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"I don't know if I hear so much of my influence with some of the younger people coming up now," he shares. "Hopefully, the influence I hear is the idea that it's cool to be whoever you are. You don't have to modify whatever your personality may be. I've heard people say before, when you might see somebody drop a little hip-hop, or a little bit of an Afrocentric vibe, people [say], 'Oh, he's trying to be like Stuart Scott.' I don't think they're trying to be like Stuart Scott. You don't hear that when you see a sportscaster from a different culture, [who] may be doing the same thing that other sportscasters have done. You [just] think 'oh, he's just being him' or 'she's just being her.' I don't think there's a 'Stuart Scott' vibe, I think there's a freedom-to-be-expressive vibe."

Scott is certainly expressive, and while the cultural and generational shift that has happened during Scott's tenure at ESPN can't be disavowed; one must also acknowledge Scott's undeniable charisma and on-air persona have influenced many of his colleagues - regardless of color. Younger SportsCenter anchors like Scott Van Pelt and Anthony Aimee bear Scott's influence, and much of the Fox Sports Network owes him a debt of gratitude. The sports news community is a lot like an extended family, and the ESPN family is as tight-knit a clan as the Jacksons or the Baldwins. Scott has a few theories as to where that uncanny closeness comes from. "The camaraderie we have comes from [a few] different sources," he reveals. "There's a different vibe when you work together 9 to 5 and when you work together [from] three or four in the afternoon until midnight or one o'clock. The late hours just foster some kind of . something. When you're with somebody at midnight and you've been with them all day and everybody's tired; you're going to have a certain [type] of closeness. [Also], a lot of us have worked here for a long time. The people who've worked here for a long time, we've kind of grown up together in the sense that all of us came here either young [and] not married, or young and newly-married, so the conversations have changed. Thirteen [or] 14 years ago when I got here, what I talked about with my colleagues was completely different. It was 'Hey, let's go out after the show and grab a beer'; now it's 'I'm tired because I had a parent-teacher conference,' [or] 'I had to take my daughter to tae kwon do.' "

Maturing professionally and personally certainly changed Stuart Scott's perspective. No longer the young upstart, he can now take pride in the ones coming after him and in the progress that has been made over the years. Scott's gone from being 'the brotha at ESPN,' to now being an elder statesmen shepherding the new wave of young black sports reporters. "I've done shows with African American anchors, ["Entertainment Tonight's"] Kevin Frazier; Ian Page, who's a great sportscaster with the golf channel, [and] it's nice to see the African American anchors that we have now," Scott pauses thoughtfully. "But I'll tell you what's even nicer - and it took a long time - but I remember the night it happened: for every show there are two anchors, a producer and a coordinating producer. We have these little pods that we work at - just little four-person pods in the newsroom. One day I was doing a show with Stan Verrett. We all sat down at the pod, and we had a black producer and a black C.P. - the pod was black." Scott smiles, obviously still joyful of the strides made at the network behind the scenes. "Yes, it took a long time, and, on the one hand, I could say 'well, it took too long,' " he continues. "But on the other hand, I remember sitting there and saying 'man, look at this, this is cool.' It didn't matter that it had taken so long, it just mattered that there we were. African Americans doing the show, creating the show - creating everything about the show."

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