ESPN Should Have Canceled Toxic 'Around The Horn' Years Ago

"Around the Horn" will air its final episode on Friday, May 23. ESPN announced plans to cancel the program Thursday, after 23 years on the network.

While we feel for the producers and staffers affected by the decision, ESPN should have canceled the show years ago. "Around the Horn" had become a safe haven for far-left bigotry, which should have no place on a sports network. 

The show represented the worst of ESPN, as evidenced by the list of personalities the network thanked for their contributions: Jemele Hill, Bomani Jones, Mina Kimes, Kevin Blackistone, Sarah Spain and Clinton Yates.

Yikes.

The program reached its lowest point in 2022 when Northwestern University professor J.A. Adande criticized Americans for sympathizing with the Muslim Uygur in China. Adande shamefully claimed red state voting laws are just as evil as the genocide China commits against Uygurs.

ESPN has never addressed the matter, and the video clip of Adande's argument remains live on ESPN's official X page today: 

If you are on American television downplaying the rape, caging, torture, murder, and forced abortions of an ethnic group, you have lost the cause. ESPN and Northwestern should be ashamed to have any association with Adande.

While Adande is the only "Around the Horn" panelist to share CCP talking points on television, there is a lengthy list of other segments to reference as reasons why the show has long overstayed its welcome.

Let's review a few.

In 2022, Sarah Spain called the religion "bullsh*t" while responding to five Tampa Bay Rays players who refused to wear the gay pride logo on account of their faith.

What a miserable dolt she was.

Last summer, "Around the Horn" was ground zero for ugly, racially charged coverage of Caitlin Clark notably, David Dennis Jr. defended the black women in the WNBA targeting and hard-fouling Clark, saying she has a responsibility as a privileged white woman to stand up for the black women, even if they bully her.

Show host Tony Reali, an obvious eunuch, watched and nodded along as his panelists defended the racially motivated violence against Clark.

At its inception," Around the Horn" served the valuable purpose of putting various newspaper columnists on television. ESPN created the show to replicate the success of "PTI" with former Washington Post columnists Michael Wilbon and Tony Korneheiser. 

However, sometime around 2013, "Around the Horn" transitioned into a landing spot for any non-white male with a toxic opinion. In its final years, the program replaced its newspaper writers with bloggers from Andscpae, ESPN's all-black race vertical. 

In other words, nearly everyone on the show specializes in one field: feigning racial hysteria and calling white people racist. Hence, the addition of that Dennis character.

Speaking of "PTI," multiple sources tell OutKick that ESPN management prefers to expand "PTI" to an hour to replace the 30 minutes that "Around the Horn" filled in the lineup. That said, a deal to extend "PTI" is not finalized and a 30-minute addition of "SportsCenter" will air at 5 p.m. in the meantime.

It's unclear if ESPN will staff the new "SportsCenter" blocked with any CCP sympathizers, like Adande.