Bomani Jones

Brian is on today with sports journalist extraordinaire Bomani Jones. Bomani tells Brian how he ended up with three separate economics degrees, his hot take on hot takes, and his very favorite part about sports: the petty dramas behind the scenes of college football.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I like being on the microphone though, Like I really
there's something that hits me if I'm doing a podcast
or doing a radio show and I'm talking, like I
like that, And it's not because of the attention as
much as I really just enjoy the act of putting
those ideas together and figuring out how to present it
largely exceptoraneously. But like, I really I dig doing that part.

(00:22):
TV boy, It's interesting though. It's a drug, Like you
watch how people respond to that drug, and it can
it can get people, like I've realized pretty quickly off
the TV, like, hey, you kind of gotta dabble in this.
You gotta you know, you need to be like you can't.
You can't just slam this. You'll be messed up for
the rest of your life. A. My name is Boboni Jones,

(00:45):
and I host The Right Time with Boboni Jones, A
Way Sports and Entertainment and listen to Brian forget how
to say my name?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hello everybody, and we're back on another beautiful Tuesday with
another beautiful episode. If I do say so myself, of
Off the Beat, I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. Now,
as you heard, my guest today is Bomani Jones. Now
I want it on record that I do know how

(01:18):
to say his name, Bomani, Boumani, Boumani. Now, I'm gonna
be honest with all of you here, as I was
with Baumani shortly after this misstep, exactly twelve minutes after
this recording, I tested positive for COVID. Yes, I suspected
that I might have it, and indeed I did, so,

(01:41):
you know, COVID brain And the whole sentence came out wrong,
and I said Bommi, and he came right for me.
I deserve it, you know what, O'mani. In exchange, I'm
going to give you a privilege that I've never ever
extended to anyone else. You can call me Ryan or Kevin,
your choice. I'm feeling fine now, by the way, just

(02:04):
a little clouded brain, but I so enjoyed this conversation.
Beaumani is one of the smartest, most interesting voices out
there today in sports journalism or really anywhere. He's a
fascinating guy when discussing really any topic. In fact, the
secret to his success is he can connect with people

(02:27):
about a lot of different things. He can make a
thoughtful and deep argument on any topic he just happens
to get paid to do it about sports. He is
or has been, a music and culture writer, a radio host,
a television personality, a podcaster, and an economist, though not

(02:49):
necessarily in that order. Most recently, you can find him
three days a week giving nuanced insight and context to
the sports world and many other topics on his new
the rebooted podcast The Right Side. He also hosts The
Evening Jones, which has been going strong since the year
two thousand and eleven. It's incredible. If that podcast were

(03:12):
a person, it would be in middle school by now,
and that that's pretty crazy. He is so interesting. His
story is interesting, his family is interesting. Talking to him
was so much fun. So here is a man that
could never have COVID brain even if he tried.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Bow money Jones. Bubble and Squeak.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
I love it, Bubble and squeak, A.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Bubble and squeak. I could get every.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Mole lift over from the ninet before.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
What's up for money?

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Hey man? How are you?

Speaker 3 (04:03):
I'm doing all right? How are you.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Doing all right? Good to be on with you.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Well, thank you so much for joining me. I know
it's a very busy day in the world. Of sports,
always something happening.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Can I tell you this, I can't pass up the
rare opportunity to meet a white person from actual Atlanta.
It doesn't happen very often.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Well, first off, thank you, that's very humbling to hear.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, I heard you were you were born there, But
when did you move to Houston?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
So we moved to Houston when I was seven, but
I went to Clark Atlanta for the undergrad and my
parents have been back in Atlanta since ninety seven, so
I kind of got like a dual citizenship going with Atlanta.
I mean, I've spent definitely more time in the last
twenty five years in Houston than I have in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Right, what was the reason for the move to Houston.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Oh, my parents got a differ and gigs, Like they
were professors, so they were working at what was Dan
Clark College at the time, and then we're working at
a school call Prairie View A and M. And then
my dad got the job back at COAU and so
went back there. So, like my brother and sister grew
up in Atlanta, like they were ten years older than me,
so that's all they knew. Really growing up.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Your parents, I understand were Well, you just said they
were teaching in college. They were intellectuals, a political scientist
and an economists and economists. Was education important to you
growing up in your home? Were you having intellectual conversations
over dinner?

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, I would probably say it's fair to say that
they were intellectual conversations over dinner, though I don't think
I realized that's what they were, because they were just
kind of the conversations over dinner. Like the thing about
my parents, I always tell people that, like when you
tell people that your parents are professors, like they imagine
that you were living like the Huxtables on the Cosme Show,
and they're like jazz intermissions for dinner and stuff like that.

(06:03):
But we're very way more I'd say, I guess regular
than that. So intellectually yes, but always without pretense. Which
is probably the best thing I got out of growing
up with those parents was that you can operate on
an intellectual level, but you can also speak English to people.
What you're doing is sharing knowledge as opposed to showing

(06:24):
it off. Like that's a really important distinction that I've
come to find over time.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Were were your parents sports fans?

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Oh? Yeah, my dad more so than my mom, but
my mom also like, yeah, that's a sports is a
defining characteristic of the Jones household.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
I would say they were interested in a variety of things.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, they were interested in a variety of things. And
I also think, like it gets interesting because my father
in particular, my mother like somewhat also, but my father
in particular, shall we say, has some fairly militant class politics,
and so the idea of joining we will call it
the elite, is never something that was particularly alluring us, Right,

(07:10):
So I think that becomes a big part of it.
But I think another thing that's kind of like a
larger and like a kind of macro sociological phenomenon, which
is like an interesting window or glimpse into blackness, is
every now and then you'll catch black people who can
be around enough bourgeois black people that everybody's bourgeois. But
the truth is they just ain't that many of black

(07:30):
people in general, of a bourgeois black people in particular
for you to really court yourself off. And that's the
world you're going to live in. And so as black person,
what you're going to have to do is learn how
to navigate and deal with a bunch of people in
different places. And one thing I was like real fortunate
with my parents, like having them as the exposure in
understanding is people want to be around knowledge, right Like

(07:54):
they want to be around the person who knows things,
no matter what it is. The person who knows things
is generally pretty popular, right, Like that is something that
people want. What they don't want is for you to
talk to them like the stud that's the part that
they don't like. And so when you figure out that
rather than your place as educated person or whatever it is,
is not to show people that you're educated, but your

(08:17):
place is actually to share what it is that you know,
because you recognize that a lot of what you know
it's things that people themselves could easily understand but maybe
have not been in a position for somebody told them
what it was, you know. So once you can become
the person who can do that, then oh okay, cool.
But that requires you to stay grounded in a certain way,
like I think that generally Southerness we know this a

(08:37):
little better than most people because we have to interact
with more of each other than other people do. Right,
And you learn you've been to learn how to talk
to people about this in a way to make them
feel good about it. Otherwise you gonna feel bad about it.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I think that's very very true.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Look, we all wear masks all the time, depending on
who we're with. Do you feel like you spent your
childhood wearing masks with different people depending on who it
was and who you were with.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, that's an interesting question because I've always said that
if I ever got to be self absorbed enough to
write a memoir, right, it would be kind of centered
around the idea that like, I'm not really from here,
no matter where the here happens to be, So like
I grew up in Houston, Like that's the thing I
always say, but like the sensibilities that I have and

(09:28):
like from the house and everything else, probably like more
of an Atlanta sensibility. Like I wasn't in lockstep with
the place that I was in. We lived in like
suburban northwest Houston, but I went to school twenty miles
farther out from that, which was just a completely different
life experience for those people. So I wasn't really in
line with what, you know, with what they were on.

