Stuart Scott has been an annoying jackass making a good living on ESPN for years. Somehow, I haven't written much about how annoying he is. Perhaps I just hoped if I ignored him, he wouldn't make me angry. As it is, I seem to be able to avoid him on Sportscenter since I tend to watch the late ones. But I just have to weigh in on a Stuart interview from sometime last week.
Evidently, at the Super Bowl last year, Stuart Scott was caught text messaging a Broncos cheerleader in the middle of the night while down there "covering" the Super Bowl. In Miami. Without his wife.
Now, obviously, there's no way to know for sure why he was texting this young lady, or if in fact he really was texting her or casting his net for a booty call. Until he gets kind of wrankled about the whole thing.
Last week, Stu was interviewed by DC Sports Bog's Dan Steinberg at the National Spelling Bee.
One of the first things Steinberg politely, if skeptically, points out is that Stu claims "he only recently got a home computer, and, for example, if he comes back to work after a vacation and has 200 e-mails, he'll just delete them all."
Really? If you have 200 emails, you'll just delete them all, eh, Stu?
I'm calling "bullshit" on this story already. Stuart Scott is a filthy liar. In fact, I'm willing to bet that being an employee at ESPN, like almost every other company in the damn world, you're probably required to know a lot of things that are only disseminated via email. Like, you know, if you are on the air that night or not. I bet that doesn't come via carrier pigeon.
In the interview, first question:
Q: So do you read sports blogs?
A: I don't read any sports blogs.
Really? None? Where do you get information? ESPN.com only? I find this a bit hard to believe, given that Stuart Scott is under 50 years old and works in, you know, media.
But Stu's little BS story goes on from there, and this is where you can tell he's trying very hard to make believe that blogs don't really exist or have any impact on...anything. He's trying so hard, almost as though if he can convince us all that he doesn't even notice their piddly little existence, maybe the rest of us will wise up and realize they're just pack-of-lie filled garbage, too. And maybe we could each call his wife to tell her not to read anything that is said about her husband's wayward wanderings on a blog. So anyway, back to the interview...
Q: And if I asked you if you could name a sports blog?
A: I can't name a sports blog.
Can't name a sports blog. Interestingly, though, Stu does go on later to discuss the fact that he was unfairly judged by a sports blog. And he knows the story rather specifically. So again, liar.
I don't, I'm not a big computer person. I use a computer when I'm at work. I'm not on the Internet much at all. I'm just not a big Internet guy.
Why would Stuart Scott need to be on the Internet? He works for ESPN, I'm sure he just reads the sports page of the local Bristol paper each morning and then "raps" from that. What does Stuart take us for? Idiots? Okay, maybe we all are. But still...
The first two iPods I had, I love music, but I had no clue how to put music on an iPod. I gave the iPod, I said here, put some music, just put some music on it.
Wait, you can't work an iPod, yet you've had two? What did you expect, the second one would be easier to put music on or something? You're a liar, Stuart.
And people were like 'Oh c'mon it's easy, all you have to do is download it.'
It is easy, Stuart. And you know it.
Wait wait, that's the problem, 'downloading.' It's like, all you have to do to hit a 300-yard drive is drop it in the slot and turn your wrist over and come inside-out.
"Drop it in the slot and turn your wrist over and come inside-out." Look, Stu, whatever you did with that cheerleader in Miami you should keep to yourself.
Well, if you don't know how, you don't know how. Computers, they just aren't my thing.
No, cheating on your wife is your thing. We know. And don't give me this "Computers are so confusing" crap. You're LYING, Stuart. You use a computer every single day and likely have for the past 15 years. You simply could not exist in your profession without extensive use of computers. You know it. I know it. We all know it. Learn a new tune. And even if computers were hard to use, that doesn't mean that what someone writes on a Website is patently false.
Stuart goes on to talk about how he doesn't care what's going on in athletes' personal lives...
But as far as what did Gilbert Arenas do last night? I don't care. I don't care about his birthday party.
You would care if you were invited.
You know, I saw Tiger at his Tiger Jam. He always invites me out there to help him raise money. I saw him the week before at a wedding. I caught up with him--'Yo Tig, what's been up? How's Elin doing? How's the pregnancy? You guys good? Good.' Other than that, what Tiger did last night and where he went to dinner.
You're a colossal, name-dropping asshole, Stuart. I hope you understand that nobody for a second thinks you're tight with Tiger Woods.
Or what Curt Schilling thinks about on the mound? I'm not concerned.
This is probably part of what makes you a crappy sports "reporter." If you genuinely don't care about what Curt is thinking on the mound, you're a putz. Generally, the most common question asked of athletes about a situation on the field of play is "What were you thinking?" This is a poor attempt by Stu to continue to minimize blogs. Curt Schilling has a blog, so Stu reasons that he should pointedly comment on how he doesn't care about Curt's blog. Good for you, Stu. Other people do. And, despite what you think, you don't get to decide what we think is important or interesting.
