Bomani Jones is an award-winning sports journalist that covers a wide range of topics on TV, radio and his podcast "The Right Time." Bo has worked for the likes of ESPN, HBO & Sirius XM and has left a significant impact on the sports media landscape.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What are the highlights of the Matt Jones Show?
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All right. Welcome, everybody. This is the Matt Jones show. And, you know, when I did my first show, I guess, of the old Matt Jones podcast, which started many, many, many years ago, my first guest was Bomani Jones. And I thought, how fitting that we're starting it back and we bring him back. My longtime friend, Bo, from ESPN, HBO, now CNN. He was a writer. He did local radio.
You've done everything, Bomani. Thank you very much.
me I appreciate you it dawned on me like we're not in the round number stage yet but we are almost at 20 years of uh knowing each other yeah so let's start with that you were tell everybody how we met you were a local a lot of people don't know you did local radio for a long time yeah but this was before I did local radio I was writing for page two and I wrote a story about um Carolina and Kentucky had played at the Dean Dome this was the last year of Tubby Smith
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Chapter 2: How did Bomani Jones get started in sports media?
Why is this guy on TV? It would be the same with me. If they put me on, it's like when I used to host the nightly political show in Kentucky, there'd be people who say, why do you get to do that? And I don't really know the answer to that. But that's also, by the way, true about sports. I didn't even play. So, like, why do you and I get to talk about sports? We weren't big athletes.
Right. And you have to show and prove. Like, this is actually an interesting Stephen A. Smith parallel. People were very upset with Stephen A. Smith about him getting Max Kellerman fired. And I respected the fact that Stephen A. owned it. But his point was, people come on every day and ask, why are you here? You weren't a journalist. You weren't a player. Why aren't you here?
And people took that as arrogance. And I'm like, no, sir, that is the question that all of us have to answer every single day when we are on television. Like we've got to answer it. I will admit, I watch a lot of political television and I'm not putting this on news night. I'm talking about in the macro.
I put, I watch a lot of television, even if the people have some qualification within this political world, I watch a lot of television and say, I don't understand why I'm listening to you.
I'm surprised you watch that. Like, I find it mind numbing. What makes you what makes you watch political television?
I watch some of it just to get a handle of what's going on. I don't watch a lot. I want to be very clear. I don't watch a lot. I'll see clips as they float down on the Internet. It is. I mean, look, the business, the business of cable news is in a real bad place because apparently.
people in general outside of the fox news audience have decided they don't feel like this is a great use of their time anymore yeah which i am fascinated by how like that has happened now i think people just kind of burned out um on all of it i think they i think people have just grown exhausted like i think with all these if you think about 10 years ago like the emphasis on social causes that you saw all of these things i think people are just in survival mode at this point and interestingly enough cable news they don't feel like it's going to help them survive
Well, that's interesting. You and I have had conversations about this. After George Floyd, which was just five years ago, it felt like a lot of people, companies and all these folks, felt like they had to sort of show their commitment to causes. You joked about how for two weeks everybody did their two weeks of things. And then it seems to have completely gone in a different direction.
And I have friends who are on the left who just now are like – I just don't – I can't think about it anymore. It frustrates me, and I'm just, like you said, exhausted. Why do you think that happened so quickly? I mean, it just reverts so quickly.
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Chapter 3: What is the racial dynamic in sports commentary?
Well, I mean, in Kentucky, John Calipari knelt with the team at a game and it still got brought up three or four years later. It was one game. It wasn't even in Lexington. It was at Florida. That was the year he went 13 and 19 or whatever. And it was like the only good game they played all season. But people still remember. And that image stuck with him. And it's interesting.
I still have people, Bomani, that five years later bring it up to me and said that's when I turned on him. It wasn't the fact that they went 13 and 19. It was that kneeling that day.
That's for something that is so ultimately benign.
Yeah. That mattered to some people. I thought it was silly, but it did.
It did a lot. And it was – I actually thought that around college places that there would be, if nothing else, an understanding that this is good for business.
Oh, yeah. Mark Stoops has a picture. The whole U.K. football team and Mark Stoops marched in Lexington, and there's a picture with pale Mark Stoops with his red hair with Black Lives Matter shirt on. I remember that. And I just... I can't wait.
When this gets far enough away for people to do the documentaries on it and we can go back and look at all Lane Kiffin going down to the Lane Kiffin and the late Mike Leach going down to the state house in Mississippi to get the flag down, to get the flag changed. Mike Leach did it? Mike Leach. And I look, I want to FOIA the emails that it took for them to make that happen.
Cause Mike Leach don't, he's like, look, I don't need players to play. We all need to recruit.
Wow, I didn't realize Mike Leach did it. That is crazy. Yeah, for people in Kentucky will know who this is. But there's a picture of the front of the U.K. football Black Lives Matter march is Mark Stoops and Landon Young, who literally grew up on a farm in Lexington, whitest guy you'll ever see. And the two of them are standing in the front, both with Black Lives Matter shirts on.
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Chapter 4: How does the internet affect opinions in sports?
Yes.
Right? When's the last time you've seen a white country male on TV speaking Democrat politics? Right. Right.
And I can pull it off.
And you used to say that you thought people in North Carolina would listen to you because you were black and not a white liberal. Because they really hate white liberals. They do. Especially educated ones.
They do. They hate them and they don't know how to talk to them. But the other part is when they've got something... I'll say they've got something. For example, yeah, they ran an end around on us about Biden a year ago and what his physical and mental constitution was, right?
Does that make you mad, by the way? It does me now.
Furious.
Because I liked Biden. I don't blame him. I blame the people around him. Do you?
And the reason the people around you do that is for their own jobs. Like, they were all... And look, we got a history of this happening with politicians. Like, this isn't the first time this has happened. But when that went down, I was doing the CNN show, and, you know, they tend to balance it out. And it was... Somebody was blaming...
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