ESPN star shares how famous show got started

Woody Paige has been a stalwart on Around the Horn ever since the show’s first episodes.

Paige talked to Awful Announcing’s Brandon Contes about the original concept for the show and how he met with two ESPN executives at the Super Bowl. They were thinking about doing a companion show to Pardon the Interruption , which was already off to a roaring start with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon leading the way.

But ESPN wanted to do an hour of debate television with Paige as one of its leading panelists. They would have someone be the host—and judge—and riff about it being somebody’s grandmother, a celebrity every day, or one of ESPN’s many personalities. We now know that Max Kellerman was the original host from 2002-04, and Tony Reali has since taken over the reins for the last two decades.

Paige wasn’t interested. He was willing to do it freelance but nothing more.

“When they started Around the Horn, they said, ‘It was obvious, you know, you’re funny and different; we’d like you to be on the show,'” Paige recalls. “I said, ‘Nah, I like my job. I don’t (want to) devote that much time to it.'”

ESPN tried to sell Paige on the idea of him being a TV star, but at 50 years old, that wasn’t really appealing to him. But then he was informed that it was going to be on TV every day, and The Denver Post columnist also found out how much it paid, and he started to change his tune.

Paige and his fellow panelists initially envisioned ATH as a more traditional, fact-based sports show, similar to a daily version of The Sports Reporters . However, his humorous approach to the game left the other panelists scratching their heads.

“There was a book about ESPN called, ‘Those Guys Have All The Fun,’ and Tim Cowlishaw, when we started rehearsing, he was quoted in the book as saying, ‘We didn’t understand why Woody Paige was doing the show, because all he brought was like humor,'” Paige says. “And he said, ‘We figured out two weeks in the show that Woody Paige was the show, and we had to change.'”

In contrast, PTI had a more laid-back, conversational tone, featuring two longtime Washington Post columnists who shared a comfortable rapport. With a four-person panel scattered across different locations and Kellerman at the helm from the studio, Paige wasn’t convinced the show would be a hit.

“So, I thought after six weeks that it would last 13 weeks,” adds Paige. “I thought I was the worst person in the history of television. That’s how it got started. And you know, why did I do it? Because, I wasn’t interested in being a star or being on TV every day, but I was interested in the money because I thought I could use it for a vacation for Hawaii, even if we were only for a week…That’s basically the history of it, and I think 22 years, I’m still on the show, even though we’ve gone from being four old white guys.

“Well, middle-aged white guys to maybe the most diverse show on all the sports networks because of the use of women’s sports writers and broadcasters. We have panelists who are, who have origins in the Philippines and Asia and Cuba. And, of course, the African Americans and Latinos. It’s such a broad-based show now that I am the minority.”

Despite his initial doubts and self-deprecating views, the show continued to evolve and thrive. It’s become a fabric of sports media, and getting rid of it would be a mistake .

“A point was made to me by an ESPN executive is that one of the great strengths of that show is that it’s propelled the careers of a lot of people, Mina Kimes, for example,” Paige says. “Getting her start on ESPN really on Around the Horn , and look what she’s developed into. You can go down the list of and all the participants have been on the show over the years and I mean, it even propelled…my career. I have been doing six different shows and going to New York, and I’ve been doing a bunch of different shows for ESPN.”

Paige has carved out a unique place for himself on Around the Horn over the years, becoming both the show’s most successful and most unsuccessful panelist, but arguably the one who has defined its enduring legacy.

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