Remembering Bo Scott
Submitted photo
Connellsville graduate Bo Scott speaks during his induction into the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Submitted photo
Bo Scott is shown during his playing days at Connellsville. Scott would go on to start for Ohio State and the Cleveland Browns.
Submitted photo
Connellsville graduate Bo Scott poses for a photo while playing with the Cleveland Browns.
Submitted photo
Connellsville graduate Bo Scott is shown during his playing days in the CFL with Ottawa.
Area sports fans were deeply saddened by the news that one of the great athletes to come out of Fayette County Robert M. “Bo” Scott passed away on Aug. 4 at the age of 78.
His given name was Robert and he had a twin sister, Roberta. “Roberta couldn’t say ‘brother’ so she would call him, ‘Bo,’ and it stuck,” his wife Phyllis Scott said.
Scott was a three-sport star at Connellsville High School in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was profiled in a Memory Lane column in 2007. Here are some excerpts from that column.
Robert “Bo” Scott had a fine high school and college football career and played in the CFL and NFL, but it all started in Connellsville, Pa.
“I was talking recently to my grandson,” Scott recalled in that 2007 article. “He plays quarterback in football and I was talking to him about my experience and I remember Wally Schroyer — he was my first coach when I was in second grade. I remember he’s the one that got me into football. I remember one day my brother had gone to football practice and I asked my mother if I could go and my brother was gone and I saw a couple of other guys. And they were on their way to practice and I asked my mother if I could go and I followed them up the path through the woods to practice. I stood around and was watching practice and Wally walked over and said, ‘Who are you?’ I told him who I was and he gave me a uniform and my brother had a fit and I went home and my mother said what are you doing? That’s how I started playing football.”
Scott played at Connellsville from 1959 to 1961.
“We didn’t have any exceptional teams,” Scott said. “But we were competitive and had pretty good teams.”
His high school football coaches were Roger Spiedel his sophomore year and Dan Hamil his junior and senior seasons.
“I was a quarterback for years, from booster football all the way through my sophomore year,” Scott explained. “And then the new coach told me he thought I’d be more beneficial to the team if I played running back. At that time I didn’t think much of it. I had been playing quarterback from like second grade all the way through, and at first I hesitated, but I said he’s the coach and I can’t do anything about it. As it turns out that probably was the best move that ever happened to me.”
Scott also ran track and played basketball in high school.
“Football was always my main sport,” Scott recalled. “I started on the basketball team and I did well in track. I had a few school records. I first started out in the high jump and then ran the 100-yard and 200-yard dash and the relays. I loved track — I loved them all.”
Scott garnered All-County, All-WPIAL and All-State honors and played for the West in a 34-14 victory over the East in an intrastate contest in the 1961 Big 33 Game.
Redstone High School product Don Croftcheck and Scott served as co-captains for the West squad in the Big 33 game.
Scott was a highly sought after football recruit when he graduated in 1961, and chose to go to Ohio State.
“I had a lot of schools after me,” Scott stated. “Woody Hayes was the reason I went to Ohio State. He came to see me play. Plus I didn’t know it, but when we played the Big 33 game he came over to Hershey, Pa. to see me play in that game.”
Scott played on some fair teams at Ohio State from 1961 to 1963. He played freshman ball in 1961 and was on a 1962 squad that went 6-3 and a 1963 team that finished 5-3-1.
Scott had a good relationship with Coach Hayes.
“Oh, yeah — it was either you liked him or you didn’t like him,” Scott said of Hayes. “There was no in between and I know there are some guys that didn’t have much to say good about him and there were a lot of guys who raved about him, but the main thing is everybody respected him. I had a great relationship with him.”
Scott had a chance to play with some outstanding players at OSU.
“We had Paul Warfield — he was a year ahead of me,” Scott said. “We had Matt Snell who ended up playing for the New York Jets and there was Bob Vogel and Daryl Sanders, they were two tackles and were No. 1 draft choices.”
One of Scott’s fondest memories is his first varsity touchdown at Ohio State in 1962 during a 41-7 win over North Carolina.
“I remember the first touchdown I made,” Scott said. “It was against North Carolina and back then you had to go both ways, offense and defense, and I was in on defense and intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown.”
