A Hard P

EPISODE 264: Mike Wilbon, Dan Le Batard, and a PTI family reunion.

I should clarify — after this past week, especially — that while we’re over here trying to make the weird new future of sports journalism, I also have a deep, deep affection for its past.

And for the even weirder coaching tree from which all of this has sprung.

Because for the last decade now, I’ve been a fill-in host on Pardon The Interruption: the daily sports television show, starring Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, that airs at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. (Right after where Around The Horn used to be.)

If you’ve never seen PTI before, just know that Wilbon and Kornheiser are the predominant married couple in sports media. They’re two incredible journalists, who met while working for Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee’s Washington Post, and by now PTI has been so good and so influential — inspiring imitators across not just sports but cable news, as a whole — that for Tony and Mike’s 20th anniversary, I got one of the show’s biggest fans to send them a special message.

But as my colleague and new boss, Dan Le Batard, knows better than anyone, summertime is PTI substitute-host season. And I always pair up with Kornheiser, whom I’ve come to genuinely regard as a mentor in this business… even though the most time he’ll give PTFO is the voicemail we aired in Episode #1:

But speaking of eating it: while I always co-host with Kornheiser (and I’ll be doing that again this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) I remember Le Batard (before he self-deported from ESPN) most often working with Wilbon.

And Mike Wilbon is, in some ways, extraordinarily different from me.

He’s more opinionated, in general. He hates analytics, as a concept. He regularly rails against terms like exit velocity and launch angle.

He might also be the last man alive who doesn’t have a podcast.

But when I was growing up, watching PTI, and Kornheiser was off traveling somewhere, I would delight in something that I shouldn’t have loved, on paper.

So I wanted to relive that history here today.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Knuckleheads,

Pablo