The 2025 edition of Jimmy V Week kicked off with an unreal comeback victory by No. 10 BYU on Tuesday after the team came back from being down 22 points before the last two national champions in UConn and Florida took the court at Madison Square Garden.
During halftime of the games, though, four fan bases came together to watch Jim Valvano’s famous ESPYs speech in awe.
The laughter and applause from the crowd were as if the fans were watching the speech for the first time, but it simply goes to show how magical the speech really is.
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That night, Valvano’s “V Foundation for Cancer Research” was born, and since then, it has raised over $250 million for cancer research.
“This job is the absolute honor of my lifetime,” the V Foundation for Cancer Research’s chief scientific officer, Susanna Greer, told FOX Business at Tuesday night’s Jimmy V Classic.
Greer joined the V Foundation for Cancer Research in 2022 after running her own cancer research lab and working at the American Cancer Society. After completing her fellowship at the University of North Carolina, she knew plenty about the former N.C. State head coach. Greer never met Valvano, but when she was approached for the job, she started to dig in.
“I wanted to understand what drove him, how you possibly go from this devastating disease to using your platform to start a foundation,” Greer said. “I just try to carry his legacy as much as I can.”
She does that by watching Valvano’s speech every Monday.
Greer also said she sees a “direct correlation” between sports and her role in science.
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“Sports are all about teamwork, they’re all about no individual being more important than any other individuals on your team. And you think about Jim’s amazing ride to victory with N.C. State. It was a hope and a prayer, but there was a belief to get there. That’s exactly what’s happening here. Scientists don’t work in isolation, we’re together in teams. I mean, so much of what we do doesn’t work out, right? We are driving toward really insurmountable odds, but we’re thinking together as a team. Science and sport have this beautiful connection, and I’ve enjoyed that.”
Coinciding with Jimmy V Week is also the release of ESPN’s 30 for 30 on Stuart Scott, aptly titled “Boo Yah.” Scott died in 2015 of cancer, months after receiving the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance at the ESPYs. The documentary’s director, Andre Gaines, will attend the V Gala on Wednesday night for a third year in a row and noticed some “parallels” between Scott and Valvano while creating the film, largely in part because both of their famous speeches almost seemed like farewells.
“So many people didn’t realize he was showing us a true grit and inspiration of actually standing up on that stage in the first place,” Gaines told FOX Business.
But Gaines said while watching the films, fans will laugh, think, and cry — which is exactly what Valvano famously claimed is a “heck of a day.”
“Fans can expect to be inspired and can expect to really see what perseverance looks like in human form from a man who broke barriers,” Gaines said.
The end goal for the V Foundation for Cancer Research, of course, is to find a cure. In order to do that, though, Greer said everyone with the foundation must abide by Valvano’s key motto.
“We will never give up.”
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