Trey Wingo: Stuart Scott faced significant scrutiny from ESPN management

ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary about Stuart Scott premieres Wednesday night, and it’s brought back a lot of conversations about what made him special and how the network treated him.

Trey Wingo, during a recent appearance on Hoodie Chroniclez, got asked what Scott would say about ESPN today. And instead of giving a sanitized answer about how Stuart would love everything and be proud, he reminded everyone that ESPN’s relationship with Stuart was never as smooth as people like to remember.

“Stuart was such an innovator,” Wingo said. “I’ll tell you one of the things that no one ever knows about Stuart, and maybe some people know this, but he was under a lot of scrutiny by management at ESPN. They didn’t like his style, which is interesting now because all they care about is style, for the most part. And they wanted to make sure, if you’re going to do that, back it up with information.”

That was the tension that defined his career at ESPN. They hired Scott to be different, then spent years making sure he knew they weren’t comfortable with different. It’s easy to forget now, with his style having basically become the blueprint for every SportsCenter anchor who came after him, but management constantly fought him.

ESPN producer Mary Frances Bonvini recalled in an oral history for The Ringer standing in a hallway with Scott while an executive told him, “I don’t understand what you’re doing, and I don’t understand what you’re trying to express. I don’t even really understand some of the words you’re saying.”

Scott’s sister, Susan, told Bryan Curtis that former ESPN executive Norby Williamson wrote him up and challenged his scripts, that Stuart was “desperately frustrated” and “people really don’t know how awful it was.”

But here’s the thing about Scott that separates him from just about anyone else who’s ever sat at the SportsCenter desk. He could’ve backed down. He could’ve given ESPN the vanilla, safe version of himself they seemed to want. Instead, he doubled down. He took all that scrutiny, all that pushback from executives who didn’t get what he was doing, and turned it into fuel. Suppose they wanted to question his style, fine. He’d give them style and substance, more information than anyone else was packing into a highlight, delivered in a way that actually made people want to watch. ”

“So if you go back and watch Stuart at his heyday, he was presenting himself in a way, ‘Cool as the other side of the pillow,’ all that kind of stuff, but then you would listen to him, he would drop more facts and more knowledge in one of those SportsCenter episodes than anyone else,” Wingo said. “Basically, he was like, ‘Really? You’re going to mess with me? Alright, I’m gonna do my thing, and then I’m going to show you how much of your shit I can put in there as well.'”

That’s what people miss when they remember Scott for the catchphrases and the style. He proved you could be entertaining and substantive at the same time, that style and information weren’t opposing forces. He wanted to make you smarter as a sports fan, and he understood the value of that information in a way most people at ESPN didn’t seem to.

The irony is that ESPN now chases the very thing they once tried to suppress in Scott. They’re obsessed with personality-driven content, with anchors and analysts who have a distinct voice and style. But somewhere along the way, they forgot the other half of what made Stuart work.

Wingo thinks Scott would still be a megastar if he were at ESPN today. He’s probably right. But you have to wonder if he would even recognize the place. The network that once scrutinized him for being too stylish now sometimes feels like it’s all style and no substance, the exact inverse of what Scott fought so hard to prove was possible. After all, he was the one who showed them you could have both.