(09:48):
So I figured out somewhat early that I could put
on a mask if I wanted to, but I'd be
putting on a different one every time. Like there was
like very rarely, if ever it was there a room
that I got in and I was like, oh, yes,
you know, this is the place that I was supposed
to be not so much now. The one thing that
I do, I guess I could definitely say as related

(10:10):
to like the mask idea that was probably true, was
that in this society, like I was just reading this
book not too long ago about Frank Sinatra, and it
made the point that Sinatra started off as somebody who
had more female fans than male fans, and then by
the end had more male fans than female fans. And
the arguments that they were making is that after he

(10:30):
had this fall in the late fifties and then got
back up, that that's what got men to come around.
It's like, the ability to push through the struggle is
the thing that people respect. But when you grow up
in a fairly comfortable upper middle class enviirement, you really
don't have a lot of struggle to report, Like nobody
nobody really thinks it's really cool. Like I always say
with people say you ought to write a book, like oh, yes,

(10:51):
child of privilege did everything he was supposed to do.
That's a page turner, right, anybody trying to hear that.
So I do remember that, I, like I probably is
some way he's made my life harder on myself than others,
because I had, like the luxury of parents that if
I needed a little money, I could call them and
get it or whatever. The people I grew up around,
of the friends that I had, didn't have that luxury, right,

(11:12):
And so I do remember I got to graduate school
and that was struggling, and I was talking to a
guy I was in school with and he did not
have the luxury that I had on the reach back,
and I just remember him looking at me being like, hey,
cuz you better ask those people for some money. I
wish I had somebody to call and ask for some money,
you know. And so I could probably definitely say if
that was a mask, it was not wanting to be

(11:33):
honest about some of the parts of my life that
were easier not lying in the other direction, right, Like
I wouldn't pretending like I grew up in a neighborhood
that I didn't, but like nobody like going let me
tell you I show had it. Easy. Yeah, people don't
like that. No, no, it's not really the story.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
No no that's not No, that doesn't that doesn't help
at all.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
You mentioned going back to Atlanta Clark Atlanta University, you
studied economics. Then you got a Masters in Politics, Economics
and Business from Claremont and a Masters of Economics from
UNC Chapel Hill, and you.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Started working on a PhD. There was your what was
your goal?

Speaker 2 (12:15):
I mean obviously these were things that your parents studied,
But what was it? I mean, one degree okay, fine,
but you know, three, six, nine degrees later, Like what
were you working towards?

Speaker 1 (12:29):
All right, these are interesting steps in the process. So
I'll walk you through this, Okay. So when I got
to college, I was majoring in chemistry. I wanted to
do pre mid and I wanted to be a pediatrician
find children to be delightful. I was doing the science
majoring thing, and I realized very quickly this wasn't my bag,
Like I just didn't enjoy it, Like all this lab
and these labs and stuff. I just didn't really want

(12:51):
to do it. And so I just kind of bounce
around without a major, and I took an economics class
in part just to get my mama off my back,
because she just believes that the solution to any problem
that you might have in your life is a class
of two an economics, right, Like, that's just a solution.
So I did the economics class and it was probably
more challenging than any class I had taken to that

(13:11):
point in undergrad and so I was like, cool, I'm
major in that. And then I decided I didn't want
to major in it anymore. But I had something come
up in my life where if I was going to
change my major, it would take me an extra year
to get out of college, which I was all the
way here for. Just to be clear, I knew that
the real world was not as advertised, right, right, But
a couple of things happened. I was like, no, let

(13:33):
me hurry up and get out of school. So I
got the economics degree. While I'm finishing my senior year,
I started freelance writing, and I realized that the media
space is probably where I wanted to go. I was
just thinking in terms of writing at that point, that's
probably where I wanted to go. And so I graduated
from college. But the right thing wasn't really paying no
money and I remember I had taken a trip to

(13:54):
DC because I was going to have a meeting with
a guy who said he was starting a magazine and
he was going to feature my work all over and
I was hearing what he was talking about. He wasn't
talking about paying me all the money in the world,
but he was talking about paying me living money. And
I remember I borrowed some money from my parents to
get on the road to go up to DC to
talk to the dude, and he stood me up. I
didn't hear from him. And I remember I had a moment.

(14:16):
I was at my buddy's house, was at his mama's house,
and I'm on the couch and my head's tilted back
because I'm so stressed that my phone rang and I
just picked it up, and it was a woman from
Clairemont Graduate University telling me that they had this fellowship
that was available and if I wanted to apply for it,
and this is August, right, this is August of two
thousand and one. And I was like, well, okay, cool,

(14:36):
I said I'd do it. And then in some subsequent email,
I said to the woman, I'm like, hey, so this
is for January, right, She's like, no, this is for
the fall, like this is in.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
A couple of weeks, four days from now.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, yeah, basically, And honestly, I wound up doing it
for two reasons. One I didn't have anything else to do.
And two I kind of like convinced myself in my
mind that what I could do is if I got
this PhD or not have the PhD at that point,
because I really didn't want to do any more economics,
like I just I really was trying to get away
from that. But I'm like, Okay, you know, the stuff

(15:12):
I'll learned here will probably make me a better writer.
And so I did that, and then after a year,
I did pretty well and I took the gr and
I did really well on that, and I was like, oh, okay,
so maybe if I got the PhD and I put
this along with the other stuff, like I could get
into that public intellectual space that was the rage at
the top. And so I did that, and then I

(15:33):
get to Carolina for the PhD program, and I realized
very quickly that I had a massive degree level of
curiosity in this stuff. I did not want to do
the things that I was doing, and it's really hard,
like it's a lot of work, like just elbow grease
hours and everything. I don't know. I was in the
wrong place and I'm doing all the writing and everything.

