Rich on Stuart Scott’s Continuing Role in Advancing Cancer Research Long after His Passing

There is a specific kind of vertigo that comes from watching a friend become an institution. Rich described it on the show, and he was not entirely comfortable with it.

"It just blows my mind that Stuart's now in the same position as Jim Valvano," Rich said. "Neither of us would ever have imagined such a thing."

The reason he can say that with authority is that he was sitting next to Stuart Scott when they were both at the far end of the ESPYs, physically and otherwise. Rich and Scott worked the balcony set at Radio City Music Hall, the perch off to the side that Dan and Keith had originated and then graduated from. Dan and Keith, Rich said, were the ones who first called themselves the Statler and Waldorf of the operation, the elderly Muppets up in the rafters saying impish things about the room below.

Rich and Scott inherited it. "It was really pretty cool for us," Rich said. They were young enough to be openly ambitious about what they were building. "We were wondering if we were a team, could we be a team? Are we the next team? Are we the team?" There was friction, too. Scott was annoyed that Rich had gone for Keith's chair. They worked together for seven years.

And below them, on that same ESPYs stage, was the speech. Jim Valvano had just passed away. His don't give up, don't ever give up address still resonates, and Rich fully expected to see a good deal of it again during that night's broadcast, even without a rundown in front of him.

That is the part that will not sit still for him. Scott is now in Valvano's position for the same reason Valvano was, because he left behind his own speech about not giving up and his own remarkable story. There is an award with his name on it now, the Stuart Scott Inspire Award, and it was going that night to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie.

Lurie was honored for the work he and the Eagles Autism Foundation have done, more than a hundred million dollars raised for clinical care and research supporting autism awareness. Rich made the case for the fit plainly. Anybody who has been touched by autism or has a family member who has knows exactly how important that work is.

The Philadelphia connection is not obvious, and Rich said so. Scott did not have much in the way of Philadelphia ties. That is not really the point. The point is that every year, because of the award, Scott gets remembered again.

Then Rich told a story that had come to him on a golf course, from Vince Carter, while the two of them walked up a fairway following Carter's ball after Rich had hit his own shot back into it.

Rich asked for a favorite Stuart Scott story. Carter said "wow," and Rich already knew what was coming.

Remember when Carter left the playoffs to walk in his graduation? Big kerfuffle, to say the least. What most people never knew is who delivered the commencement address at that ceremony.

Scott did.

And Scott used it. He was strident, Rich said, in telling everyone to back off. You only get to walk once. This is life, and that is business. Let him try to do both. There was no social media machine then, no platform that could churn out what you were saying the way Scott would have had at his disposal today. He said it anyway, and Carter told Rich how much it meant to him. Scott was a ride or die.

"I just can't believe that he's been gone this time," Rich said.

So the ask is simple. Remember him tonight, and raise money in his name today. Funds directed to the V Foundation can be earmarked specifically for the Stuart Scott cancer research fund at v.org/stuart. The general donation page at v.org/donate works too, but if you want it to go to Scott's research work, that first link is the one.