t matter if your voice isn’t deep or if you’re rocking a plaid leisure suit. If you can write, you have a future. Now, I don’t mean using flowery, big words to show how smart you are. I mean reading a newspaper article and rewriting it so it can be read in twenty-five seconds. I used to do that every day: practice my writing.
When I got to ESPN, almost all of the other talent had grown up with a common goal: to get to ESPN. Their role models were Boomer and Craig Kilborn and Olbermann. They’d had mentors in the business along the way. But I had never dreamed of one day hosting SportsCenter. In college, I didn’t even watch TV, let alone faithfully follow the Worldwide Leader. My role models were iconic athletes, people like Muhammad Ali and Walter Payton.
Until my internship, I didn’t have mentors in the news business. But at WTVD, I had plenty—and I soaked up as much knowledge as I could. Stogner continued to give me opportunities to prove myself. Denise James was a nightside news reporter who let me shoot stand-ups that I could use on my résumé tape.
Denise, who went on to be a reporter in Philadelphia, was so cool to this intern. She was doing a story on young people having heart attacks and asked if I wanted to be on-camera, hooked up to an EKG. I said sure. When she cut the tape, as footage rolled of me being tested, she said, “Stuart Scott is a twenty-year-old college student in good shape …” But I was about to turn twenty-one within a month, and I sheepishly asked if she could refer to me as twenty-one instead.
“But why?” she asked, no doubt more used to people lying in the other direction about their age.
“I don’t know,” I said, a bit shyly. “Twenty-one is just cooler.” No doubt, I was thinking of how it would play with the ladies.
And she did it—because her intern asked her to. The whole staff seemed to take me under its collective wing. One night that summer there was a party for all the twentysomethings on staff, and I was invited. Rick Williams was a news reporter who would go on, like Denise, to the Philadelphia market, and he engaged me in conversation over a couple of beers as if I were his equal. Stogner, James, Williams, photographers like Ron Savage and Steve Denny—who blocked for Phil Simms at Morehead State back in the late seventies—they were all nice to me when they didn’t have to be. That stuck with me, and I haven’t forgotten it when I relate to interns to this day.
So now I knew what I wanted to do. Little did I know that deciding on a career path would be the easy part. There were hardly any sports reporter jobs open, so, given my experience as Denise’s intern, I set my sights on news-reporting positions.
In advance of spring break my senior year, I sent out twenty-seven résumé tapes to small-market stations up and down the East Coast. When school let out for spring break, my friends hightailed it down to Florida for one last fling as a collegian. I was tempted, but someone at WTVD had advised me not to follow up my tape to stations with a phone call asking for an interview; instead, the advice went, just call the news director, say you’re in town, could you stop by? Ten minutes later, you just show up! I loved the aggressiveness of that play. So I recruited Stephen for a road trip, and we drove up and down the coast, basically cold-calling TV stations all the while.
We went to Savannah, Augusta, Charleston, Little Washington, Wilmington. One by one, the rejections came until they all blurred into one another. The best—and by best, I mean most traumatic—came when I got back to UNC. I was sitting at my desk in my dorm room late one afternoon. I had sent a tape to the news director at WITN in Little Washington, North Carolina, and now I was following up with a phone call. I got through directly.
“I was just wondering what you thought of my tape,” I said.
He said, and I can hear it today as clear as if I’d recorded it: “I’ll be honest with you—you suck, and you’ll never make it in this business.”
For years I remembered this guy’s name, because I used it for fuel. But it escaped me a few years back, once I didn’t need to prove anything to him anymore.
I remember the way the evening’s fading sunlight was streaming through my window when I hung up. I was now officially 0 for 27. All the negative self-talk came in waves: Would I ever get a job? Maybe I do suck. The tears started to flow, turning to gasping sobs. For twenty minutes, I sat there, wallowing.
And then, like Ali when Frazier knocked him down with that good-night shot in the fifteenth round of their first fight—you could tell it wasn’t his legs lifting him off that canvas as much as his heart—I summoned something from within. I stopped myself. Enough with the self-pity, I thought. And then I said out loud: “I’m going to prove that sonofabitch wrong.”