(15:54):
But I got myself set up. I had gotten a
column writing about music for AOL at the time that
was paid me enough to like live. I bought a
house at a mortgage. I was taking care of it.
I was living a life doing all that. Man, I
fought out of school and a column got camp like
all at the same time. And so it was funny
because my parents really would like I would have liked,

(16:15):
at the very at least one of the kids to
get a PhD. And I was kind of the last hope,
and all paper was probably the best hope. And then
it didn't work out. But yeah, so I wound up
getting each one of those degrees for entirely different reasons,
but they all really proved to be very helpful in
the end.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
So you talked there about about writing and developing a
passion for that. Now I know that when you started
you were writing about music and culture primarily. Is that
what was was initially the most interesting for you or
what you wanted to focus on.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Well, I think it was the most, at least in
my mind, the most available. Like I read a book
that Chuck d wrote, and he talked about the need
for strengthening kind of the quality of the music press,
and that inspired me and made me kind of want
to go in that direction. But I was writing about
what it was that I could write about, you know,
Like I could get an album and write a review
of that, or I could talk about something that had
come up. I could see what was going on in

(17:13):
the world and I could respond to that, like, you know,
those are the things that I could do. Like getting
the sports was completely different for me, at least in
my mind, because I knew enough about sports writing to
know that there was a way that you got in
the door, and I did not have access to that door,
you know, Like I was not a beat writer. I
had not you know, worked at the student paper. I

(17:33):
hadn't done any of those things. Like if you were
to ask me at that time, how do you get
a job sports writing? I wouldn't like what I would
have thought. I probably wouldn't have known. I couldn't have
given you an answer to that. But I got lucky
that when I was really getting into it in the
mid aughts. Shall we say it's kind of when the
Internet was really booming in terms of writting content, and
the way that people were writing about sports was expanding

(17:54):
beyond just the things you need to have by getting
in the arena and like, you know, being a beat writer,
and I would have never known how to get that
job or how to go about that, but this other
stuff I knew how to do was so I kind
of went in through the backdoor of doing that.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
That's very, very interesting, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
I think about this often now that there is I
don't know what you'd even call it traditional press or
traditional sports press. I mean these associated press feeds about
a game.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
That just occurred.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
They are the exact same that they were in nineteen
seventy three. Like you know, as you set the scene,
this is where it took place. Here are the stats
here a few and yeah, like I'm not going to
give Bill Simmons all the credit in the world, but
places like grant Land that start around this time where

(18:51):
you start reading writers who are talking, I mean to
the point we were just making more pul political or
historical or putting a game or a person in context
to something larger than itself, which is obviously, I'm sure
to you and to me as a consumer as well,

(19:13):
so much more interesting.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, and I think, you know, to be fair to
the previous generation of writer, the Internet. A big part
of what made the Internet a place where you could
do more of these more expansive things was literally just space, right,
like the idea that space is infinite on the internet, right,
you can scroll up and down forever. That newspaper. We
got this block on this page that we got to fit,

(19:38):
and we need words in these places, and then we're
going to make it happen. But I really feel like
the mid auts because I think it's turning back in
the other direction now. But that was probably the best
era of sports writing that we've had. And the reason
that I say that is it was an explosion of
so many different things. So we had the train died
in the wool journalists, right, who are just incredibly important

(20:01):
to have. But also you had like it was a
lot of these like the lawyers started getting into the game,
the professors started getting into it. You just had a
lot of people who also people who were like well
known professional writers who just decided they wanted to dabble
in sports a little bit more like I worked at
ESPN dot COM's page too, and like Hunter Thompson is
writing columns, right, Hunter Thompson not a sports writer, but

(20:24):
doesn't really matter, you know, like you're you know right
in that page. Show him on a page with a
hundred Thompson Ralph Wiley. Bill Simmons was the one who rose,
but I'm there at the same time, and he plays
a big role in people like me recognizing that there
might be other ways that you could go about getting
in and talking about sports. And I think that people
are going to look back on a lot of the
stuff that was being done in that time and like

(20:47):
maybe the ten years after that, and it brought the
world into sports coverage in a way that I don't
think it really existed previously.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Once you started writing about sports, both for page two
and others, does that fairly quickly become your focus as
opposed to music culture, you know, entertainment, other things like
is sports it for you where you see your place?

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Not? No? Okay, overall, I would say no. Part of
why sports became the focus was quite honestly, that other
stuff just didn't pay a living wage. Like I still
dabbled in a lot of ways in doing some of
the other stuff. Like now I'm at the point where
if I want to write something about music, it's because
I want to do it, Like I'm I basically do
that for free if I decide that that's the space

(21:55):
that I want to go in. I do a lot
more podcasting now, and so I'm at the point now
of people knowing me and I guess of being visible
for lack of a better term, that I got leeway
where I can talk about these other things, like Cason point.
When COVID hit in twenty twenty, sports podcasts in particular,

(22:15):
the numbers just all knows did we ain't had no
games to talk about, Like why would we do this?
The numbers for my podcast actually went through the roof
because people understood that without sports, we still had other
things to talk about, you know. So I figured out
how to judiciously kind of bring those things into those
other spaces. Did I do a few little CNN hits
here and there talk about the politics and stuff if

(22:37):
I feel like it, because sometimes I just don't like
that ain't really the most fun stuff to get into.
Like I went up there one night to do the
CNN stuff. It was like ten o'clock, and I think
it was after somebody shot up one of them places.
I can't remember which one. I feel like Tennessee, but
it was one of the places that it got shot up,
and I was like, man, this is saying like we
just all in here. It is late at night. I'm
not even getting paid, and this is say it.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, and the wheel keeps turn on and on. Just
the other day, I mean, the same story over and over.
It It does become like beating your head against the wall, right,
some of the some of those politics or I don't
even know politics, current events stories.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, like it's I think the thing I've learned over time,
especially the Internet has helped me learn this and a
lot of times the hard way, Like I ain't got
to talk about everything right, like I could stop it
figure out what it is that I do and do
not want to discuss, which makes I think a lot
of it a lot more enriching and then a lot
more fun. But yeah, no, current events especially now that

(23:43):
like sports coverage has ruined every other kind of coverage.
And I mean that in the sense that like Jeff
Zuckery's always talk about this with CNN that he kind
of want to CNN to be like ESPN. I'm like, well, buddy,
what you do over there is actually important. Like we
come up with contrived argument stuff over here because it's
kind of like a big old barber shop. I'm I
supposed to do this with the actual news, you know,
and he's get all stuff. Man, everybody just kind of

(24:05):
going home and everybody back and forth, and it's just like, hey,
you know, I don't want to talk about these things anymore.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, well, you know, I think in a way though
what he said has happened. It's just they're just different
barbershops that talk about things in the same way, and unfortunately,
too often we don't talk about them together or directly together.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
I think that's part of the problem.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And that's where I get kind of lucky
with a lot of my work because I don't know
if you know this, but among certain groups of people,
I'm a bit of a polarizer figure. But while there
are those that if I'd be at one end of
that pole, there's a lot of people in the middle
who kind of and this is where sports in a way,
I don't want to say it's like a trojan horse necessarily,

