Scott Van Pelt Talks ESPY Day V-Foundation, Open Championship & More w/ Rich

Scott Van Pelt has been at ESPN for twenty-three years and counting. He has never been invited to the ESPYs.

That admission landed early, drew a "wait, what" out of Rich, and produced the best idea of the segment. "Look at us. We should do our own thing," Rich said. "We should dress in tuxes and hang out."

"I'm in," Van Pelt said. "I'm in."

Fine. Let the ceremony have its ballroom. The two of them will be somewhere else in formalwear, which is arguably the better broadcast.

Van Pelt joined from home in DC, fresh off a trip to Europe that took him through Wimbledon and Paris, and reporting that the heat back in Washington beat anything he found overseas. His internet fought him the entire way. He apologized for it repeatedly and kept going, which turned out to be thematically appropriate for a conversation about showing up when conditions are bad.

Because this was ESPY Day, and ESPY Day is about the V Foundation. In his radio years, the tradition was to auction themselves off, and the byproduct was not just money. "People become friends through this," he said, with a shout to his guy Bart, out in Utah or wherever he might be. Go green, go white.

His framing of the day was the least performative thing you will hear this week. "This day is frankly the most important thing that we do," Van Pelt said. "As much as the stuff that we love doing and talking about sports, if we help, if the money that you give leads to some breakthrough, what's more important?"

Rich made the same point from the other direction, which is that you never know which dime is the one that puts something over the top.

Then Rich asked for a Stuart Scott story, and Van Pelt gave two.

The first is hard to read and worth reading. When Scott was sick, Van Pelt watched him sit on the set in what he described as a zen-like state, leaning back, gathering every bit of energy he had before a segment.

"He was a performer, and the performance requires energy," Van Pelt said. "And that energy is being attacked by this cancer."

He watched Scott go from a giant jacked-up guy to someone wiry, still muscle-bound but visibly shrinking in front of them. And the work itself was medicine. The hour gave Scott a diversion that was, in Van Pelt's word, vital.

"To sit with him in the middle of that and see this guy still at the height of his craft and the peak of those powers," he said. "I think about that a lot now, and recognize how lucky I was to share the stage with him."

The second story is lighter and just as revealing. Van Pelt and Scott were set to follow a North Carolina and Duke game in Chapel Hill. Carolina was up one, and then Austin Rivers hit a three at the buzzer. Twenty minutes later they were on the air for an hour.

"I would have walked off the set if it's Maryland," Van Pelt admitted. Scott had the gumption to summon his courage and do the show anyway. "He loved his heels the way you love Go Blue, the way I love Maryland. We're all from somewhere, and everyone knows he was a Tar Heel."

The golf conversation came with a special guest, since Red made an entrance and had to be introduced. Red now owns the chair in Van Pelt's office. It used to be Buck's chair, and after they lost Otis, Van Pelt told the new arrival he would have to earn it.

On the Open Championship, Van Pelt has been texting with Justin Thomas about the conditions. Baked out, but perfect. Also, no air conditioning in the flat in England, which Van Pelt suggested somebody sort out. His read on Birkdale is that it traditionally rewards a great player, so he is not hunting for an outlier deep down the board even though somebody nobody has heard of will be gone by tomorrow. He would not look much past Rose, or maybe Morikawa, who has won this before. Expect drives of four hundred yards, because the fairways are playing like tarmac.

On football, Van Pelt is ready. No more doubleheaders means no more trips to New York trying to serve two audiences at once. The October run is LA, San Francisco and Seattle with a Philadelphia trip in the middle, and then the Thanksgiving stretch gives him Baltimore and Washington back to back, which means he drives. Texting with Joe and Troy, the consensus is that on paper this is the best schedule they have had.

The big one is February, and Van Pelt did not pretend to be casual about it. A Super Bowl as an ESPN production was not something he ever assumed would happen. "That was in the stars," he said. Reaching for the stars while your feet are on the ground, and then the stars align and you get to put the full weight of the machine behind it.

Before that, a bit of summer. Toes in the sand, deep breath, and then a season.

"I appreciate the opportunity to share some memories of Stuart," Van Pelt said, "and to spend some time with you."