R. F. K.

R. F. K. by Dick Schaap

Publisher: New American Library, first printing 1967Hardcover
9.6 x12.4 inches, 216 pages

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

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.

After spending the 1970s with NBC as an NBC Nightly News and Today Show correspondent, he moved to ABC World News Tonight and 20/20 at ABC in the 1980s. He earned five Emmy Awards, for profiles of Sid Caesar and Tom Waddell, two for reporting, and for writing. In 1988 he began hosting The Sports Reporters on ESPN cable television, which in later years often featured his son Jeremy as a correspondent. He also hosted Schaap One on One on ESPN Classic and a syndicated ESPN Radio program called The Sporting Life with Dick Schaap, in which he discussed the week's developments in sports with Jeremy. He also occasionally served as a substitute anchor for ABC's late night newscast, World News Now.

He wrote the 1968 best-seller Instant Replay, co-authored with Jerry Kramer of the Green Bay Packers, and I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow... 'Cause I Get Better-Looking Every Day, the 1969 autobiography of New York Jet Joe Namath. These resulted in a stint as co-host of The Joe Namath Show, which in turn led to his hiring as sports anchor for WNBC-TV. Other books included a biography of Robert F. Kennedy; .44 (with Jimmy Breslin), a fictionalized account of the hunt for Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz; Turned On, about upper middle-class drug abuse; An Illustrated History of the Olympics, a coffee-table book on the history of the modern Olympic Games; The Perfect Jump, on the world record-breaking long jump by Bob Beamon in the 1968 Summer Olympics; My Aces, My Faults with Nick Bollettieri; Steinbrenner!, a biography of mercurial New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; and Bo Knows Bo with Bo Jackson. His autobiography, Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines & Punchlines, was reissued under Schaap's original title "Dick Schaap as Told to Dick Schaap: 50 years of Headlines, Deadlines and Punchlines."