(24:53):
but I got enough credibility of one space that I
can get people to listen to me about some of
the other spaces, and they can hear things that they
really might not hear otherwise. And I don't even mean
that like in some sort of dogmatic way or like
I'm trying to beat people over the head with it necessarily,
but just to huh. I hadn't thought about it like that, right,
And that's a privilege that's afforded to me, honestly, And

(25:15):
I'm very fortunate and lucky in that regard, because you know,
sometimes you got to put the medicine in the apple sauce.
I can do that with them knowing that the medicine
might be there, and they're still like, oh okay, cool.
Well if he says that I might want to give something,
you know, maybe this applesace ain't so bad.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
Do you think that around this time you're writing for
page two, you start appearing on television shows like Outside
the Lines, around the Horn, to name a few. First off,
did you initially like being on camera?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
I mean, you wanted to be a writer. Now suddenly
you're on camera.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Yoh, So the camera thing is really interesting in that
I don't mind being on camera, okay, but I don't
love being on camera. Like I've taken long stretches of
time off from being on TV and all of that,
and I don't ever feel like, man, I really miss
everybody looking at my face. Like you ever seen that

(26:12):
movie I think it's called soap Dish, like Sally Field, Yeah,
you Goldberg, right, you know about the woman and she
would stage these moments in the mall where somebody would
be like, oh my gosh, is this such and such
the sun also sets, right, you know, and just go
about it because she needed that drug and that attention
and that rush. And I hate that part right like

(26:33):
I enjoyed. I think it's because for me, I came
around a lot of this stuff in my like mid thirties.
I was a foreign person. I was good with who
I was, So like being on camera. There's a level
of like looseness with it that I have to learn
at different points, in part I admit, because I'm afraid
people are gonna be like, boy, he sure loves being
on camera a little bit too much, Like you know
that that's not the natural part of me. I like

(26:55):
being on the microphone though, like I really there's something
that hits me if I'm doing in a podcast or
doing a radio show and I'm talking like I like that,
And it's not because of the attention as much as
I really just enjoyed the act of putting those ideas
together and figuring out how to present it largely exceptoraneously.
But like, I really I dig doing that part. TV boy.

(27:17):
It's interesting though. It's a drug, Like you watch how
people respond to that drug and it it can it
can get people, like I've realized pretty quickly off the TV, like, Hey,
you kind of gotta dabble in this. You gotta you know,
you need to be You can't. You can't just slam this.
You'll be messed up for the rest of your life.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
You know it always and I don't.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
I don't know him obviously being in southern California for
a long time. Uh, and maybe you won't even want
to respond, you know, Platchki always Uh. He comes across
to me as someone who really loves being on TV.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
He really loves being on TV.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
That is an interesting thing that I don't know if
I had fully thought about, like how much he loves it.
I love that guy, by the way, Justin and.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
I'm not speaking any Oh yeah I do. When I
watch him, I'm like, oh, he loves being on TV.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah. Well. The thing is the reason I say that, though,
is I like Bill Plashey so much as a person
that I reflexively, no matter who I'm talking to, if
you say Bill Plashky, I go, man, I love that guy.
Like that's just that's It's one of the more unexpected
developments of my life is how much I like him,
like as a person, but like what he page, that
guy loves being all camera. Yeah, that one's that one's

(28:26):
fair to say. I do think I think Bill is
probably one as most of the guys on around the
Horn work because they were all we got to remember,
they're all newspaper guys, and this is before we were
putting all those guys on camera. I think a lot
of them had to get comfortable with the idea that
they are now people on camera. Because they also had
a value system that had them thinking that, like, there's
room for judgment in this, right, like they had always

(28:48):
looked down on the TV people, right.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's very very interesting. I never I never. I don't
know why that never occurred to me before.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
But also they there's an anonymity to these columnists writing
for newspapers and dispensing their opinions and or judgments on
players or coaches or front office people. That of course

(29:18):
those people know who they are because they're beat writers
or they're around the stadiums or whatever. But as a reader,
you're not fully you don't have a relationship with that
person like when you're seeing them on TV. And that
show did really adjust that, which is literally because now

(29:38):
when I read Bill Plashke, I'm I am taking what
I can see about him and his personality and the
little comment that I just made that he likes being
on TV, that there are certain things that now when
I read his work has changed the way that I
read his work because I see him.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah. And what's interesting to me about that is I
always say about my time on Around the Horn is
that I was maybe the first regular Around the Horn
panelists who for lack of a better term, grew up
watching Around the Horn, like it started coming on when
I was in graduate school. So I became familiar with
those people as the people they were on television. And

(30:20):
so over the course of I guess we'll call it
a decade, I got to know the people on TV,
Like I had to divorce myself from what I may
have thought not necessarily bad, but just preconceived notions I
had of these people based on television and then actually
get to know them as people and be like, oh wow,
I had this completely wrong about insert person here. Did

(30:44):
I think from watching on television the Jim callistalls the
dude that goes to radiohead shows with his son never
would again.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
That's who he is, right, That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Do you think that for you because this is now
you start or you're on televis like it or not?
Do you feel like that gives you more power in
the other things that you're doing?

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yes, it does a couple things. One, boy, people sure
do call you back a lot faster as the dude
on television. But number two, and this is a big
thing being on ESPN regularly, Like I had a stretch
of seven years that I was on ESPN at least
five times a week, Like sometimes it'd be more because

(31:30):
I do this one show and they going to do
another on the same day. Like men in this country
know who I am. Like English speaking men in this
country are very, very very familiar with me, and so
when I started doing stuff like I did the HBO
show with some of the things I'm trying to get,
you know, going after having done that, there's rooms where
people know who I am at the very least they

(31:52):
know my name. That isn't the case if I do
this really in any other space or any other media,
right Like, I can calls, I can get meetings. I
have been able to make legitimate friendships with like people
I grew up idolizing because I'm the guy on TV
now the guy and he you know as the guy
on ESPN. And that's something that I realized very quickly.
People still really care a lot about the fact that

(32:15):
you were on television. Even in this day and time.
They're like, Oh, the kids o't really care about this,
They just care about streaming. Let what are these streaming people?
Wind up with a TV show and they gonna act
like it's different, Like it's it's a powerful currency in
this society.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah, you eventually began co hosting highly questionable of course,
with Dan Levatard. Talk to me about that gig, because
here's the thing that it seems to me by a
lot of the work for you from the outside that
comes after it game theory on HBO being forefront. You know,

(32:53):
love him, like him, am ambivalent toward him. Dan has
found a way to really focus on a cross section
of sports and fun. I guess entertainment that it feels
like influenced you moving forward, true or false.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
It's interesting because I think for a lot of people,
if your familiarity with me comes from seeing me on
TV and not having like heard my radio stuff or
read the stuff I'd written before, you might get a
narrow view of kind of how I do it.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Now.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
Keep in mind, I'm doing this showed up on a
Round the Horn and the second time that he won
and broke out a championship belt like I'm here for
the good time in its own way. But what highly
questionable had that no other show has ever had or
probably ever will have, is Dan mocking the whole concept

