'Around The Horn' - ESPN's DEI Show - Forgot What Diversity Actually Means | Zaksheske

ESPN premiered "Around the Horn" back in 2002 and the concept was quite strong. They took writers from around the country and had them weigh-in on topics that created national headlines. 

This, in and of itself, was brilliant. Sports fans in Denver had different views of stories that involved, say, the Kansas City Chiefs, than fans in Detroit might have. 

That led to a robust discussion between the panelists, who each had a sense of what the fanbase in their home city thought about certain issues, since they interacted with them on a daily basis. 

One of the problems that ESPN had was that it was filled with mostly coastal elites. This is something true of most major news networks, quite frankly. 

When ESPN first debuted "Around the Horn," the show featured a diversity of thought from panelists like Woody Paige (left), Michael Holley (center) and Jay Mariotti (right).

(Getty Images)

That's why you'd often hear fans complain that ESPN over-covered stories that affected the northeast – like the Red Sox and Yankees – and for years under-covered college football. 

But the explosion of College GameDay showed that there were sports fans all across the country that previously felt underserved by the "Worldwide Leader in Sports." 

To me, that helped birth "Around the Horn." ESPN leadership, which was not the same then as it is now, recognized that the idea of trying to make all fans across America feel like their team mattered was a winning strategy. 

So, they gathered people like Tom Cowlishaw in Dallas, Woody Paige in Denver, Jay Mariotti in Chicago, Michael Holley in Boston, Kevin Blackistone in Washington D.C. and Bill Plaschke in Los Angeles. 

And the show worked. It worked really well. The format was fun and the