CHAPTER FOUR
GOTTA BE ME
Sonja. Sonja would know what I should do.
It was June 1987, and my streak of rejections had finally been broken—I had a job offer. So why was I undecided about taking it? Because it hardly paid a living wage, that’s why. This wasn’t back in the days of black-and-white TV, after all—and they were expecting me to work for $175 a week?
Bob Howick was the anchor and news director at WPDE, the ABC affiliate in Florence, South Carolina. He came off as a cranky, grizzled veteran of broadcast news. I’d later learn that beneath the tough exterior was a kind man. I’d met him some weeks before, when my dad accompanied me to Florence for an interview at the station. Howick was looking to hire a reporter for his Myrtle Beach bureau, which was about fifty miles from the station. “You know, I like you,” Howick barked at me. “But you’re not ready for this. You’d be all by yourself. You don’t have the experience to make that work.”
I’d heard that song and dance before. “If anything comes up, I’ll let you know,” he said. Yeah, right. I bet you say that to all the guys. I was silent on our ride home.
But two weeks later Howick did call. “We have an opening in Florence,” he said. “News reporter. I want to offer it to you.”
That’s when I heard the $175 figure. That’s less than $10,000 a year. Even though it ran the risk of Howick hanging up and finding somebody else, I negotiated. Howick agreed to up the salary to $200 per week. But I still wasn’t sold. “Let me think about it,” I said.
I really was tempted to say no. So I did what you do when you’re young and trying to break into an industry—you seek out advice from those who have been where you are. I called Denise James, who told me the same thing as Miriam Thomas, Larry Stogner’s coanchor at WTVD in Durham: “Get your foot in the door.”
But I still couldn’t get myself to yes. That’s when I thought of Sonja.
Sonja Gantt is now an anchor at WCNC, the NBC affiliate in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. She and I had been tight throughout college. She called me her “play brother,” and she was my “play sister.” We were both broadcasting students, and right after graduation she landed a job at number-one-rated WBTW, the CBS affiliate in Florence. She’d been there a couple of weeks. Sonja would know what I should do, because she was already there, yes, but also because she was uncommonly wise.
Her father was Harvey Gantt, the mayor of Charlotte—the first black to hold that office. In 1990 and then again in 1996, he’d challenge Jesse Helms, North Carolina’s racist U.S. senator, and lose in two very close elections. Michael Jordan came under some fire for not endorsing Gantt in either of those elections. When asked about it then, Michael said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” I really wanted to see Gantt win, and Michael’s imprimatur in the 1990s could have made a difference. But years later, Jordan gave a more nuanced and persuasive explanation for hi
s silence: “I supported Harvey Gantt privately,” he told GQ magazine. “But then it became, ‘Okay, why won’t you speak out politically?’ Well, I’d only be setting myself up for someone to scrutinize my opinions, which were limited, because I never channeled much energy into politics.”
In other words, Michael smartly saw the call for him to get involved in politics as a way for the media to knock him off the pedestal upon which it had placed him. Jesse Jackson used to say, “There are tree shakers, and there are jelly makers”; Jesse was the former, Michael the latter. Both are necessary.
But back when I was contemplating that offer, Michael was lighting it up in Chicago, and Harvey Gantt was still a couple of years away from challenging Helms. And all I needed was for Sonja Gantt to tell me whether to put my reservations aside and join her in Florence.
“You have to do it!” she squealed when I told her the news. “You have to take this job. We’ll go grocery shopping together. We’ll eat tuna fish every day.”
Florence should have hired her to do its marketing. She made it sound like Shangri-La. All my life, I’d sought out a sense of community: that’s what drew me to football, the theater, and fraternity life. Sonja knew this and promised me the same in Florence. There were a ton of young TV reporters in Florence just like us, she said, and we’d all hang out together. When you start at an uncommonly low salary, of course, it’s nearly impossible to fully make that up in later years, no matter how well you perform your job. But, Sonja pointed out, that concern didn’t really apply in this case. None of us, after all, were going to stay in Florence, only the 103rd biggest market in the country. This was a starter job. Bigger markets down the road promised bigger paydays.
