Nature & Animals Quote by Dick Schaap

Schaap is doing that very journalist thing: treating sports less like scorekeeping and more like a national story engine that runs on people, not rules. The line lands because it pivots on a contradiction: boxing and horse racing have "the greatest characters" precisely because they are messy, morally complicated, and built for myth-making. Yet those same traits, he implies, don’t translate into modern mass affection without a hero the public can safely root for.

The subtext is that decline isn’t just about economics, competition from other entertainment, or the rise of safer, more televised-friendly leagues. It’s about narrative scarcity. Boxing and racing have never lacked drama; they’ve lacked a protagonist who can carry the drama without dragging the audience into the sport’s uglier baggage: exploitation, corruption, bodily damage, gambling, scandal. When the hero disappears, the ugliness stops being an undercurrent and becomes the headline.

There’s also a shrewd media critique embedded here. Schaap knew that sports popularity is partly an editorial decision: cameras and column inches chase stars, then stars justify the cameras. A "suitable hero" is as much a packaging problem as a talent problem. Ali or Tyson, Secretariat or Seabiscuit didn’t just compete; they offered legible symbolism in an era hungry for icons.

"Ironic" isn’t a throwaway. Schaap’s point is that the richest character factories can still die off if the culture can’t find someone to mythologize without flinching.