A new season of ESPN’s award-winning SC Featured storytelling brand will debut Sunday, February 20th, on SportsCenter, continuing the 20-year-old tradition of the Sunday feature in ESPN’s signature news and information program.
What’s Happening:
- SC Featured stories air on SportsCenter during the months of the NFL offseason and the new season opens with a tie to this weekend’s NBA All-Star Game – History of the Alley Oop will examine the origin and evolution of one of basketball’s most exciting plays.
- The segment will premiere in the 8 a.m. ET hour of Sunday’s SportsCenter, re-air in the 11 p.m. ET program and then air again in other editions. SC Featured segments also are available on demand in an exclusive archive on ESPN+.
- SC Featured began in 2002 as the SportsCenter Sunday Feature and was re-branded SC Featured in 2013. ESPN Features, which produces SC Featured and was also created in 2002, has received 118 Sports Emmy Award nominations resulting in 19 Emmys.
- SC Featured has received 44 Sports Emmy Award nominations and won five Emmys since it was branded in 2013. SC Featured has also won seven Edward R. Murrow Journalism Awards in the past six years, with the 2021 story Fighting for Aniah the brand’s most recent Murrow recipient.
- Stories scheduled for the next three weeks of SC Featured:
- February 27th — Omitted: The Black Cowboy — For Black History Month, SC Featured will explore the history of African Americans contributions to western and rodeo culture and the media bias in the 20th century that did not include African American accomplishments. One such story is that of Bill Pickett, the son of slaves, who became famous for his unique technique to catch runaway cattle in the early 1900’s. Fifty-two years after Pickett’s death, a promoter saw a need to highlight the talents of Black cowboys and created the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, an all-Black rodeo intended to create a safe space for riders to develop their talents on their journey to the highest levels of rodeo. In 2021, it became the first all-Black rodeo to air on national television.
- March 6 – Paying It Forward – In 1999, Carolyn Peck became the first Black woman to win an NCAA Women’s basketball championship as a coach. In 2015, she sent a piece of the championship net to coach Dawn Staley. Once Staley won her own championship in 2017, she gave the piece of the net back to Peck. It was then Staley’s turn to continue the tradition. Unable to just pick one deserving Black female coach, she chose to send a piece of her championship net to all Division 1 Black female coaches as a symbol to keep pushing forward and support each other along the journey.
- March 13 – The Chosen Ones — On the 20th anniversary of the game, SC Featured revisits Lebron James’ only loss to an Ohio high school with several of the players from the team that took down King James. James’ Lakers play the Phoenix Suns that night at 8 p.m. on ESPN.
- SC Featured schedule subject to change.