Jeremy Schaap recalls ‘insane’ atmosphere of Bob Knight interview: Felt like a ‘boxing match’

Jeremy Schaap’s ESPN career is filled with renowned reporting, but maybe none more memorable than his tense interview with Bob Knight nearly a quarter-century ago.

Knight was fired by Indiana University Sept. 10, 2000. Less than three days later, he was sitting across from Schaap in Bloomington, Indiana, for a live and uncut interview on ESPN. For the 31-year-old Schaap, he was experiencing one of those rare career moments where everyone was paying attention to the job he was doing.

“The banner headline on the back page of the New York Post was, ‘Schaap aces Knight test.’ You don’t get a lot of moments like that,” Schaap said during an appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast. “I had just turned 31. And so you think, this is what it’s gonna be like all the time! It takes a few years to realize there aren’t a lot of moments like that…It was exciting stuff. It was a big deal. It was the one guy everybody wanted to talk to and you got him in the chair, it was live and it turned out to be kind of confrontational.”

The most memorable confrontation occurred after Schaap questioned the Hall-of-Fame coach for claiming his son, Pat Knight, was the biggest victim from his firing. Bob Knight was fired after an altercation with Indiana University student Kent Harvey conflicted with the “zero-tolerance” policy he was ordered to abide by following a history of misconduct.

After a tense exchange over who was interrupting whom during the interview, Knight told Schaap, “You got a long way to go to be as good as your dad, you better keep that in mind.” Schaap is the son of legendary sportswriter and broadcaster Dick Schaap.

“We were on the clock and he’s filibustering,” Schaap recalled. “One of my closest friends is longtime ESPN producer Willie Weinbaum. He said, ‘He’s gonna say something about your dad to throw you off during this interview.’ I don’t know if that was in the back of my mind the whole time. But really, my strategy was like, ‘Okay, Bob Knight insulted me.’ Get in line!”

“It felt like the closest that I’m ever going to come to a boxing match,” Schaap said. “And that’s the way it was covered. It was at this remote venue we found far away from campus, that was intentional. And when I showed up, there were satellite trucks from all these other entities covering the interview as an event. State troopers everywhere, it was insane!”

While Knight did have a relationship with his father, Schaap said it was former college basketball coach and then ESPN analyst Digger Phelps who set up the interview. Throughout the day, Phelps kept attempting to get Schaap and Knight to meet. But Schaap successfully avoided seeing Knight before the interview, ensuring there was no attempt at influencing their conversation. What followed was a 35-minute discussion that would go down as one of the most memorable interviews of Schaap’s career and in college basketball history.

Listen to the full episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast featuring Jeremy Schaap beginning Friday, Feb. 21. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA’s YouTube page.