So I moved to Florence. I roomed with Terra Redus, one of the other young reporters. For the first and only time in my life, I had a budget book in which I dutifully recorded every expense. I didn’t splurge, and I was never in too much debt. Rent was $315 a month. I bought a 1981 Plymouth Reliant K-car for $1,000, and Sonja turned out to be prophetic: I ate vats of canned tuna. One time, I splurged and bought myself dough to make chocolate chip cookies—only to return home one day to the wafting smell of cookies in the air. “Did you make my cookies, Terra?” I asked.
“No,” she said, forgetting the maxim we had all learned from Watergate: Often, the cover-up is worse than the crime.
“How you gonna lie to me, Terra? You ate my cookies,” I said. Finally, after a bit more cross-examination, she broke down and confessed.
Every Friday night, a group of us would go to Applebee’s—me, Sonja, Terra, and Rick Henry, who was WPDE’s sports director and one of my mentors. We were all learning together, and our barroom conversations were as much a part of the apprenticeship as our time in the studio or newsroom. After a few months, I was made weekend sports anchor—while continuing my role as weekday news reporter. It wasn’t more money, and it meant I’d have literally no free time, but it was invaluable.
It was a great learning experience because you were expected to be a one-man band. The station had only three cameras. I’d take a Betacam with me out in the field and shoot all my own material. How do you shoot a stand-up of yourself? I learned very quickly. You take the light pole, run it up to six feet, position it to where you’re going to stand, focus on it with the camera, hit Play, move the light pole, and stand in its place—holla! You’re recording your own stand-up.
I worked at WPDE for eleven months. In the summer of 1988, at all of twenty-three years old, I made a quantum leap. WRAL in Raleigh—competitor of Stogner’s WTVD, where I’d interned—was in the thirty-second biggest market in the country. And the work was top-ten quality.
I was the nightside news reporter. But the assignment desk knew of my affinity for sports, so I’d get all these sports-themed stories. That’s how I first met Coach Valvano, when he was going through that recruiting scandal at N.C. State. He had me to the house, where we sat out back and talked for hours after the camera was off. I remember thinking, If this guy is this cool to a reporter when he’s going through a scandal, he must be one special dude. And that’s hard to admit when you’re a Tar Heel.
Another time, I did a story on a brash Duke law student who, at twenty-two, had become the youngest registered agent in sports. Drew Rosenhaus had gone to undergrad at the University of Miami when the Hurricanes’ football program was at its peak; he turned his close connections with players at “the U” into a career. He was then as he is now: loud, unafraid, a slick operator. The conniving character Bob Sugar, played by Jay Mohr in the movie Jerry Maguire, is said to be based on Rosenhaus.
The sports department at WRAL consistently won awards, and I learned from them the importance of great photography. I soaked up the wisdom of sports director Bob Holliday and anchor Tom Suiter. But the true stars were sports photographers Jay Jennings and Jeff Gravley.
To this day, Jennings might be the best I’ve ever seen. Way back in the late eighties, he was doing stuff well ahead of his time. Video montages, with great jump cuts. Real tight shots on a spiraling football, slowed down, NFL Films–style.
Funny, you know how, when I think back on my relationships with Jordan, Tiger, and Obama, the moments that have stayed with me the most are those in which we’ve talked about our kids? Well, I admired Jay Jennings’s work, but my most powerful memory of him had nothing to do with anything he shot. Jay was a great athlete, and we used to have some killer touch-football games. To one, he brought his four-year-old son, Jason. The last play of the game, we kicked off to Jason, who caught the ball, and those of us on the other team went diving over and beyond him, just missing him time and again, while he scampered down the sideline for a touchdown, his dad a step ahead the whole time, shouting, “C’mon, Jason, this way! C’mon, man!”
I was twenty-three, but, looking at Jay’s pride and Jason’s giggling joy, I knew then: I want this. I can’t wait to be a dad.
Years later, Jason became a news reporter at WRAL. He’s now a sports anchor in Tampa, Florida. That circle-of-life stuff is a trip, man.
