Well, crap. Looks like I hit Save instead of Publish last night. Friday the 13th, indeed.
Despite this show being around since 2002, I've only started watching Around the Horn regularly in the last few years. The show of "competitive banter" features a host, Tony Reali, and four sports journalists. The journalists express their opinions of the major sports news of the day before, and Reali gives them points based on how clever and persuasive they were in their arguments. Periodically, one of the competitors is booted from the show for being too far behind. The last two standing have a one on one showdown, and the winner gets 25 seconds at the end of the show to say whatever they want, excepting what you can't say due to FCC regulations.
And that's it. Unlike most of the shows I'll be discussing in this series, there's really no long term for Around the Horn. There's no cash being passed around, except as salaries to the people on the show. Being eliminated first just means you get less face time that episode. They keep track of who's scored the most points, but that's just for bragging rights, and the current champion, Denver journalist Woody Paige, got his 71 points because he scored a 40 point bonus for being the only one on the show, and maybe on ESPN overall, to pick the Broncos to beat the Steelers last week.
As much as I enjoy the show for the competition, it also lets me see the top twelve topics in sports without having to sit through the usual Sports Center type hype show. Plus you even get the occasional insightful point or funny line. In truth, this isn't a show for everyone, but if you like banter and sports, you could do much worse than Around the Horn.
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