Speaker 1: I like being on the microphone though, Like I really
Speaker 1: there's something that hits me if I'm doing a podcast
Speaker 1: or doing a radio show and I'm talking, like I
Speaker 1: like that, And it's not because of the attention as
Speaker 1: much as I really just enjoy the act of putting
Speaker 1: those ideas together and figuring out how to present it
Speaker 1: largely exceptoraneously. But like, I really I dig doing that part.
Speaker 1: TV boy, It's interesting though. It's a drug, Like you
Speaker 1: watch how people respond to that drug, and it can
Speaker 1: it can get people, like I've realized pretty quickly off
Speaker 1: the TV, like, hey, you kind of gotta dabble in this.
Speaker 1: You gotta you know, you need to be like you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just slam this. You'll be messed up for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. A. My name is Boboni Jones,
Speaker 1: and I host The Right Time with Boboni Jones, A
Speaker 1: Way Sports and Entertainment and listen to Brian forget how
Speaker 1: to say my name?
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and we're back on another beautiful Tuesday with
Speaker 2: another beautiful episode. If I do say so myself, of
Speaker 2: Off the Beat, I am your host, Brian Baumgartner. Now,
Speaker 2: as you heard, my guest today is Bomani Jones. Now
Speaker 2: I want it on record that I do know how
Speaker 2: to say his name, Bomani, Boumani, Boumani. Now, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be honest with all of you here, as I was
Speaker 2: with Baumani shortly after this misstep, exactly twelve minutes after
Speaker 2: this recording, I tested positive for COVID. Yes, I suspected
Speaker 2: that I might have it, and indeed I did, so,
Speaker 2: you know, COVID brain And the whole sentence came out wrong,
Speaker 2: and I said Bommi, and he came right for me.
Speaker 2: I deserve it, you know what, O'mani. In exchange, I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you a privilege that I've never ever
Speaker 2: extended to anyone else. You can call me Ryan or Kevin,
Speaker 2: your choice. I'm feeling fine now, by the way, just
Speaker 2: a little clouded brain, but I so enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: Beaumani is one of the smartest, most interesting voices out
Speaker 2: there today in sports journalism or really anywhere. He's a
Speaker 2: fascinating guy when discussing really any topic. In fact, the
Speaker 2: secret to his success is he can connect with people
Speaker 2: about a lot of different things. He can make a
Speaker 2: thoughtful and deep argument on any topic he just happens
Speaker 2: to get paid to do it about sports. He is
Speaker 2: or has been, a music and culture writer, a radio host,
Speaker 2: a television personality, a podcaster, and an economist, though not
Speaker 2: necessarily in that order. Most recently, you can find him
Speaker 2: three days a week giving nuanced insight and context to
Speaker 2: the sports world and many other topics on his new
Speaker 2: the rebooted podcast The Right Side. He also hosts The
Speaker 2: Evening Jones, which has been going strong since the year
Speaker 2: two thousand and eleven. It's incredible. If that podcast were
Speaker 2: a person, it would be in middle school by now,
Speaker 2: and that that's pretty crazy. He is so interesting. His
Speaker 2: story is interesting, his family is interesting. Talking to him
Speaker 2: was so much fun. So here is a man that
Speaker 2: could never have COVID brain even if he tried.
Speaker 3: Bow money Jones. Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 4: I love it, Bubble and squeak, A.
Speaker 3: Bubble and squeak. I could get every.
Speaker 4: Mole lift over from the ninet before.
Speaker 3: What's up for money?
Speaker 1: Hey man? How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing all right? How are you.
Speaker 1: Doing all right? Good to be on with you.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for joining me. I know
Speaker 2: it's a very busy day in the world. Of sports,
Speaker 2: always something happening.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you this, I can't pass up the
Speaker 1: rare opportunity to meet a white person from actual Atlanta.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen very often.
Speaker 2: Well, first off, thank you, that's very humbling to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard you were you were born there, But
Speaker 3: when did you move to Houston?
Speaker 1: So we moved to Houston when I was seven, but
Speaker 1: I went to Clark Atlanta for the undergrad and my
Speaker 1: parents have been back in Atlanta since ninety seven, so
Speaker 1: I kind of got like a dual citizenship going with Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've spent definitely more time in the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years in Houston than I have in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Right, what was the reason for the move to Houston.
Speaker 1: Oh, my parents got a differ and gigs, Like they
Speaker 1: were professors, so they were working at what was Dan
Speaker 1: Clark College at the time, and then we're working at
Speaker 1: a school call Prairie View A and M. And then
Speaker 1: my dad got the job back at COAU and so
Speaker 1: went back there. So, like my brother and sister grew
Speaker 1: up in Atlanta, like they were ten years older than me,
Speaker 1: so that's all they knew. Really growing up.
