[4] During his time at Maryland, Roberts worked at the popular campus hangout R.J. Bentley's, where one of his Emmy Awards is now displayed.
[4] He covered the speed skating competition and, witnessing Eric Heiden's record five individual gold medals, came to regard it as history's greatest athletic achievement.
[4] Though he regards Dan Jansen's 1,000 metre win at the 1994 Winter Olympics as the most memorable sporting event he has televised.
[4] His first roles as a sports TV writer and associate producer were with ABC, under Howard Cosell, on “SportsBeat,” a 30-minute investigative program.
[4] In this time, he became known as an essayist with a sense of story, remembered for his Olympic reports on Eric the Eel and other idiosyncratic sports personalities.
[12][13] In April 2009, Roberts published his first book, Breaking the Slump, which detailed the struggles of many famous golfers, including Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, George Herbert Walker Bush, and others and how they found their way through the inevitable challenges that plague anyone who plays the game.
Roberts's father, Ralph, had been a US soldier, serving in the regiment which liberated the French town of Farébersviller.
[16][10] Roberts' sister-in-law, Debbie Mayer, worked in the south tower on the 56th floor at New York City's World Trade Center.
Immediately after American Airlines Flight 11 (the first aircraft of the September 11, 2001, attacks) struck the north tower, Mayer began going downstairs to leave the building.