Dick Schaap

Richard Jay Schaap (September 27, 1934 – December 21, 2001) was an American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author.

Born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, and raised in Freeport, New York, on Long Island, Schaap began writing a sports column at age 14 for the weekly newspaper Freeport Leader, but the next year he obtained a job with the daily newspaper The Nassau Daily Review-Star working for Jimmy Breslin. He would later follow Breslin to the Long Island Press and New York Herald Tribune.

He attended Cornell University and was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, during which time he defended a professor before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He obtained a letter in varsity lacrosse playing goaltender. During his last year at Cornell, Schaap was elected to the Sphinx Head Society. After graduating in 1955 he received a Grantland Rice fellowship at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and authored his thesis on the recruitment of basketball players.

Schaap's younger brother was lawyer William Schaap. He was the father of six children, Renee, Michelle, Jeremy, Joanna, Kari and David, and had five grandchildren.

Schaap began work as assistant sports editor of Newsweek. In 1964, he began a thrice-weekly column concerning current events. He became editor of SPORT magazine in 1973. It was then that he set in motion the inspiration for the eccentricities of Media Day at the Super Bowl. Opposing the grandiose and self-important nature of the National Football League's championship match, he hired two Los Angeles Rams players, Fred Dryer and Lance Rentzel, to cover Super Bowl IX. Donning costumes inspired by The Front Page, "Scoops Brannigan" (Dryer) and "Cubby O'Switzer" (Rentzel) peppered players and coaches from both the Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers with questions that ranged from the clichéd to the downright absurd. Schaap was also a theatre critic, causing him to quip that he was the only person ever to vote for both the Tony Awards and the Heisman Trophy. He interviewed non-sports people such as Matthew Broderick and produced cultural features for ABC's overnight news program World News Now.

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