ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap Talks World Cup, Knicks, New NFL Podcast & More w/ Rich

Jeremy Schaap has covered the U.S. men's national team at World Cups for nearly three decades, and he has never seen anything like Friday night.

"It was just a different level," Schaap told Rich. "It was really like an out-of-body experience."

The U.S. opened the 2026 World Cup at home with a 3-0 demolition of Paraguay, and Schaap, who attended his first World Cup match at the Rose Bowl in 1994, wanted to be clear about how rare the performance was. He has been to the catastrophe in France in 1998, the knockout runs in 2010 and 2014, and the shock of failing to qualify in 2018. None of it prepared him for this.

"They did everything better," Schaap said. "They did everything better."

He singled out the talent. Christian Pulisic was brilliant. Weston McKennie was brilliant. Chris Richards had a great game. And the man of the match was Folarin Balogun, the 23-year-old Monaco striker who, as Schaap put it, maybe one in 100 American sports fans could have named before Friday.

Schaap pushed back on the idea that Paraguay was a soft opponent. Gustavo Alfaro's side, he noted, gave up almost nothing in South American qualifying. Rich marveled at how the US could steamroll a team that itself steamrolls opponents, and Schaap underlined the history: this is a national team that has won one knockout-stage game in its existence.

He kept perspective, too. "We have every right now to rejoice and to be positive about this, even buoyant," Schaap said. "But we do have to keep things in perspective. It's one game." Twenty-five million people watched it.

The conversation turned to New York, and to the Knicks ending a 53-year title drought. Schaap's father co-wrote "The Open Man" with Dave DeBusschere about that 1969-70 team, and the family knew the era's players personally. Earl Monroe came to the house. So did Phil Jackson. His mother once walked into the living room and asked who the two tall guys were. One was DeBusschere. The other, his father said, was going to be president someday. That was Bill Bradley.

When Rich relayed that Mike Breen had Clyde Frazier placing Jalen Brunson among the top five athletes in New York sports history, Schaap balked. "That's tough on one championship," he said, rattling off Babe Ruth, Lawrence Taylor, Mickey Mantle, Tom Seaver, Joe Namath, Mark Messier. His counter-measure: how many of them had been in his living room? Seaver had. The Schaaps even had cats from the same litter as the Seavers, and Seaver named his "Fergie" after losing the Cy Young to Ferguson Jenkins.

Schaap is also hosting "The Biggest Game," a podcast anchoring ESPN's Year of the Super Bowl. He is recording roughly 50 episodes, with guests including Jimmy Johnson on the Herschel Walker trade, Desmond Howard on Super Bowl 31, Chris Russo, Chris Berman and Mina Kimes. The history is the draw for him. He has been watching old Super Bowl broadcasts on YouTube, marveling at production from another era, including a Jack Whitaker monologue that ran six straight minutes with no cutaways.

And yes, there was a hydration break. Two minutes of extra time, too. Rich made sure of it.