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Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Producers at ESPN felt that the end may be near for their dear colleague, Stuart Scott, and secretly began taping a heartfelt farewell tribute shortly after Scott gave his monumental speech at the 2014 ESPY Awards.

Per TV Newser:

“They all talked about what it would mean if the piece ever aired. It meant their friend and colleague was dead,” writes Sports Illustrated‘s Richard Deitsch. “But the small group of ESPN staffers who worked on the feature believed they owed it to their colleague to produce something with love and care if that awful day ever came.”

Deitsch reports the producers informed Scott’s agent that work on the obit was underway, asking if Scott would want to know. It’s believed he was unaware that it had been completed.

Lieber and Greenfield found out Scott had passed before sunrise on Sunday and hustled to get the piece ready for air. Lieber said producers were working on some of the auxiliary Scott pieces that ran on Sunday as late as two weeks ago. There are a lot of advanced pieces that live on ESPN’s servers until they run but Lieber and Co. intentionally did not put the main Scott feature on the servers because they did not want the piece living electronically.

“God forbid someone hits a wrong button or sees that we are preparing it and starts to talk, and word got back to Stuart,” Lieber said.

Check out the tribute below:

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Related Links:

LeBron James Gives Touching Tribute To Stuart Scott

Stuart Scott Dies Today At 49

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