Even when ESPN didn’t feel like home, Around the Horn still did.
For Michael Smith, the 5 p.m. time slot on ESPN wasn’t just another show; it was also a refuge. Whether it was playing on a TV above the treadmill or quietly running on a bar screen in the background, you knew that Around the Horn would always be there. No matter what was going on behind the scenes at the network, the show offered a kind of consistency and comfort to Smith, like the porch light left on for you, no matter how long you’d been gone.
“When I went through the most difficult portion of my career, and I was just — you can call it exile, whatever you want to call it — this would’ve been circa 2018,” Smith told Bomani Jones during a recent appearance on The Right Time with Bomani Jones podcast. “I’m saying like ’18 when I was at ESPN getting paid, but wasn’t working.”
His high-profile run as co-host of SC6 with Jemele Hill had ended in frustration. What was supposed to be a fresh, personality-driven take on SportsCenter had run into internal resistance. After Hill left the show and the format reverted to something safer, Smith stayed, but not in any real capacity. His voice, his platform, and his presence were all sidelined until his eventual departure in 2019.
That’s when his Around the Horn family stepped in.
“Tony Reali insisted that I sit in his seat and host Around the Horn,” Smith recalls. “He was like, ‘Come on home.’ And you were like, ‘Yo man, you need to do Highly Questionable,’ and then you had me do High Noon with you. Like my Around the Horn family, you, Tony, Erik Rydholm, Aaron Solomon was like, ‘Yo, come on home. Damn all that bullsh*t that’s going on with SportsCenter and ESPN. Yo, you got a place that will wrap its arms around you, that will celebrate you. You got a place where the secretary that worked with your mama remembers you. You got a place that knew you when.’ Around the Horn knew me when.”
And when the industry turned its back, ATH didn’t flinch. It remembered Michael Smith long after others seemed to forget.
“That feeling when I did that last show was just immense gratitude for what it’s done for my career, what it’s done for my family, what it’s taught me,” Smith said.
While Around the Horn has always had its critics, those who saw it as too loose or too gimmicky, Smith sees it differently. For him, it was an education in television, a place where the craft of writing and sharp conversation mattered. And at the center of it all was Tony Reali.
Smith said what really set Tony Reali apart wasn’t just his sports knowledge, but his writing ability. While Mina Kimes praised Reali as a “ball-knower” during her final FaceTime segment, Smith emphasized that it was Reali’s writer’s mind that made him connect so naturally with a panel full of veteran journalists like Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan, and Tim Cowlishaw.
The show, at its core, spoke the language of writers, and Reali understood it fluently.
But even 23 years later, Around the Horn remained one of the rare safe spaces in a cutthroat industry — at least it did to Michael Smith. Right up until ESPN pulled the plug and the long-running show aired its final episode this past Friday, it was still home.
And Smith still carries that with him.
“That place is just such a safe haven, you know what I mean? I’ll never not be grateful for the opportunity they gave me and just what it allowed me to do from there,” Smith adds. “Everything I’ve been able to do since then — and what’s crazy, I’m sure you get this, as well. For all you’ve done, for all you’ve done since then, how many people still associate with you first and foremost with Around the Horn?”
“Yeah. No. 1,” Jones replied.
Even after everything he’s built since, Michael Smith knows exactly where his story will always trace back to: 5 p.m. ET, where the music played, the scores ticked, and the doors never closed.