(33:50):
of sports television by saying, I can put my father
up here and we can still make a show out
of it. Right, I can have him say what is off?
It's what he things, but it's often the same thing
you're a local columnist is saying, But it's my dad
that's doing the thing. Where I was helpful to Dan
though in that regard is Dan doesn't get that people

(34:12):
do want to take this fort stuff seriously, and so
you can dismiss that idea all that you want. You
still got to give them some of the serious stuff
because that is why they're here. They just don't need
it to be as serious as it is in some
of the other places. But yet Dan. Working with Dan
was very helpful and having a reminder that you don't
have to make this scene more serious than it is. Like,

(34:32):
if this part of it is a joke, then you
can kind of ride out with the idea that this
part of it is a joke.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Like for him, he's a large child, so he kind
of wants everything to be like it's not work. Like
I'm the person that's there to remind him there are stakes.
This is real. We have to be grown ups from
time to time. Right, But at the same time, there
is some value from having this large, sweaty child near you.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Well, what I have always admired about your work is, yes,
the fun, but really the thoughtfulness that you put into
your takes for lack of a better word, or for
you helping to contextualize a moment that is happening or

(35:17):
a series that is happening, that may pass, that may
be larger than one game or one series. You were
able to have fun with it. But also ticket seriously,
I do want to ask you about the hot take
for me, is in a lot of ways destroying the

(35:42):
experience of sports journalism. And I feel like you have
largely avoided feeling like you need to do that to
get attention. Talk to me a little bit, if you would,
about your feelings about this, And of course I'm talking

(36:04):
most famously about Undisputed with Skip Bayless and First Take
with mister Smith.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
All right, So I will say for me personally, I
have recognized for the better part of my life that
when I start talking, people listen. So I never felt
like I needed to say something contrived in order to
hold people's attention or anything like that. Now, with the
industry of television, I agree with you that what most

(36:33):
people would term the hot take is a problem, right,
And I think there are a lot of people who
feel like they need to have this thing to say,
and that's what's going to make people jump out and
get it. Now, I don't mind your hot take. Like
my good friend Nick Right, for example, what he is
brilliant at is. It's a different form of what I

(36:53):
call the Bill burd model, with Bill Burr is so
good at starting off with some crazy premise that makes
you all comfortable. It's like, why not let me explain?
And then you start explaining and you're like, oh, that's
not nearly as crazy as I thought it was going
to be. At the beginning, I thought we were all
going to get fired. I thought I was going to
get fired just having a ticket to this shit right right.
My buddy Nick is very similar to that, where he
says crazy thing, but he always has like a real

(37:14):
defense that comes behind it. Where I get worried about
the hot take stuff for me. And this is really
a conclusion I've come to more recently than anything else,
is that is us making the story about ourselves, right,
is us making it about our ability to win some
kind of argument and go back and forth. And what
I think gets lost in the grand scheme of that

(37:36):
is how much like the people that we cover are incredible,
Like the people that we cover are better at their
jobs than ninety nine point nine percent of us are
at our jobs. And we don't spend nearly enough time
just talking about how much we enjoy watching these people
do these incredible things that we buy and large of
ourselves try to like reproduce a reasonable fact simile of

(37:58):
like we don't do enough of that now. Like with
those two shows, Skip Bayless is that person and stephen
A is the person that you see there. Like neither
of them are particularly contrived. I watch First Take a
lot more than I watch Undisputed, and I will actually
say I think that Stephen A is more thoughtful and
measured than he gets credit for. But also he is

(38:22):
understanding of the fact that he is expected to drive,
for lack of a better term, the entertainment of that show,
and we'll dial it up and we'll get to these
places and will seem kind of loud and everything else.
But rarely. The only times I see Steven A talk
about something on TV and I feel like I don't
know if he knows what he's talking about, is because
that man works so many hours in a given day,
in a given week that now they threw something out

(38:43):
there because they need it for business, and he's trying
to carry that sort of thing too. Skip Bayless believes
that he was put on his earth to argue about
sports like he believes that this is a god given path.
I have read him saying this, so he goes about
this and sees it in a much, much, much different way.
But there was a point I guess it was about
ten years ago, like that was when Richard Sherman went

(39:05):
on and hit them with them better at life than You,
and Janel Rose hit skipped with the thing about being
on junior varsity. It had gotten so ramped up and
it had gotten so hyped up that it is defined
that whole genre of television in a way that I
honestly think it is largely moved away from. They had
people have the back and forth, but you don't have
nearly as many and like the shouting matches and stuff

(39:25):
that you would see people having on television back then,
you don't have nearly as many of those. But I
also think that this current time that we're in post Kaepernick,
where we had all this stuff come up with Kaepernick
and people, you know, the whole stick to sports thing,
need stick sports and needs to stick to sports. But
I don't think people realize how far that went. Like
I think it was one thing when you were just
saying that to get people to not talk about the police.

(39:46):
But now when you look at it, so much of
this stuff that sports is really just just sticking pall.
That's it, And that's not like I don't think that's
really that interesting either, And I think to your point,
that takes away from the ability to talk about things
and more nuanced way, because how much nuance can you
have just talking about the sports, right?

Speaker 3 (40:04):
I think nuance is great.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
I think I think having an opinion is great, and
particularly from people like you who watch and experience and
are hearing things going on behind the scenes and contextualizing
it within at times, as you just mentioned, larger socio
political things I think are incredibly interesting.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
But brock Purty is Jesus, Like what like? What like? What?
What like? What like? What is this? Like? Why? Why
are why are we? You know?

Speaker 2 (40:36):
And then an all out fight ensuing about whether or
not brock Purty is Jesus uh I'm talking about before
the season is absurd to me.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
But the funniest thing like party Party creates what I
think is a great example to look at because there's
this divide of football fans that doesn't get discussed enough,
which is about how much college football you actually watch,
because if you or a college football watcher. You had
opinions on what the Brock Party Show was because he's
a two time All conference quarterback and it was a
roller coaster ride, right. And so he gets in the

(41:08):
NFL and I look up and all these people are
talking about him like he's just a game manager guy
that just makes all the throws. And we're like, baby,
you got no idea. What's coming in the last three
weeks have been Oh that's the guy we saw at
I was stayed. But the NFL people had no idea.
So all they had to lean on was every trope
and cliche that they ever had. It's like, oh, he's

(41:29):
not that big, he's a white dude. He's gotta be smart.
Otherwise how could do the seventh round pick still be
getting this? And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, you're ready,
You're in. He's gonna do a lot of dumb stuff.
You're gonna see He's gonna do some stuff that blows
your mind too, but old dumb stuff is all the way.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah, of all of let's call it major sports. What

