As I was coming of age, ESPN was getting cool. The network itself is two years older than me. We all know how cool juniors and seniors can seem when a 14 year-old arrives at high school. Scott started at ESPN2 when I was 12 and was really coming into his own during my freshman year of high school in 1995-96.

That year UCLA had just won the national championship, Michael Jordan was at the height of his reign, and ESPN was at the height of showing highlights.

Stuart Scott, who passed away Sunday morning, was a bright, shining star. Young, hip, and vibrant, Scott’s highlights, attitude, and delivery set a standard for how young people talked about great feats of athleticism for decades to come.

Music fans of my generation reminisce about days when MTV showed actual music videos. While ESPN’s highlights have given way far more gently to analysis and hyperbole, it wasn’t that way in the mid-90’s. There were still fewer than 50 channels. Sports programming was a fraction of what it’s become. The Internet, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist as it does today.

To find out how teams did and who won important games, SportsCenter was a must. You could watch for a half-hour or an hour, depending on the show, and you always got excited when your favorite anchors were on and doing highlights fro your team. Any time I had my druthers, it was on in the background. When I was doing homework — Sportscenter. When I was eating — SportsCenter.

I know my experience was the same as millions of young sports fans at the time. For my money, Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman or Stuart Scott and Kenny Mayne couldn’t be beat. Rich Eisen was good, too.

As Scott battled cancer over the past number of years, his attitude never seemed to change. Everyone who worked with him is crushed, which tells you a lot about the kind of guy I’m sure he was. I’m basically in tears this morning over a guy on television, which says something about the impact he had on me and, I think, other sports fans of my generation.

He will be missed.

 Here’s Rich Eisen’s reaction this morning. 

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-network-gameday/0ap3000000453849/Rich-Eisen-remembers-Stuart-Scott

And, finally, some vintage highlights from a guy who loved his Tar Heels: