I still haven't figured out what was wrong with the Old Journalism, except that it became harder and harder to practice as the one-eyed monster that is the television camera roamed the land, bringing with it the scourge of checkbook journalism. There's the insatiable demand for programming, for exclusive interviews, for scoops. Let the record show that the participants all were tested for sexually transmitted diseases, to make sure that reality was the only dose they acquired. Schaap could have whipped the hair-sprayed guys, but he joined them anyway, becoming a wonderful, incisive voice reporting sports on the television networks. Almost always became a friend of the athlete or coach he was writing about.
Some folks have a problem with that.
But he is not Will Rogers. He has met men he didn't like. George Steinbrenner is one of them. Schaap wrote a book about the owner of the Yankees, ignoring threats from Steinbrenner's friends. Thank goodness, there's an obligatory scolding of Knight for the way he treated Schaap's son, Jeremy, in that infamous television interview that followed Knight's firing at Indiana.