(42:05):
do you consider yourself to be? Well, what's your favorite
and what do you feel like is you are the
most knowledgeable at or in.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Okay, I would say if you were to ask me,
like knowledgeable on the history of it would probably be
college football because college football is just so fascinating, with
little to do with the actual football itself, just the
crazy people who are around it and the crazy things
that they do. I mean, after all, I let you
up on the wiki. You went to college at a

(42:37):
place that when you got there didn't have a football
because crazy people were doing crazy things, you know, So
like on that level, they're basketball, probably just because it's
a game. I think it's easier to understand. I got
probably more participatory knowledge of doing that. But like college football,
and it is really a wild thing. Becase I've had
this problem in the entirety of my career because people

(42:58):
think the college football is kind of like the exclusive
purview of white men. Like I could. I never could
get people. I'd be like, yeah, I'm really into college football,
but really I didn't. I didn't think that, Like what
what what is the reason that you didn't think that?
If I, I mean, if I said baseball, they would
have had less of a surprise. But I enjoy talking
about college football more than anything else because you just

(43:19):
wind up with these wild stories are like, yeah, this
guy tried to get that guy fired so he could
stay there because if he stayed there one more year,
he would have ten years in the state system and
then he could get a pension. Oh okay, I'm.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
In, Well, what should and what is going to happen
to Jim Harbaugh.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
So this is a situation where and I think the
longer we all live, the more we realize the number
one thing that gets you fired is when your boss
wants to fire you. That's all it comes down to,
does your boss want to fire you? Because they don't
have to fire him for what's going going on with
the signs, stealing and all of that. They don't have to.

(44:03):
But Ohio State also didn't have to fire Jim Tressel
over those tattoos. They wanted to because they thought they
could get Urban Meyer. Urban Meyer ain't walking through the
door from Michigan, right, So I think they'll probably get
some other suspension in the NCAA will try to wallop
him just to try to prove some sort of point.
Because look, now that the kids can get paid, they
don't really got nothing to do. They gotta be bored

(44:24):
as hell now that they can't just stop the kids
from getting paid so they don't have to come down
on somebody like hardball and make it happen. And it's
just wow, this is the nonsensical nature of college football.
We're here because some dude was stealing signs. That's the
controversy that we got. But just a couple months ago
they said at Northwestern the boys were slapping each other

(44:44):
with they meet, and we didn't have no time to
really delve into that. I don't really understand what we're
doing out here these days. It's sports coverage?

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Is it? Because it's Michigan and Jim.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
I think that's a big part of it. Is his
personality that rubs people. I'm fascinated by him because I
find him to be so sincere and I think in
this where it gets interesting is people feel like he's
lying to them at various points, and I'm like, no, no, no,
he believes what he's saying. It may not be true.
I don't know what mental gymnastics he has used to
work himself around, right, But Jim is he is what

(45:18):
he is like. I learned to really like Barabad when
he first came out. When Kaepernick did his thing, and
he was like, I don't stand by what he's doing
or the message, and then went back and was like, Okay,
I overreacted, and then wrote so other for Time magazine
about how he had overreacted and how he started doing
work with people about trying to make sure the folks
have proper legal representation when they have to go into
the system and everything else. And I don't agree with

(45:40):
him on this, but he is a pretty staunch anti
abortion guy. And he had given some talk where he
talked about how he just doesn't think that people should
have abortions, which I mean as just that right there.
I don't think it's a nonsensical premise until you add
all the real world factors into it. Like I could
see how somebody would get there and somebody says something
to him about, well, who's going to take care of

(46:00):
these unwanted kids, and he was like, well, if you
don't want them, bring them to my house. And I'm
telling you right now, he meant that if you showed
up in his house and put a baby in a
basket and said you said, leave this kid here. He
is crazy enough that I think that he might take
that kid in there and be like, all right, well,
eighteen more years, this is what we're gonna do. Right,

(46:20):
But he's so intense, and he runs so many people
the wrong way, and he's one of the few personalities
left in college football that anybody has a passionate opinion about.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, you know, see, to me, as we've been talking
about the variety of things that we're talking about about,
it's it's sticks and balls, but it's politics, there's culture,
there's race, there's I mean, to me, this story, the
part of this story that's so fascinating, which I haven't

(46:48):
heard anybody right about because I'm not a writer. The
NCAA moves like a slug holding on to a turtle,
so there's no way anything's gonna happen there. So really,
as I understand it, the only way they can get
punished is by the Big Ten, which has a financial

(47:12):
so it's in not punishing even if they don't like
him and he rubs them the wrong way. They need
Michigan to get into the College Football Playoff and get
that big payday.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
For their conference. Yeah, so they're not going to punish him.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
And it's just to me that that's what's fascinating about sports.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Well, Also, the eighties and early nineties were a different
time with the NCAA where they were willing to do
the thing that really hurt, which was take you off
of television. Right, you know, a joke with you about
the SMU thing. But that whole Southwest conference they went
through and got everybody just about at every point, even
the big boys, they were pulling them off television. Alabama

(47:54):
got to the brink of the death penalty at one
point they were willing to do that, and then they realized, Man,
all that's doing is costing people money. Ain't doing that
no more crazy, you know, So they decided they were
gonna stop doing that. And so you're absolutely right. Is
there any real incentive for there to be any real
like mechanized punishment against Michigan. Probably not. But at the

(48:15):
same time, you're not gonna get me all bored with
well you really got to shut them down for this
science stealing thing.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Like yeah, yeah, having a.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Hard time getting me to care boys, Right, you've managed
to be a strong voice for racial justice in this
field that, as we've talked about often once to just
put their head down and focus on the sticks and balls.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Do you think that your voice has been welcomed by
and large, or do you feel like it has been
not appreciated.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
I think it has been appreciated by Honestly, if it's
appreciated by one person, then I probably does some good, right.
But I actually think it's been appreciated by a lot
of people. And I think that I talked to Tanna
hoose Coats about this once and he made the point
that I said a little earlier, it's just like you're
getting people who somebody like him could never reach because

(49:12):
they're not coming to the Atlantic or wherever the places
are that he might be. Like, I'm able to come
to where people are. And I think that people who
thought they would not appreciate it at first ultimately did
come to appreciate it, because I think they came to
respect the way that I choose to go about this.
My brother made a point to me when I first
started writing that has been a guiding light in my career,

(49:33):
which was a good argument is not one that a
genius cannot refute. It is one that a fool cannot refute.
And so I've given example. This is when I was
working in North Carolina and it was one of those
Confederate flag stories that come up, like I think South
Carolina was doing their Confederate flag thing and the ACC

(49:54):
was supposed to have some event there and yeah, it
was all I'll never forget. Yeah, yeah, And I remember
I did a tournament, you're right. And I remember I
did some event or some show in South Carolina where
a guy who'd always been very nice to me on
Twitter asked me to come on. He had three names,
like he's that kind of country like I want to say,
it's like Alan Wayne or something like that, and he

(50:16):
had me come on and then next thing I know,
he's like the ACC or as I called them, the
acc PC, and he just started rolling and said in
the N double ACP said this, bonbonni? Why did the
N double ACP do that? And I go, you talking
to me? He says yeah. I was like, my bad,
I don't work for them. I don't know, right. I
was like, oh, what's going on here? And so I

(50:38):
came on my show and I know how people feel
about that flag. And honestly, I grew up in Texas
and like had a next door neighbor who had stars
and bars, bumper sticker, but it was always very nice
to me. Whenever we talked in the driveway, like I didn't.
It doesn't hit It didn't hit me viscerally in the
ways that he hits a lot of other people. But anyway,
I was like, I want to talk about this because

(51:00):
I'm not buying the arguments that people are getting back
from me. And I never felt more accomplished in my
career than this moment. So I get on the mic
and I say, hey, I understand that a lot of
you are making this argument that the Confederate flag for you,
is an emblem of Southern pride, and that's really all
you're trying to say. You're not jumping off for slavery,

(51:20):
you're not supporting any of that, You're just supporting your
Southern identity. And I said, that's cool. I get that,
And I'm like, I as a very proud Southern to
feel the exact same way that you do. So I
just want you to tell me, why don't you come
up with something for Southern pride that we can all
get with? Like, you know why I can't get with that?

(51:41):
So why don't you come up with something that we
can all get with? And I went to the commercial break.
You know, people love to call the show, right, And
I went in, and people love to call me happy,
they love to call me mad, they love to call
me anyway they wanted to. And we went to the
commercial break and I said, all right, cool, well, anybody
want to give us a call and let us know,
just like, why can't you come up with something that
we could all share? And I looked over at that
phone for those four or five minutes of that commercial break,
and it did not rain. One time. I had stumped them.

(52:05):
I had completely left them flumixed and left them in
a place where they had to say to themselves, damn,
he's got a point, right. Those people who did not
call probably didn't think that they would appreciate me. I
bet you in that moment, a lot of them did.
And so that's what I You know, a lot of
people get mad, and a lot of people say the

(52:26):
angry things, and they may say all kinds of things
about me that I think are like accusatory and inaccurate.
But I think that there are a lot of people
that are quiet, and the folks realize who would say
that they have appreciated some of the perspective that I've
offered on these things. Because I'm not. I don't intend
to badger every individual about it because I know it's
a lot bigger than them. But you can listen, and

(52:47):
I think that if you deal with people the right way,
you can get them to do so that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
I have to mention your father, who was You mentioned
it briefly before. He was one of the Southern University
sixteen arrested and then banned from public colleges in Louisiana
for organizing anti segregation cit ins. Do you think, well,
did he talk about his activism with you and do

(53:14):
you think that that has shaped you today?

Speaker 1 (53:18):
So what's interesting when you mentioned that is my mother's
actually a little bit more gangster than him when it
comes to that. My mother, when she was fifteen years old,
was the face of the city in movement in Oklahoma City.
And it's these, I want to say, the second like
second city in movement in America. The first one was
in Wichita. This is the second one. So if you're

(53:39):
ever here in the Kanye West songs where he talks
about his mom being arrested at the age of six
at the city ins, these are the city ins that
we're talking about. And so I bet my dad was
ready to brag to my mama when they met in
graduate school about his revolutionary bona fides, and she was
right there to tell him no. Actually, I spoke at
the national NAACP convention in nineteen sixty and so what

(53:59):
is interesting about that though, is generally yes, but specifically no.
I've learned probably more about my parents on that front
as an adult than I knew and really understood growing
up at any point. Like I knew my mother was
involved in these sit ins. I knew my father had
been put out of school behind those, But I think

(54:22):
I had to truly get older to like really appreciating
grasp the magnitude of both what they had done. But
I also think for them that it was important. They
are not at all self aggrandizing people, and I think
that it's honestly a humility that comes from it. Like
when we left that we moved out of the house
in Houston in ninety seven, I remember we were going
through some drawer and we came across, you know, one

(54:43):
of those cardboard cylinders and like, oh, I it was
in there, and we look at it and as my
dad's PhD, you know, like you know, like we're going
about it a little bit differently here, but no, it
was my dad made a point about his father that
makes me understand him in a way. He's and he
said himself, he's medaled over years, but like what he

(55:03):
learned from his father was if there was something to
be done, he did it. Consequences be damned, and that's
how he winds up getting kicked out of school. He
doesn't exactly view it that same way. But what I
got from them, more than anything else, is a real
picture of people who've done the real work. So now
when you see everybody who thinks they some kind of
god damn activist on Twitter just because they said something
that made somebody mad, No, I've seen the real thing, right, Like,

(55:25):
think you think you about this revolution, you think you
about changing the world. No, no, no, no, no no no.
I've met people who got stories that will blow your mind.
In that regard, I mean people that have had to
take they fight to the Supreme Court and shootouts with
the federal government. I've I've met a different caliber of
person when it comes to this, and that's, if nothing else,
the perspective of understanding what it takes to really get

(55:48):
it done. Has been really helpful.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
I started podcasting a few years ago. It seems like
a long time for me now, four ishs five years ago.
You've been doing it basically since the beginning, your first podcast,
The Evening Jones.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Going strong since twenty eleven. What do you like about it?

Speaker 1 (56:13):
You know, it's so funny because I started doing The
even Jones because I worked for a company where I
was doing a radio show out of my house, doing
ID in line and every now and then, then every
now and then they would forget to pay the bill
and so it would take like three or four days
to get it up. But my people wanted content, So
I started doing this just to make sure that the
people had content. And what I liked about that was

(56:35):
because that one is like it's a live webcast, right,
like I take questions from people. I really liked the
intimacy in the back and forth of it, right. What
I liked about podcasts from the very beginning though, was
the portability of it. Like when I first started doing radio,
I was trying to push to people like, hey, how
do I get this out of the podcast because I
knew that would be the best promotion, Like I rather
than being beholden whether or not somebody was in the radio,

(56:56):
you know, in the car listen to radio at a
specific point in time, like, let me get this to
them in little bite and they could go get it
and then as time went on. What I like about
doing a podcast now after having done many different forms
of television, is it's an opt in product. Like, yes,
I need to be conscientious in terms of my topicality
and not go too far off the beaten path and

(57:17):
what I'm talking about. But I'm dealing with people who
decided to come here. I have more leeway, I have
more flexibility. I can go in more directions. So if
all of my sports podcasts, my buddy Joel Anderson as
Slate just got through doing four podcast series on Clarence Thomas,
then we can talk about that series for forty five minutes.
Because the people who are here trust me enough that
they know, Okay, this isn't sports, but it must be

(57:38):
worth something that Bomani's willing to talk about it for
forty five minutes.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
It's that, you know. It's that it's I know that
if you're here, you're here for me to forget about
life for a while. You know, like I absolutely, I'm
very aware of what this is.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Your podcast The Right Time just relaunched after eight years
at the proverbial mothership ESPN. You're now back on wave.
Are you excited to be You do this three three
days a week, you do video, you do you do
it all? Are you Are you excited to be back?

