The top 10 ‘Around the Horn’ panelists of all time

Everyone knows Around the Horn .

As one of ESPN’s longest-running and most prolific shows ever, the show’s legacy is cemented. It has also propelled multiple generations of sports personalities to bigger and better, setting the conversation each afternoon while serving as a proving ground for raw smarties to become professional takers.

Nobody aside from longtime host Tony Reali fully knows what it takes to “win” an episode of Around the Horn , but any average viewer knows what makes a great panelist. Dozens have passed through the house that Reali, his predecessor Max Kellerman, and producer Aaron Solomon built. The best still stand out even years after their last appearance.

Panelists come from all backgrounds and perspectives. That’s the point. Some ace the test from their first segment; others need seasoning. But flip on ESPN at 5 in the evening and you’re bound to lock in on someone you either agree with or who infuriates you. That’s the fun.

The key to being great on Around the Horn is brevity. But the show also has its own bustling rhythm, with four charged-up panelists and a teasing host.

“To me, it was have two points in your pocket and a rebound,” veteran panelist Michael Holley recently told the Awful Announcing Podcast . “There’s like a little rhythm in your head, just like this internal clock.”

But while winning on ATH is subjective, so is what makes a cherished host. Metrics are just part of it.

Around the Horn celebrated its 20th anniversary two years back. There is no sign it’s going anywhere, and new panelists become regulars every year. Stopping the clock to draw up a best of the best now may be difficult, let’s have some fun (Thank you to ESPN’s Caroline Willett for compiling all the stats used to create these rankings) .

Honorable mentions: Jay Mariotti, Israel Guttierrez, Pablo Torre, Harry Lyles, Emily Kaplan

So much of selecting an ATH top 10 is about personal taste. With that in mind, let’s start with Torre.

Not only is Torre a unique voice on ESPN as a magazine writer turned take artist, but he also demonstrates the potential for ATH to make a TV personality out of a regular old journo.

“The initial insecurity that I had to overcome was me assuming that everyone’s response would be, ‘Who the f**k is this guy that I have never seen before?’” Torre recalled recently to Barrett Media . “And that was, for somebody who was in his mid-20s, Asian-American guy who clearly didn’t play professional sports, that was not easy to sort of psychologically be confident and credible enough so that you could feel like you belonged.”

It’s difficult to compare ATH eras, particularly with how much more fiery the show was in its original form. The brash Kellerman called the match like a ref in the ring for his favorite sport, boxing. And the panelists vied for KOs.

Nobody encapsulates that original era more potently than Jay Mariotti, the former Chicago Sun-Times columnist who flamed out of the industry a decade ago. Back when local reporters were beamed in from their newsrooms to bark at each other about the news of the day, Mariotti gave the show an identity.

“I don’t think you saw Jay Mariotti stutter not one time ever while he was on the show,” says Bomani Jones. “Whether you agreed with his opinions or whatever it is, it was clear, it was concise, and he was willing to say it no matter what it was that you thought.”

Elsewhere, Kaplan and Lyles get a shout here as newcomers with relatable young Millennial takes (Lyles) and dominating the leaderboards (Kaplan). And we can’t finish without highlighting Gutierrez, a volume shooter on ATH hailing from an under-appreciated market in Miami.

Now, here is Awful Announcing’s first-ever Around the Horn Top 10.

10. Courtney Cronin

Cronin may be one of the newer panelists on ATH , but the show is not new to her. Cronin is among the generation of sports reporters who grew up most of their lives with ATH on the air, meaning that it was a major opportunity rather than merely a curio.

“I have the backstory like everyone else who grew up in the early 2000s. We rushed home to watch Around the Horn , to watch PTI,” Cronin tells Awful Announcing. “You grew up watching the people who you end up idolizing, whether it was Woody, Tim Cowlishaw, Bill Plaschke, even Jackie MacMullan.”

Cronin got the call in 2022 to join ATH after working her way up the NFL Nation roster as a reporter and hosting Chicago and national radio shows. Pinch-me factor aside, Cronin said the show made her a much better reporter.

“You’ve got to pare it down to your absolute best stuff and nail it off the bat,” she says.

Despite tallying just 125 episodes so far, Cronin clocks in with a 30.4 percent win rate, best of anyone in the show’s history with at least 100 appearances.