• • •
“THAT IS ONE BIG DUDE,” I said, letting out a low whistle. In the same way you remember that awestruck feeling when you first take in the sheer immensity of the Grand Canyon, so it was that I’d always remember first laying my eyes on this hulking behemoth in front of me.
It was 1992, and my photographer and close friend Ricky Scarwid and I were in Chicago for the NBA Pre-Draft Camp leading up to the draft. By now, I was the sports anchor at WESH, the NBC affiliate in Orlando, Florida, having left WRAL in 1990. The Orlando Magic had the first pick in the draft, and everyone knew it was going to be this giant out of LSU, Shaquille O’Neal. We were there to land Orlando’s first interview with him.
Now here he was, checking in to his hotel. He was a little hard to miss. Ricky and I approached, and Shaq couldn’t have been more accommodating. He had as many questions for us about Orlando as we had for him about basketball.
But mostly what I remember about him was … that size. I’d seen taller guys but no one bigger. That he was also a great athlete and, as it turned out, a charismatic personality made you think early on: This is something entirely new.
Shaq’s arrival in Orlando was a type of passing of the torch: What had been Mickey Mouse’s town now belonged to Shaq. You know how some people are just silly and goofy? Well, Shaq was silly, goofy, and smart. But the goofiness is what set him apart. A lot of times, as practice was about to end, he’d break-dance—it’s one of the freakiest sights I’ve ever seen, a 7′1″, 300-pound giant dropping to the ground to bust some moves.
Everything Shaq did was newsworthy. Ricky and I were there when he’d take area kids on toy-shopping sprees at the mall, and the story would lead our sportscast. We were there when he made his rap debut with Fu-Schnickens in a song called “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock?),” and I loved his riff; I remember it to this day. “Forget Tony Danza, I’m the Boss/When It Comes to Money, I’m Like Dick DeVos,” he rhymed, ref
erencing the Magic owner. “Now, who’s the first pick? Me. Word is born’in/Not a Christian Laettner, not Alonzo Mourning.” It’s fair to say Shaq wasn’t happy with all the hype Duke’s Laettner received when they both were in college.
Even before Shaq’s arrival, I loved my time in Orlando. I had never worked in a city that had a pro basketball team. Our sports director, Marc Middleton, was intense. He’d come in in the morning and stay until eleven p.m. Most days, the Magic were our lead sports story. Marc would send us over to Magic practice, and we’d put together an ambitious 1:30 package on the team for that night’s broadcast.
Before Shaq, the Magic weren’t very good, but they had a great cast of characters. Dennis Scott, who arrived in town when I did, was the purest three-point shooter I’ve ever seen. Nick Anderson was a streak scorer—and someone who always seemed like he was in a foul mood in the locker room. Years later, I ran into him, and he was laughing and joking around. I remember thinking, Where was this personality back in the day? But some days he must have felt the need to put a wall up. Some guys play better with a permanent scowl. Nick was one of them; the Magic back then won a lot of games they shouldn’t have simply because Scott or Anderson would get unconscious and go on a roll.
There was also point guard Scott Skiles—the answer, for a time, to a great trivia question: Who holds the record for most assists in an NBA game (30) and most consecutive home runs by a high school baseball player (4)? I was at the game when Skiles set the assist record. He was aware of what he was about to do, and on one play late in the game, he passed the ball to Jerry “Ice” Reynolds—who promptly passed it to another teammate. “Shoot the f’ing ball!” Skiles yelled.
And there was Litterial Green, a backup point guard who could jump outta the gym. One day at practice, he and I held a slam-dunk contest. He won, but I held my own.
When there wasn’t a Magic story to pursue, there always seemed to be something interesting worth covering. There was Banana George, the barefooted legend of the stunt water-skiing circuit, the only person to have skied on all seven continents. There was Brown’s Gymnastics and coach Rita Brown, who produced countless gymnastic stars, including Olympians Wendy Bruce and Brandy Johnson. And there was the time I got in the ring with some pro wrestlers for an on-air lesson in the art of body slamming. That took me back in time to Winston-Salem, when Stephen and I would construct a makeshift ring and wrassle—and I’d always be Ric Flair, my hero in the squared circle.