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Now?

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah? I was excited to be back. If for no
other reason, then, like not working for three months makes
me realize how much work you do, you know what
I mean? Right? I enjoy the hour of doing it,
you know, like sometimes there's other things that are hassles
and everything else, but I like when I know it's
me and this audience that's talking, I enjoy getting gone
and doing that. And so I was glad to get back.

(58:37):
I'd work with ESPN in various capacities for the better
part of the last twenty years. So I'm not a
person that leaves there and has all these terrible things
to say about the place.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Now.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
I changed my life in a lot of ways, But
I think for a podcast, this is going to be
a much better chance for success, to get more eyeballs
on it, and at a place that I think for
the medium itself is more concerned. So you know, I'm
glad to be back.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Do you think you're gonna have more freedom? And I'm
not asking you to talk crap about Oh oh.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
No, I get it in theory, yes, but ay, but
don't nobody really pay attention to what you're doing in
the first place. You got more freedom than you realize, Like,
there's no more freedom to do it a Saturday morning
radio or Saturday night radio show. You boss, ain't listening,
Ain't nobody calling, Like there's no more freedom than that.

(59:28):
But I have learned over time, and I've always been
able to figure out how to say exactly what I
wanted to say within any constraint that somebody has, And
so I probably have the freedom to say something stupid
in a way that I didn't have before. And I
prefer not to flex that, you know, But I've I
truly feel like, yeah, I mean, I truly feel like
I learned how to do this stuff in such a

(59:51):
way that now that I'm here, I'm kind of like,
was I really losing anything? Like, oh, I can curse more.
I probably should have been Like thing you learn while
doing it, HBO show, it actually turns you into approove
right because everybody is like, ooh hbo, let me write
fuck and they put it in as many times. You're like, guys,
we don't need the.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Curse that much, all right, rapid fire. I don't know.
I'm just inventing this in the moment college football team
you root for.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
I used to root for the University of Texas, and
then I had to stop because of that odds at
Texas thing where black people are like, hey, you find
this song very offensive. We're like, oh, black boys are
going to sing that song, dammit. So I have backed
out on them. I wish that Miami could get good again,
so I could go back to rooting for Miami because
that was Come on, rooting for Miami was a great time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
You're from Atlanta, come on.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
I know, I know, I know. The Georgia. The Georgia
thing is interesting. I do think they have the best
looking uniforms. That is. That is where I will always go.
My problem with Georgia right now is they're so good,
but it's no fun. They're just super good, right, like's like,
let's I just need them to be a little more fun.
That's all I need is just give you a little
more fun because they are a destroying machine. They are.

(01:01:07):
And by the way, what ified that clause in the
laws of the State of Georgia that say the University
of Georgia is not allowed to run a single pass
play without at least one white person throwing in or catching.
I don't think they've called a play in the history
of that school. How one of those things being the case?

(01:01:28):
You have to think about it. Well, no, but the
year there'sckly year.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
There was yes, and also uh uh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
And because he became a trader, because he decided to
leave because he didn't like being understand in the fields
fields there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, but he was gonna be throwing the lad or
brock or one of those, like at least the lads
and brocks are good now. He used to always be
the one where they be like, oh, that's Matthew Safford's roommate.
You always throwing out there like that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I recently saw your take. I find him so fascinating. Wimby,
I mean, is it the most exciting rookie? Said Shack.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
That's more closest example that I can get to. It's
more exciting for me than lebron was. And Shaq I
think is a good example because Shaq had done three
years of college, so there was reason to think that, like, oh,
he's gonna jump like that's back when rookies of that
caliber could jump in and be NBA players. And Shaq
was like, wow, I've never seen anything like this before,
but not like this. I've never seen anything like I

(01:02:34):
didn't know, Like you didn't think a human life shack
was likely, but it seemed possible in its own way, right,
Like you've seen really big guys, you've seen really tall guys.
It could be both at once, right, I couldn't believe,
like all the things I see this guy do, I
just can't believe. Like I say, he looked like it's
a grand opening, right, like them plastic things with the
wind gets them, except he can really, really really play basketball.

(01:02:56):
And he's an orderisme bitch too, like he's flexing at people,
and shit, imbody did teach you all that in friends?

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Okay, Well, French, the French people can be nasty. We
know this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Come on again, I didn't know they were doing it
in basketball though, you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Know, no, I I know, I know the whole idea
of like, oh, seeing somebody in person, seeing somebody in person.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
I want to see him in person.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
It's different, like I want to I want to sit
down there near the court and I want to I
want to watch him operate.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Let me tell you something. I went to Summer League
in Vegas this year for that second reason. I wanted
to be there for the game. And the internet had
all the jokes about his first game. We did not
have jokes in the building. We could not believe what
it was that we were saying. You were watching a
seven foot five dude out here, dribbler like Kyrie Irving
like it just it was. It was stunning and shocking
to see. You know, it is a difference seeing something
like this in person. Television just takes some away, Like

(01:03:50):
football is the biggest one where if you ever go
watch football game from the sideline, honestly, it's kind of
like if you've ever been in a car and your
car broke down on the side of the interstate, you
really don't know how fast the cars are going until
running past you, right, same thing. No, I want to
see this with my own eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Yeah, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Good luck on the relaunch of the right time. I
absolutely will be watching. Congratulations on your continued success all
across the podcast panel.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
I find you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
I find you refreshing because of your depth and intelligence
to listen to you always. So thank you so much
for coming on here, and thank you for forgiving well
for giving Southerners a good name.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
I appreciate you having me on. Man would have to
do this.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Again, absolutely, I appreciate it. Good luck the rest of
the way. Oh wait, who are the best two teams
in the AFC?

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
The best two teams in the AFC are the Chiefs
and shockingly, the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Interesting, are the Jets going to make a playoff run?

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
I hope they do. I'm actually enjoying that. It's making me.
It's a fun little run. They're a little into that could,
and you never get to be that in New York.
They are a little into that could. I went through
five years. It's some really terrible football on over the
air television here. I am just glad to have interesting teams.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Yeah, all right, I can't wait to see your takes
as we continue along.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
Best of luck to you.

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
I appreciate you bad all right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Bomani, Thank you so much, buddy. It was great getting
to know you today. I love what you said about
podcasting being an opt in medium. It is so true
and I am going to continue to opt in to
your show. And you're very astute analysis. Everybody, you too
should opt in to the right time to hear more

(01:06:02):
from Bomani. And thank you all for opting in to
hear me today. I hope you'll come back next time.
Until then, feel good and have a great week.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Off.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
The Beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,
alongside our executive producer lingg Lee. Our senior producer is
Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and
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(01:06:40):
and Squeak, performed by the one and only Creed Brag