“I’m a very competitive person. I want to win,” says Cronin. “But the thing I love about the diversity of thought that we have in our panels is that in a 22-minute show, you’re getting a multitude of information and of opinions coming at you where you as a viewer … have a chance to garner a lot of information in not a very long time.”

9. Michael Smith

Just behind Cronin in win percentage is Smith. The national NFL reporter turned SC6 host tallied 451 ATH appearances in his 15 years at ESPN, where he delivered his signature thoughtful, concise opinions around the world of sports.

Maybe it’s how common his name is or that he was so versatile, but Smith remains one of the more underrated talents in the history of ESPN. We won’t forget him here.

8. Mina Kimes

Like a proud scout on draft day, Solomon considers Kimes a testament to what ATH can be for sports opinionists. Kimes’ story is well-known at this point, but she arrived at ESPN from Bloomberg quite raw when it came to covering sports and doing television. Now, she’s one of the most recognizable and bankable people on the network.

“Tony is going at a breakneck speed just asking panelists what they think, so there’s a lot of active listening involved,” Solomon says. “He’s coming at you, so you have to listen to him. But you also have to listen to other panelists to hear what they’re saying and react to them. There’s so much happening on our show, a good panelist has to take all that in and react to that in real time.”

Kimes boasts a 29.2 percent win rate and has made it to the showdown stage in nearly 60 percent of her episodes.

Despite massive opportunities on NFL Live and with Omaha Productions, Kimes remains a fixture on ATH , where she can spill her thoughts beyond football.

7. Jorge Sedano

One of the first guiding lights of ATH from its inception was that viewers would get perspectives from across the country. So Sedano gets major props for not only his 27.7 percent win rate and 22.5 points per show (tied for seventh among regular panelists) but also bringing the goods from South Florida. Where markets like Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York were over-saturated on ATH , Sedano brought a Miami perspective (at least originally, before he defected to L.A.).

On top of that, Sedano has made it to the showdown round in 58.6 percent of his appearances, fifth among regular contributors.

6. Bill Plaschke

If ATH has a heel, it’s Plaschke. The longtime Los Angeles Times columnist knows his market like few others, but one thing he does not know is hedging.

There is no gray area for Plaschke as an ATH character. It’s all about bests, worsts, must-wins and can’t-loses.

He is third all-time in appearances, with a higher win rate than most of his fellow OGs. Still, his antagonistic spirit earns low marks from Reali. Plaschke averages an abominable 17.9 points per show and gets to the showdown round less than 45 percent of the time.

There’s something to be said for taking a beating in the name of good content, but that’s only enough to cement Plaschke in the top six rather than in contention for best.

5. Bomani Jones

Years from now, sports data scientists will run the all-time ATH numbers and make a GOAT case for Jones. Call him the Around the Horn Reggie Miller, great in his time but underrated by the numbers.

Despite coming from an unorthodox background within that first generation of ATH as a digital writer and small-market radio host, Jones says it took him just “two, three minutes” to get comfortable doing the show.

“I wasn’t thinking about living up to what people were (thinking), I wasn’t thinking about the standard of it,” he explains. “I was just really out there to have a good time while I was doing it, because who knew how long it would last?”

As an ATH panelist, Jones was known for razzing the older guys, his referential analysis, and of course his pinky ring . Jones departed the show in 2018 and ESPN in 2023, but remains near the top of the leaderboards with a 28.4 percent win rate. His 23.4 points per show are second only to NHL reporter Emily Kaplan among regular contributors, while his showdown rate of 77.4 percent is tops among regulars by a mile.

“I have to be honest, I never really got comfortable with the idea that sometimes you’re not going to win,” he says. “Even knowing everything I know about the way that television show works, I’d be lying if I did not say that a W didn’t help pick up your day.”

4. Jackie MacMullan

It was a sad day for ESPN and ATH when MacMullan departed in 2021. She was one of the few remaining reporters who had deep relationships with legends across the entire history of her sport as an NBA writer for nearly four decades.

On ATH , she wasn’t afraid to duke it out with the stuffy dudes she called colleagues. With 890 appearances, MacMullan remains the only woman in the show’s history with more than 433.

MacMullan is second only to her Boston Globe partner Bob Ryan in win percentage among panelists with more than 700 appearances. But MacMullan has him and almost everyone else beaten with 22.9 points per show and a 58.1 percent showdown rate.

3. Woody Paige

Take it from Jones, a fellow ATH challenger, on what makes Paige “the defining panelist of the show.”

