Around the Horn, a columnist’s perspective

Welcome back to Whose Line is it Anyway, where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.

Or at least that was the attempt for Tony Reali’s Around the Horn, an ESPN sports talk game show. But in reality, not even Wikipedia is sure what to call this show.

It combines a clever host and four overly sports-educated men who attempt to yell and whisper at the same time to get their points across, all the while receiving points for what seems to be absolutely no reason.

Reali, who has been the host of Around the Horn for 10 years, controls the four commentators by directing them through a series of topics that happened in sports this week.  Much like Whose Line, Reali has complete control of who gets how many points and for whatever reason.

But it seems that Reali rewards those commentators for their knowledge of the sports and how passionate they are about their choice.

If a commentator knows a coach’s statistics from his high school coaching career, points.

If a commentator can name all the reasons why the new owner of the Knicks will do poorly, points.

If a commentator completely disagrees with all of the others, but for a good reason, points.

And while the points really don’t make a difference, in this game, as with every game when there is testosterone in the room, there will always be a winner.

And you know what the winner gets? A whopping 25 seconds to say whatever he wants to say about sports.

That’s it.

But they fight for it. They talk over each other on mundane subjects such as a recent player becoming a free agent in B league baseball. They fight about how two coaches are disagreeing on whose conference is the best.

To what end?

All of the news covered in this show has been covered before. Everyone has heard professional opinions on how Carmelo Anthony won’t be able to work well with new Knicks owner, Phil Jackson.

So what makes this show different? Why should we watch this over Sports Center on an hourly basis?

You shouldn’t.

Though it offers plenty of information and perspectives on different stories, unless you have a personal connection to one of the commentators, this show doesn’t add anything to what Sports Center has already told you.

So in the end, this is a sports game show where maybe not everything is made up, because it seems that the commentators actually know a lot of information, but the points really just don’t matter.

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This article was written in compliance with the instructions of my creative sportswriting class.