Speaker 2: Your parents, I understand were Well, you just said they
Speaker 2: were teaching in college. They were intellectuals, a political scientist
Speaker 2: and an economists and economists. Was education important to you
Speaker 2: growing up in your home? Were you having intellectual conversations
Speaker 2: over dinner?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would probably say it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: they were intellectual conversations over dinner, though I don't think
Speaker 1: I realized that's what they were, because they were just
Speaker 1: kind of the conversations over dinner. Like the thing about
Speaker 1: my parents, I always tell people that, like when you
Speaker 1: tell people that your parents are professors, like they imagine
Speaker 1: that you were living like the Huxtables on the Cosme Show,
Speaker 1: and they're like jazz intermissions for dinner and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But we're very way more I'd say, I guess regular
Speaker 1: than that. So intellectually yes, but always without pretense. Which
Speaker 1: is probably the best thing I got out of growing
Speaker 1: up with those parents was that you can operate on
Speaker 1: an intellectual level, but you can also speak English to people.
Speaker 1: What you're doing is sharing knowledge as opposed to showing
Speaker 1: it off. Like that's a really important distinction that I've
Speaker 1: come to find over time.
Speaker 3: Were were your parents sports fans?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, my dad more so than my mom, but
Speaker 1: my mom also like, yeah, that's a sports is a
Speaker 1: defining characteristic of the Jones household.
Speaker 3: I would say they were interested in a variety of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were interested in a variety of things. And
Speaker 1: I also think, like it gets interesting because my father
Speaker 1: in particular, my mother like somewhat also, but my father
Speaker 1: in particular, shall we say, has some fairly militant class politics,
Speaker 1: and so the idea of joining we will call it
Speaker 1: the elite, is never something that was particularly alluring us, Right,
Speaker 1: So I think that becomes a big part of it.
Speaker 1: But I think another thing that's kind of like a
Speaker 1: larger and like a kind of macro sociological phenomenon, which
Speaker 1: is like an interesting window or glimpse into blackness, is
Speaker 1: every now and then you'll catch black people who can
Speaker 1: be around enough bourgeois black people that everybody's bourgeois. But
Speaker 1: the truth is they just ain't that many of black
Speaker 1: people in general, of a bourgeois black people in particular
Speaker 1: for you to really court yourself off. And that's the
Speaker 1: world you're going to live in. And so as black person,
Speaker 1: what you're going to have to do is learn how
Speaker 1: to navigate and deal with a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: different places. And one thing I was like real fortunate
Speaker 1: with my parents, like having them as the exposure in
Speaker 1: understanding is people want to be around knowledge, right Like
Speaker 1: they want to be around the person who knows things,
Speaker 1: no matter what it is. The person who knows things
Speaker 1: is generally pretty popular, right, Like that is something that
Speaker 1: people want. What they don't want is for you to
Speaker 1: talk to them like the stud that's the part that
Speaker 1: they don't like. And so when you figure out that
Speaker 1: rather than your place as educated person or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: is not to show people that you're educated, but your
Speaker 1: place is actually to share what it is that you know,
Speaker 1: because you recognize that a lot of what you know
Speaker 1: it's things that people themselves could easily understand but maybe
Speaker 1: have not been in a position for somebody told them
Speaker 1: what it was, you know. So once you can become
Speaker 1: the person who can do that, then oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1: But that requires you to stay grounded in a certain way,
Speaker 1: like I think that generally Southerness we know this a
Speaker 1: little better than most people because we have to interact
Speaker 1: with more of each other than other people do. Right,
Speaker 1: And you learn you've been to learn how to talk
Speaker 1: to people about this in a way to make them
Speaker 1: feel good about it. Otherwise you gonna feel bad about it.
Speaker 3: I think that's very very true.
Speaker 2: Look, we all wear masks all the time, depending on
Speaker 2: who we're with. Do you feel like you spent your
Speaker 2: childhood wearing masks with different people depending on who it
Speaker 2: was and who you were with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting question because I've always said that
Speaker 1: if I ever got to be self absorbed enough to
Speaker 1: write a memoir, right, it would be kind of centered
Speaker 1: around the idea that like, I'm not really from here,
Speaker 1: no matter where the here happens to be, So like
Speaker 1: I grew up in Houston, Like that's the thing I
Speaker 1: always say, but like the sensibilities that I have and
Speaker 1: like from the house and everything else, probably like more
Speaker 1: of an Atlanta sensibility. Like I wasn't in lockstep with
Speaker 1: the place that I was in. We lived in like
Speaker 1: suburban northwest Houston, but I went to school twenty miles
Speaker 1: farther out from that, which was just a completely different
Speaker 1: life experience for those people. So I wasn't really in
Speaker 1: line with what, you know, with what they were on.
