INDIANAPOLIS – Scott Van Pelt slipped out the back door of College Park Church and FaceTimed his kids.

"I'll give you a hug when I get home," he said. "I love you."

The nation didn’t watch Van Pelt on "SportsCenter" at midnight Tuesday. Adrian Wojnarowski wasn’t tweeting “Woj Bombs” Tuesday night. Tom Rinaldi and Kirk Herbstreit were in California until the wee hours of Tuesday morning. All four ESPN personalities convened in Indianapolis on Tuesday night to honor Purdue superfan Tyler Trent, the 20-year-old who died Jan. 1 after his third battle with rare bone cancer osteosarcoma.

“I was supposed to work tonight, but I told them I had to go to Indianapolis,” Van Pelt said. “There’ll be other Tuesday nights. We’ll do other nights of highlights. Tonight it was more important to be here. ... You take Woj off his phone for two hours and that’s a fate worse than death. But, the same as all of us, he wanted to be here.”

Trent built friendships with numerous media celebrities. Van Pelt’s relationship began after he got Trent’s cell phone number from Wojnarowski. They began texting, and were texting the night that Purdue football upset Ohio State — the night Trent’s story went viral.

“After they beat Ohio State, he texted me about how it’d be a dream to work with me,” Van Pelt said. “I said, ‘Well let’s work together.’ It was simple. Two days later, he was on the show.”

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Trent and Van Pelt cohosted "SportsCenter" on Oct. 25. Later, Van Pelt sported a "P" on his head during an episode of "SportsCenter" after losing a bet with Trent over a Purdue-Maryland game.

“He had a lot of nerve dying before we play them again and get a chance to beat them,” said Van Pelt, a Maryland alum. “I’d like to take that up with him. I’ll take him up on the other side for that. We were supposed to have another bet.”

Last week, hours after Trent died, Van Pelt honored him on the show. Van Pelt had promised him in October that he would save Trent a chair on the set whenever Trent was ready to cohost again. So to close the show, Van Pelt sat next to an empty chair and left the set.

“He radiated something that was rare, and a grace and a courage that I admired,” Van Pelt said. “He reminded me of Stuart (Scott). Ferocity in the fight and a spirit for life.”

Scott, a longtime ESPN anchor, died in 2015 from cancer.

Ask Van Pelt to summarize what Trent’s legacy is, and he can’t pinpoint one thing. There are too many attributes.

“His legacy is that he had this death sentence and he smiled and fought and lived,” Van Pelt said. “Certain people you come across, their spirit is undeniable. He radiated something that I was drawn to.

“As a dad, I was just FaceTiming my kids. Is it that? As a dad, as a father, you empathize with the idea of that? Or is it just as a human being that you admire someone’s capacity for strength and courage? I think it’s all those things. It doesn’t feel like an accident that we got to help share his story.”

Fans of SVP might wonder where he is when they turn on their televisions Tuesday night. He was right where he was supposed to be.

“The kid had cancer three times,” Van Pelt said. “Getting to Indy and taking a night off work’s not hard. It’s what we were supposed to do. It’s what we were meant to do.”