No one has fonder memories of Stuart Scott than his former SportsCenter cohort, Rich Eisen.
Appearing on the Awful Announcing podcast, Eisen admitted to host Brandon Contes that his chemistry with the late Scott was instant.
“It took a while for us to realize that we were a team,” said Eisen. “You know, we would get our schedules month by month at ESPN back in the day. And so, November would start, and around Thanksgiving, we’d get our December schedule; sometimes they wouldn’t release it until the day before December, and everyone’s looking around saying, ‘Can we make plans around here, please?’ Then the December schedule would come out, and you’d look for the SportsCenter on the screen — the number of SportsCenters that you have. And then, once you see the number of SportCenters that you have, you’d scroll down and say, ‘Who am I doing it with?'”
Eisen said that he and Scott would keep opening up the schedule month after month to see that they were paired with each other more than anyone else.
“I just remember about a year into our tenure —barely short of it — we’d look at each other and go, ‘Are we…Are we a team?'” recalled Eisen. “‘You know Dan (Patrick) and Keith (Olbermann) are a team, and Robin Roberts, Charley Steiner, and Bob Ley are a team at the 6 o’clock eastern SportsCenter — are we one too?’ As if we thought there’d be a press release announcing that story of stuff, but there wasn’t. And we kept on getting thrown together because I thought we had a fascinating chemistry and a love for each other that I think came through our connection through the screen.
“It was an incredible ride for all those years, and I can’t believe he’s been gone nine years. And I miss him.”
It’s been a few weeks since the ninth anniversary of Stuart Scott’s passing — Jan. 4, 2015 — and Contes asked Eisen what that day is like for him.
“Well, invariably, it’ll come up, whether it’s me opening my phone and seeing, ‘Oh God, that’s right, it’s today,’ because someone has talked about it,” he said. “On occasion, my wife will bring it up because she knew Stuart too. And again, Suzy Shuster is my wife, and she and I met in the newsroom in Bristol. She needed some time — as I like to say — to realize I was the one for her because I knew she was the one for me right from the jump.
“And Stuart noticed that. And he kept playing the two of us towards the middle for years. There’s a great photograph at Suzy and I’s wedding…and Stuart’s there, and he’s looking at my ring and he’s holding my hand. He’s got this smile on his face looking at me. And the smile on his face is you know, I told you to hang in there — like that’s the way he looked at me. And the other smile on his face that he’s connoting is we did it together. Like, I hung in there, and he played n a significant role in this thing.
“He and my wife had a great relationship, friendship, as well. And so, she would occasionally bring it up, ‘Today’s the day.’ And it’s just…it’s just unbelievable because he had such a love of life and anybody that met him, one of the first things that was obvious to anybody that would meet him is like, ‘That’s the guy from TV. That’s the guy.’ It was nothing. No airs, no nothing. And he would always tell people, ‘If you have kids, be there for them,’ and things of that nature. He was always about love and putting it out there and being pure about his personality and what he was all about. He didn’t put any airs ever, so it’s just mind-blowing to me that he’s not around.”
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