“He is in a lot of ways the reason the show held on as long as it did,” Jones says.

Paige has almost 1,000 more appearances than the next most prolific panelist and appeared on the show multiple times per week for much of its history. Still, the mostly retired Paige has no secrets to success.

“There are no keys to scoring well on ATH ,” he once told ESPN. “Some days I think I’m doing great, with good information and a couple of humorous answers, and I get nothing but mutes. Other days I’m lousy, and somehow I win.”

Despite his long history on the show, Paige falls to third because he ranks quite low in scoring and showdown rate. These are the breaks.

2. J.A. Adande

Adande was the young guy in the first generation of ATH . Now, Adande is among the vets as he splits time between ATH and his day job as the director of sports journalism at Northwestern.

“I was the arbiter of young and hip and cool when I started, and I’d make fun of the old guys. Now, I’m sure people are making fun of me,” Adande laughs.

He knows both he and the show are better now than they were in those days.

“We were all stiff, we would talk too much, use too many big words,” Adande says. “We were all newspaper reporters on television who didn’t have a lot of television experience.”

Still, Adande experienced firsthand how valuable it was to be a regular each evening on one of the biggest shows on one of the biggest sports networks. In his capacity as a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and later an NBA reporter at ESPN, Adande bypassed the usual meet-cutes with sources and league figures.

“I didn’t have to introduce myself really or establish my credibility, or they didn’t have to wonder who I was,” Adande says. “They had all seen me.”

Adande owns the fifth spot in all-time ATH appearances, with the second-best win rate among the top five.

1. Tim Cowlishaw

When Paige was asked after his 600th win who else would join him in the vaunted 600 Club, his answer was Cowlisaw. While the Dallas Morning News columnist is still 62 Ws away, he boasts the best win rate of anyone with more than 1,000 appearances.

As a veteran, Cowlishaw carries the show in more ways than one. He isn’t afraid to be the traditionalist or get bullied by Reali and other panelists. Still, he carries a clear perspective informed by still working the day-to-day journalist grind.

“We don’t just go and tape these segments one by one by one, we take time in between segments and we’ll talk about what’s grinding somebody’s gears, and talk about stuff that has nothing to do with the show,” Solomon says. “It’s not necessarily about paying it forward, but nurturing that family kind of place here on ATH . It just makes everybody feel like they’re part of a family.”

Cowlishaw is the grandfather of that family these days.

He also upholds the unique localized spirit of ATH . Aside from a stint as a NASCAR reporter for ESPN, Cowlishaw stayed true to his newspaper roots. He is still a Dallas guy through and through, bringing on the ground opinions from the home of America’s NFL team and one of the most rabid sports markets in America.

The combination of longevity, perspective, and success gives him the top spot.

***

As ESPN continues its transition into the digital age, a show like ATH will wonder about its place. That may be on-demand in some ESPN app, on YouTube, or perhaps gone altogether. Still, it serves its purpose for the audience even as it struggles to keep up with the second-to-second news cycle of today.

The show provides an array of viewpoints on big stories and makes ESPN talent better at their jobs. To many, the spirit of ATH still matters a whole lot, particularly compared with the purposefully loose or obnoxiously fiery poles of most popular sports shows.

“Everything in sports media is driven by personalities and takes, but this show was started by f***ing writers,” says Cronin. “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.”

Like all sports television shows, ATH can’t really compete with podcasts or live streams. But its legacy is locked through its panelists.

“Are we making an impact in the grand sports world? I don’t know,” Solomon says. “But to know that we’re making a difference to an individual panelist, it’s really rewarding for me. To know that viewers have still been watching for the last 20 years, that’s really rewarding for me.”

Adande has lived that impact on individual reporters, day by day in his ATH box over two decades. He knows no other show on in 2024 counts your favorite sports writer’s favorite sports writer’s favorite sports writer in its history while still churning out talented young people with new thoughts on the crazy world of competition.

“We bombed moderately at the start, but we didn’t bomb completely enough for them to get rid of the show. So we enabled a dream to come true,” Adande says. “It wasn’t a dream of mine because none of these shows existed when I was coming up.

“But for this generation, these people that you’re seeing on now who actually wanted to be on the show when they were younger, it’s cool that they’re getting this chance and that it’s lasted long enough that they saw it, they wanted it, and now I can only imagine how excited they were when they get that call.”

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