Battle with Cancer

The first signs of trouble began during a Pittsburgh Steelers–Miami Dolphins Monday Night Football game on November 26, 2007, which Scott was covering for ESPN, where he became ill during the game. This resulted in an emergency appendectomy a few hours later, during which a malignant growth was discovered, and extra surgery required removing the possibly cancerous tissue.

Despite this, Scott was back at work within a month. Even during his chemotherapy treatment that followed, he continued to broadcast even his chemotherapy treatment, garnering much praise from fellow broadcasters and ESPN President George Bodenheimer in particular.

Remission lasted several years; however, in 2011, Scott revealed that he again had to fight off cancer, which thankfully went into Remission again in 2012. This time Remission was not such an extended period, and in 2013 Scott announced that his cancer had returned once again.

Scott continued the fight and was honored at the 22nd Annual ESPY awards on July 16, 2014, by being presented with the Jimmy V Award for his ongoing, inspirational battle against cancer. His acceptance speech has been regarded as one of the best and most moving in the history of the awards, as he revealed that in the week before his appearance at the awards, he had undergone four surgeries in seven days due to complications with his liver, as well as kidney failure and that at times he wasn't even sure he would survive to be at the awards at all.

Scott was still fighting his cancer and remained a positive influence on people living with cancer and had a bold impact on the world around him; his strength of character and zest for life despite the odds stacked against him were, and are, an inspiration for everyone.

He had been battling cancer. His speech was both emotional and supportive for many. He mentioned he doesn't like to feel like he has a disease, even though he thinks about it more than 20 times a day. He also said that death is not the war lost to fighting cancer and that we can beat cancer by how we live.

Sadly on January 4, 2015, ESPN announced that Stuart Scott lost his battle with cancer. However, as far as he was concerned, he won the battle. He considered every day he lived before his death a victory in the fight against cancer.

Career

Following graduation, Scott worked as a news reporter and weekend sports anchor at WPDE-TV in Florence, South Carolina, from 1987 to 1988. He also worked as a freelancer. In the course of his first job at WPDE, Scott came up with the phrase "as cool as the other side of the pillow," which became popular. Scott then went on to work as a news reporter for WRAL-TV 5 in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he stayed from 1988 to 1990. According to WRAL Sports anchor Jeff Gravley, Scott, and the sports department had a "natural bond" when they first met. Gravley characterized his personality as "creative, gregarious," and "a source of tremendous energy in the newsroom." Scott continued to visit his former colleagues at WRAL and treated them as if they were members of his family even after he had left.

In the sports reporting and anchoring departments of WESH, an NBC affiliate in Orlando, Florida, from 1990 to 1993, Scott worked as a sports reporter and anchor. While working at WESH, he met ESPN producer Gus Ramsey, starting in his own professional life. Ramsey had this to say about Scott: "You could tell the second he walked through the door that he was on his way to becoming a big star somewhere else the moment he walked through it. When he went out and did a piece on the rodeo, he did an excellent job, just as he would do an excellent job covering the NBA Finals for ESPN." The Central Florida Press Club awarded him first place honors for a feature on rodeo that he had written.