Sports radio wiseguy Kornheiser may bail on XM

The way I figure it, Tony Kornheiser owes me $300.

Kornheiser, if you are not a sports nut, is the acerbic host of a radio show broadcast daily on XM satellite radio from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The show’s motto, sold on hats and T-shirts, is “This show stinks.” It doesn’t.

Although freely admitting that he has “a face for radio,” he also hosts the nightly television show, “Pardon the Interruption” with his close pal Michael Wilbon. Many fellow sports nuts consider the show “must watch TV” every night at 5:30 p.m. Many consider it simply the best show on television.

I know one guy who has set his wristwatch alarm for 5:30 p.m. so he won’t miss PTI.

Kornheiser, a Long Island native, worked at The New York Times and the Washington Post before expanding into the broadcast media. I caught his wiseguy sports columns in the Post on occasion. He made me laugh every time.

This week he railed against the Olympics as a “diversion from the wreck that is your life” and derided women’s gymnastics and skating as “soft-core porn.” But the Olympics, he said, will get the sports deviate through “the valley of death that is February” and from the Super Bowl to the NCAA basketball playoffs. Kornheiser especially likes the luge event “because you can compete even if you are dead.”

Like Bree Daniels in Klute, “I love his mind.”

His books, collections of his Post columns, are “Bald as I Want To Be” and “I’m Back for More Cash.” Those titles will tell you all you need to know about the author. He is harder on himself than anyone else, with the possible exception of Wilbon.

I was delighted when he started a radio show on ESPN, and I listened whenever possible. His naturally acerbic personality got him bounced off that show, and he ended up with a show on a Washington, D.C., radio station, eventually picked up by XM and broadcast around the planet. It was that, and only that, that propelled me to spring for a $300 XM receiver. I hate to admit that I love a man, but two years ago this week, he read a column of mine on the radio.

Plus, he shares my white-knuckled, Erica Jong fear of flying.

Here he is, Ma, top of the world, making oodles of dough talking about his dog, the lousy service at a Baltimore restaurant, or even, once in a while, some actual sports. But is this enough for “Mr. Tony?”

Oh, no.

ESPN has reported that Mr. Tony will be on the three-person team calling games on Monday night football when it takes over the broadcast next fall. The rumored salary is $1.8 million (as in million), or twice what PTI pays. Needless to say, he may leave the radio show behind. He claimed this week that he would stay on PTI if the deal went through and admitted that his unconquerable fear of flying would make him a million-mile rider on Greyhound to get to all the Monday night telecasts.

His million-dollar move may leave my late morning and early afternoon entertainment with a rather large void. Plus, there are the three bills I set out for the radio. Sure, I will listen to Frank’s Place, with all that Sinatra music, and an occasional baseball game.

But I never would have bought the damn thing if I thought Kornheiser was going to abandon us after a year or two.

Pay up, Mr. Tony.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.