At first glance, cornhole on TV seems pretty basic: person, camera, bag, hole. Then you hear the voice of Trey Ryder, the cornhole color analyst. Ryder is the rare sports announcer who can predict the future. “A lot of people have described him as the Kirk Herbstreit of cornhole,” said Jeff McCarragher, his play-by-play partner. “But I like to call him the Tony Romo.”

Last month, at a tournament in Philadelphia, a cornhole player named Lester Price faced a tricky shot. Two of Price’s turquoise bags hung over the top half of the hole. One of his opponent’s red bags hung over the bottom half. On ESPN, Ryder used a Telestrator to draw an X on the precise spot where Price’s next bag should land—a spot that would coax Price’s three bags into the hole and give him the maximum score.

Price, whose COVID face mask had a skeleton design, threw his bag high in the air. It landed on the spot Ryder had picked out and, sure enough, all three of his bags went in the hole. Someone must have said a happy cuss word, because the broadcast was muted.

Ryder is modest about such prophecies. What he says on TV, he told me, is common knowledge within the “cornhole community.” But this is what analysts like Romo do: They convert a sport’s mysteries into sound bites for the masses. Or as Ryder put it: “What I try to deliver is: ‘He’s going to put the bag right here.’”

[Read Bryan Curtis's profile of the Tony Romo of cornhole, Trey Ryder.]