Oh, but Stu keeps up his asinine name-dropping and illogical, nonsensical Web-bashing...
I don't care what an athlete had for dinner, or what he's going to do when he goes bowling, or anything. The thing's that I do care about as far as athletes' personal lives: Derek Fisher. He's a class guy. I care about his 10-month old daughter who's going through cancer surgery. But I texted him last week, I said, 'Hey man, my prayers are with you.' He thanked me. We both have daughters. My care comes from as a friend. Derek's not going to do a blog on his daughter. He's going to have his friends call him and say 'Hey, how are you doing?'
Yeah, you texted Derek Fisher. I bet he's one of your boys, too. But wait! How has the ability to text message not fallen into your "too technical for me to figure out" bucket?? Stu? Hello? You don't know how to download or use an iPod, but you can text message? Hmmm, seems a bit incongruous to me. And do you know why? Because Stuart Scott is a liar.
And then his little "Derek's not going to do a blog on his daughter." Umm, actually, many athletes have set up sites and blogs and charitable outreach for sick kids, missing children, etc. Some even set up MySpace pages. And do you know why, Stuart? Because it's how people communicate these days and they're things a lot of people read. We get it -- your f-cking text message was more personal than a blog post. That's your opinion. And it's an ignorant, uninformed one.
And then he gets to why he hates the Internet and now pretends it confounds him:
I was at the Super Bowl. I had been working 'till midnight, covering, you know, sports interviews. And there was some site...I was text-messaging a friend of mine who's in the business, who by the way had just told me, 'Hey, I just got engaged.' You know, I'm happy she's engaged. So she said, 'Why don't you come meet some friends, we'll grab a late bite.' Now one of the guys is a guy I used to work with, they all work together. So I text back, 'Cool, let me know." Somebody's reading over my shoulder, and what they wrote was 'Lemme know. At 12:30 at night.'
This story barely makes any sense and Stu has had four months to come up with a good cover story. I can only imagine what he said to his wife.
Well, we work late. They meant that it was a booty call, and that was all over the Internet. That hurts me. It hurts her. It hurts our business. It hurts our profession. It's a bunch of crap. It's a bunch of lies. It's crazy-making stuff.
You work late...? If you count clubbing as working, then okay, I guess. I like how there's then six sentences beginning with "It's..." in which Stu tries to debunk what was said about him. And none of it is relevant. How does it hurt their profession? That a suave dude like Stu can't get some ass while he's on the road? You know what, Stu? If you don't want people questioning what you're doing at a Miami club at 1 AM then, hey, don't be there. Just like you sanctimonious sportswriters say about pro athletes who get arrested after shootings outside strip clubs.
Here's some more babbling goodness from Stu...
The thing about blogs, blogs can be newsworthy, I guess. I don't know, I've never read 'em. I'm guessing that there are some that are newsworthy. But blogs are also about anyone's opinion. So when someone's opinion becomes fact, or at least in the eyes of people becomes fact, then I have a problem with that. It's not news. It's gossip.
Wait, huh? So Stu is saying blogs can be okay... but-but-I wouldn't really know... but I guess they could be okay. But they're about opinion. But wait, Stu, how do you know if you've never read them? Ah, that's right, because you're an effing liar.
Blogs are indeed about opinion and this is an interesting point Stuart makes. He suggests they're "about anyone's opinion" and he likens that to gossip. Well, when you clowns on ESPN pitch around your opinions, why are those more valid? And if he's suggesting that what they do at ESPN is simply report the news and scores and whatnot and nothing else, then, well, he's just being a disingenuous douchebag. To illustrate this point:
If I wanted to work in the gossip industry, I'd work for another network or another newspaper, another magazine, another entity. That's not my job. My job is sports, and facts, and passion, and the drama and the beauty of sports.
You're such an idiot, Stu. "Passion," "drama" and "beauty" of sports involves a fair amount of opinion, no? And then right after that line he follows it up with this nonsequiter:
So Curt Schilling's blog? Curt's a good dude. I've met him a couple times. It's not my life.
Wha? What the hell does this have to do with what you were just talking about? It's like Stuart's brain has a "random" function like his hard-to-work iPod. Curt Schilling's blog is not your life but he's a good dude that you've met a couple of times? This is truly dizzying. I'm so confused.
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I guess what really annoys me about this and why I felt compelled to write something on this is just the fact that Stuart Scott is a bald-faced, cockeyed liar. We all know he actually can use a computer and has downloaded things before. It's insulting to suggest the things he suggest and even more insulting to expect people to believe this complete crap.
I commend Dan Steinberg for the interview and have to think he felt like he struck gold as Stuart just meandered all over the map, saying things that contradict the very industry he works in.
If you want to cheat on your wife with blonde cheerleaders, Stuart, I've got no right to stop you. But if someone sees you doing it, don't piss on them for telling their friends. You want to be a big-shot name-dropper who hangs with all the athletes, or at least you want us all to think that's who you are. So deal with it.