Around the Horn only got more unique as it went on.
Two decades ago when Erik Rydholm and ESPN launched the show, it took the chatter happening in newsrooms and on press row and threw it on live television. The iconic game show structure give that chatter some verve in its condensed half-hour format, and helped the stodgy TV rookies that made up its panels get comfortable. The result was unlike anything else on ESPN or sports television. These were not your usual talking heads spinning yarn, doing highlights, or previewing a game.
With the news that ESPN will move on from ATH next summer, the show’s farewell tour over the next several months will be a reminder of what made it distinct — and what will be lost without it.
“The idea of Around the Horn was that no one ever wins a sports argument,” the show’s first host Max Kellerman told James Andrew Miller for his ESPN oral history Those Guys Have All the Fun. “It’s wink-wink, you know; we’re joking, and very loudly, with everyone arguing.”
Rydholm brought together top journalists from all over the country, and audiences got their first taste of Jackie MacMullan, Woody Paige, Kevin Blackistone, J.A. Adande, Tim Cowlishaw and more. But it hit its stride a year later, when Tony Reali took over.
“The show got much better once it changed hosts,” Cowlishaw told Miller. “I like Max a lot, but the show was about him; with Reali, who does such a good job, the show became about us.”
Thus, sports fans got a daily recap of the sports news that mattered, directly from the people gathering that news. For two decades, no other piece of content replicated what ATH did each afternoon.
With its sea legs, ATH started to experiment. It brought on younger talent like Bomani Jones and Sarah Spain, from radio and online outlets. That talent naturally changed the tone and focus of the show.
Over time, Reali and producers like Aaron Solomon pulled ATH toward “outside the lines” topics and social issues.
“There was a time when we had a pretty limited group of panelists, and we have evolved to include so many voices, and I think that’s important,” Solomon told Awful Announcing this past summer. “And I think we’re pretty fearless when it comes to topics that we’re willing to tackle, and I think that’s really important in today’s day and age. I’m really proud of that.”
Outside Bristol HQ, the Rydholm suite of shows had more freedom than SportsCenter or other studio shows. ATH started to feel itself more as time went on.
“We get plenty of criticism for talking about some of these items, but we’re willing to take that criticism,” Solomon told AA. “It’s just that we feel comfortable in our own skin at this point of our show’s life and we’re not going to apologize for it at this point. We’re 21 years in, what do we have to apologize for?”
Of course, as ATH evolved toward those topics, so did much of ESPN. What sets ATH apart is that it didn’t stop when John Skipper stepped down and ESPN largely returned to its “stick to sports” mandate. Where Spain, Dan Le Batard, Will Cain and Jemele Hill are gone, ATH is still there.
Around this time, the first generation of reporters to have been fans of ATH began to join as panelists. NFL Nation Chicago Bears reporter Courtney Cronin pinched herself during her first show in 2022.
Despite being one of its youngest panelists, Cronin wasn’t just starstruck to be debating a fellow Chicago reporter like Adande. She felt part of a lineage of real, on-the-ground journalists that had gone to bat each afternoon, armed with facts and real reporting.
Cronin is a mainstay across all ESPN programming, but didn’t hold back in an interview with AA over the summer about why ATH is a cut above other programs.
“Everything in sports media is driven by personalities and takes, but this show was started by f***ing writers,” Cronin said. “And that’s a hot button for me, because I’m still in g**damn locker rooms every single day. It irritates me when I see people on shows who have never stepped fit in a locker room, or it’s been 15-20 years since they have, spouting off information like they’re there every day or understand. They really face no consequences because they don’t have to go face the people that they talk about.”
There is no shortage of opinions across ESPN airwaves, and it’s not impossible to find real reporters even in 2024.
The usual career path, though, went like this: reporter, columnist, TV. Even then, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were winding down their days as columnists by the time they started Pardon the Interruption. Stephen A. Smith hasn’t written for the Philadelphia Inquirer in years. Le Batard wrote his last pieces for the Miami Herald and ESPN years before he finally left the network as a radio and TV host. The time since any of that star talent was covering a team day to day is even longer.
On ATH, it’s impossible to miss the fact that when Cowlishaw is weighing in on Jerry Jones, he very well may interview him later that day. Cronin’s perspective on No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams is informed by direct conversations with Williams and his camp in Chicago.
“We’re kind of the last of a dying breed in that sense,” Cronin told AA.
The value of a journalist’s perspective isn’t just a nerdy hobby-horse for Cronin or the show’s producers. Through to the reports this week of its looming end, ATH continued to attract new ESPN talent.
Those reporters valued the reps as much as the brand. Around The Horn forces panelists to get to the root of their arguments quickly. There’s no time to waste with four voices, a half-dozen topics, and just 30 minutes.
As the internet grew and information became instantly accessible, the audience no longer needed Around The Horn for an update on the sports news of the day. At the same time, there is more local sports content than ever. Fans don’t have to watch a national variety show praying that their team comes up in conversation. In spite of all that, Around The Horn survived.
Perhaps that’s because of the relationship between Rydholm and ESPN or the show’s relatively low costs. But in surviving so many changes in the media world around it, some wonder whether it has actually become fresh again.
“I don’t think anything about it actually resonates as being old,” Jones told Awful Announcing over the summer. “I think the addition of the augmented reality certainly put a new coat of paint on the place, and I think the format of it actually turned out to be ahead of its time. And in some ways, one might argue to a degree that it has become timeless.”
No savvy young sports content executive is going to mock up a YouTube version of ATH for their next big idea. Athlete-hosted podcasts, live streams and vertical video are the trend right now. But that doesn’t mean Around The Horn is useless.
Turn on the show now, and the curation stands out. Like the front page of a newspaper, it’s helpful when other people filter through all the headlines and tell the audience what matters. A lot of what we see is just noise. If it’s on Around The Horn, it matters.
Newsletters, TikTok accounts and push alerts compete to communicate top-line news to sports fans on a constant basis these days. Around The Horn was doing it all along, each afternoon at 5 p.m. ET.
What used to be unique for its zany cast of characters and goofy format is set apart differently now. As it ends, Around The Horn stands out because it still has something to say.
