"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"
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He’s trying to sound like he’s not ranking gods, while quietly doing exactly that. Schaap opens with a defensive shrug - “I did not choose necessarily on the basis of significance” - the kind of preemptive caveat a veteran sports journalist uses when he knows the next sentence will ignite arguments at bars and in newsrooms. The move is classic: deny you’re making a hierarchy, then immediately name the hierarchy everyone already carries in their head.
The subtext is less about the athletes themselves than about how “significance” gets constructed. Schaap isn’t measuring points, titles, or even pure dominance. He’s gesturing at athletes as cultural infrastructure: Ali as politics and identity televised into living rooms; Babe Ruth as the founding myth of American sports celebrity; Michael Jordan as the globalized, corporate-era athlete who turned excellence into a brand language. That’s why he frames it as “If you have a vote” - he’s invoking a democratic-seeming process while acknowledging that the ballot is rigged by media memory, nostalgia, and national storytelling.
Context matters: Schaap came up in an era when the sportswriter wasn’t just a commentator but a gatekeeper of greatness. His list reveals the old-media canon - male, American, monolithic - and the quiet confidence that these names are self-evident reference points. The line works because it exposes how sports talk often disguises cultural power as neutral debate: pretend it’s just opinion, then use the platform to define the pantheon.
The subtext is less about the athletes themselves than about how “significance” gets constructed. Schaap isn’t measuring points, titles, or even pure dominance. He’s gesturing at athletes as cultural infrastructure: Ali as politics and identity televised into living rooms; Babe Ruth as the founding myth of American sports celebrity; Michael Jordan as the globalized, corporate-era athlete who turned excellence into a brand language. That’s why he frames it as “If you have a vote” - he’s invoking a democratic-seeming process while acknowledging that the ballot is rigged by media memory, nostalgia, and national storytelling.
Context matters: Schaap came up in an era when the sportswriter wasn’t just a commentator but a gatekeeper of greatness. His list reveals the old-media canon - male, American, monolithic - and the quiet confidence that these names are self-evident reference points. The line works because it exposes how sports talk often disguises cultural power as neutral debate: pretend it’s just opinion, then use the platform to define the pantheon.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
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