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Former ESPN colleagues at odds over longtime show’s cancellation after claim it went ‘woke’
By Ryan Morik
Published March 08, 2025
Earlier this week, ESPN announced its "Around The Horn," will go off the air in May after over two decades.
Jay Mariotti, who was a regular on the show until his domestic violence arrest in 2010, said in a recent interview that the show is being canceled because it went "woke."
"I think what John Skipper wanted from some of the shows was he started to install people on the shows who became anti-Trump," Mariotti told Front Office Sports.
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The ESPN logo on an electronic display in Times Square in New York City Aug. 23, 2017. (Reuters/Mike Segar)
Mariotti then mentioned Jemele Hill and Michael Smith by name, adding the show "lost some audience."
In a recent post on his own Substack, headlined "Around the Horn ended a long time ago - when I left the show," Mariotti reiterated that some of the panelists went "woke" while others were "on dope."
Hill caught wind of the comments and took exception.
"I don’t really appreciate Jay bringing my name into this or my friend Michael Smith. For one, I don’t even know Jay like that. And secondly, I started doing ATH in 2007 or 2008. Donald Trump obviously wasn’t in office then, so to suggest that ESPN started putting anti-Trump folks on the show on purpose is just a dumb statement," Hill said in an X post.
Jemele Hill poses for a photo on the red carpet at the ESPN the Party event in the Houston arts district in Houston Feb. 3, 2017. (Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports)
"The beauty of ATH is that it was a mechanism to get a variety of voices on air. It has launched and furthered so many careers, including mine. Having a run of over 20 years in sports television is a testament to what an institution this show became."
Hill and Smith later co-hosted their own SportsCenter. Hill left ESPN ahead of the turn of the decade and joined The Atlantic.
Disney partnered with PENN Entertainment to create ESPN-branded sportsbooks. (Mike Windle/Getty Images for ESPN)
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The ESPN show’s final episode will air May 23.
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https://www.foxnews.com/sports/former-espn-colleagues-odds-over-longtime-shows-cancellation-after-claim-went-woke