Dick Schaap Quotes (35 Quotes)

I hate repetition and I love challenges, and that is why I've jumped from newspapers to magazines to books to television to radio to public speaking.

Sugar Ray and talked about doing some articles together or writing a book together but dealing with Sugar Ray was a lot like fighting him. He would fake you in and then he'd drop you.

I worked with Rocky Graziano and Rocky was certainly a character.

If I got paid, it was no more than five dollars a column, and I still think I was overpaid.

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters, boxing and horse racing, have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.

I just can't believe all the things I did that decade.

I think on balance, Don King has been bad for boxing. I think he's done some very good things and I think he did a heck of a job of promoting Ali but I think I could have promoted Ali.

My top three were Jim Brown, Wilt Chamberlain and Bo Jackson.

I got to know Sugar Ray but I certainly would not say we were good friends.

I was also in love with the English language.

The best thing, ... was that my subject was accessible, which wasn't always true with the other people I worked with. Secondly, I didn't have to split the money with him. He did it gratis, which was nice of him. And if he was wrong, I had nobody to blame but myself. I couldn't pull a Charles Barkley and claim I was misquoted in my autobiography.

Today, it's money. There's no question about that. Unless you endorse a grill that cooks hamburgers and steaks, where else can you make the kind of money that you can make in the ring if you're good?

Sugar Ray Robinson was at the top of the boxing world during the 1950's when it seemed that he would either win or lose the championship about every three or four months.

I think it's a labor of love for everybody who was involved with it,

Some people who love boxing might love Mike Tyson, but people outside of the sport are generally repulsed by him and therefore, repulsed by the sport.

I think I dozed off before the kickoff, but I woke in time to watch Scott make his two interceptions. I wasn't alert enough to watch Manny Fernandez make his 17 tackles.

I also love the controversy of it. Even if I didn't think he should be up that high, I like the controversy it created.

In fifty years of covering the sport, of course Muhammad Ali is by far the dominant figure.

I came up with new leads for game stories by being observant and clever, by using the many gifts of the English language to intrigue and hook a reader.

It was the opportunity, ... to work with Tom Wolfe and Breslin and Red Smith. If you're a journalist, that's who you want to be with. (Legendary theater critic) Walter Kerr used to use my typewriter, I was so proud.

I wanted to be a sportswriter because I loved sports and I could not hit the curve ball, the jump shot, or the opposing ball carrier.

You need heroes like that for a sport to surge the way basketball did with Michael Jordan. Now he's gone and that sport is having problems.

Sportswriters have changed more than sportswriting.

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose.

He's in it for Don King and that's understandable because that's why people go into business. He's just kind of slippery about it.

There is never going to be another Ali.

I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance. If you have a vote for the most significant athlete, then you have Ali, then you have Babe Ruth, then you have Michael Jordan.

I always thought of him as a stoic, solid person, that I think was typical of that era of the 1950s, ... People came out of the war years with great hope and great faith in the future. Unitas sort of represented that.

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

Sugar Ray Leonard was as close as anyone came after Ali to being Ali, but he wasn't Ali.

Also, I am driven by a wonderful muse called alimony.

I began learning the sportswriting business very early in life.

I think anybody is entitled to vote for whomever they want, and I think Secretariat does qualify as an athlete,

All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.