Scott didn’t play his senior season at Ohio State and went to the Canadian Football League with the Ottawa Roughriders in 1964 and spent four seasons in the CFL.
“The highlight in Canada was playing against older brother Wilbert,” Scott laughed. “He was playing for Montreal and we had a lot of fun and he tried to talk trash to me when we played them. He was a linebacker so we ran into each other a few times. It was interesting when we played each other.”
Scott was a third-round selection of the Cleveland Browns in 1965 and also was drafted by the AFL Oakland Raiders.
“At the time I had a three-year contract, so I played out my contract and my last year I had contract dispute,” Scott recalled. “I played out my option in Canada and several teams contacted me and wanted to know who had my rights and it was Cleveland and Oakland.
“I had a good career in Canada. I was set to go to the Raiders and at the last minute Cleveland called me. Jim Brown had retired right after I was drafted and Ernie Green got hurt and they contacted me. I didn’t go to the Raiders I ended up going to the Browns.”
Scott played for the Browns from 1969 to 1974 and rushed for 2,124 yards and 18 touchdowns in his career. He also hauled in 112 aerials for 826 yards and six touchdowns.
“We went to the playoffs and we almost went to the championship game my first year there,” Scott said. ” When I first went there I wasn’t a starter. They drafted Ron Johnson from Michigan and he was a holdout and he came in late, but they gave him the starting job. After about three or four games head coach Blanton Collier came to me and said I know you are frustrated. He said he told offensive coordinator Nick Skorich to alternate Johnson and me. We did that for three games and then I had an exceptional game against the Giants and from that day on I was the starter and after the season they traded Johnson to the Giants.”
Scott was a fixture at running back for the Browns’ from then on. He played in the same backfield with Hall of Fame running back Leroy Kelly.
“He was good,” Scott explained. “I told him that you’ve got to give me a pat on the back because you know I helped you get in the Hall of Fame. I always joke with him when I see him.”
The Steelers vs. the Browns was always the marquee game on the schedule.
“It was crazy,” Scott said. “When it came up that was the game you looked forward to playing in and the fans made it that much more electrifying.”
When he retired Scott went back to Columbus, Ohio.
“I worked with kids,” Scott stated. “I was assistant director of juvenile detention center and I worked for the juvenile court and worked with them for 28 years until I retired.”
Former Connellsville star Jim Cunningam who played at Pitt and in the NFL remembered Scott fondly.
“Bo Scott was a tremendous athlete and so was his older brother Wilbert,” Cunningham opined. “His brother and I grew up together and we played together through high school. Bo was the little guy, he was the younger of the brothers and I didn’t get to spend much time with him because I was always usually with his brother. But both of those boys were very good athletes.
“Bo ran track and played basketball, he was an all-around athlete. In fact both of them were. Bo was very quiet and very humble and came from a wonderful family. I was just so saddened to hear about Bo’s death.”
Former Redstone High School standout Don Croftcheck, who played at Indiana and later with the Redskins and Bears, had some contact with Scott back in the day.
“I had forgotten that Bo and I were co-captains of the West squad in the Big 33 game,” Croftcheck said. “There were four guys from Fayette County playing in the game. Don Woodward from Albert Gallatin and Tom Kostelnik from Brownsville also played in the game. We were well represented in Fayette County. Bo Scott was really a great football player. The Big 33 was a great football game.
“We didn’t play Connellsville in football, so the Big 33 was my only football interaction with him. We tangled in track and field, I threw the javelin and Bo competed in he high jump and then ran the 100-yard and 200-yard dash and the relays. He was a great runner.
“What I remember most about Bo was he was just a nice fellow. I liked being around him, he was just a great kid to be around. He wasn’t conceited or anything. He just was a heck of a guy and a great athlete.”
Fred Hoaglin was the starting center for the Browns when Scott played in Cleveland. He remembered Scott as a tough competitor.
“We had some good teams in Cleveland,” Hoaglin recalled. “We ran the football back then and if you couldn’t stop us we ran it again. We had very good backs like Leroy Kelly, Ernie Green and Bo. We were very solid on offense and Bo Scott was a tough running back for us.”
Scott was inducted into the Connellsville High School Hall of Fame in 2012 and he was enshrined in the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.