Speaker 1: So I figured out somewhat early that I could put
Speaker 1: on a mask if I wanted to, but I'd be
Speaker 1: putting on a different one every time. Like there was
Speaker 1: like very rarely, if ever it was there a room
Speaker 1: that I got in and I was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the place that I was supposed
Speaker 1: to be not so much now. The one thing that
Speaker 1: I do, I guess I could definitely say as related
Speaker 1: to like the mask idea that was probably true, was
Speaker 1: that in this society, like I was just reading this
Speaker 1: book not too long ago about Frank Sinatra, and it
Speaker 1: made the point that Sinatra started off as somebody who
Speaker 1: had more female fans than male fans, and then by
Speaker 1: the end had more male fans than female fans. And
Speaker 1: the arguments that they were making is that after he
Speaker 1: had this fall in the late fifties and then got
Speaker 1: back up, that that's what got men to come around.
Speaker 1: It's like, the ability to push through the struggle is
Speaker 1: the thing that people respect. But when you grow up
Speaker 1: in a fairly comfortable upper middle class enviirement, you really
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of struggle to report, Like nobody
Speaker 1: nobody really thinks it's really cool. Like I always say
Speaker 1: with people say you ought to write a book, like oh, yes,
Speaker 1: child of privilege did everything he was supposed to do.
Speaker 1: That's a page turner, right, anybody trying to hear that.
Speaker 1: So I do remember that, I, like I probably is
Speaker 1: some way he's made my life harder on myself than others,
Speaker 1: because I had, like the luxury of parents that if
Speaker 1: I needed a little money, I could call them and
Speaker 1: get it or whatever. The people I grew up around,
Speaker 1: of the friends that I had, didn't have that luxury, right,
Speaker 1: And so I do remember I got to graduate school
Speaker 1: and that was struggling, and I was talking to a
Speaker 1: guy I was in school with and he did not
Speaker 1: have the luxury that I had on the reach back,
Speaker 1: and I just remember him looking at me being like, hey,
Speaker 1: cuz you better ask those people for some money. I
Speaker 1: wish I had somebody to call and ask for some money,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I could probably definitely say if
Speaker 1: that was a mask, it was not wanting to be
Speaker 1: honest about some of the parts of my life that
Speaker 1: were easier not lying in the other direction, right, Like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't pretending like I grew up in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: that I didn't, but like nobody like going let me
Speaker 1: tell you I show had it. Easy. Yeah, people don't
Speaker 1: like that. No, no, it's not really the story.
Speaker 3: No no that's not No, that doesn't that doesn't help
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: You mentioned going back to Atlanta Clark Atlanta University, you
Speaker 2: studied economics. Then you got a Masters in Politics, Economics
Speaker 2: and Business from Claremont and a Masters of Economics from
Speaker 2: UNC Chapel Hill, and you.
Speaker 3: Started working on a PhD. There was your what was
Speaker 3: your goal?
Speaker 2: I mean obviously these were things that your parents studied,
Speaker 2: But what was it? I mean, one degree okay, fine,
Speaker 2: but you know, three, six, nine degrees later, Like what
Speaker 2: were you working towards?
Speaker 1: All right, these are interesting steps in the process. So
Speaker 1: I'll walk you through this, Okay. So when I got
Speaker 1: to college, I was majoring in chemistry. I wanted to
Speaker 1: do pre mid and I wanted to be a pediatrician
Speaker 1: find children to be delightful. I was doing the science
Speaker 1: majoring thing, and I realized very quickly this wasn't my bag,
Speaker 1: Like I just didn't enjoy it, Like all this lab
Speaker 1: and these labs and stuff. I just didn't really want
Speaker 1: to do it. And so I just kind of bounce
Speaker 1: around without a major, and I took an economics class
Speaker 1: in part just to get my mama off my back,
Speaker 1: because she just believes that the solution to any problem
Speaker 1: that you might have in your life is a class
Speaker 1: of two an economics, right, Like, that's just a solution.
Speaker 1: So I did the economics class and it was probably
Speaker 1: more challenging than any class I had taken to that
Speaker 1: point in undergrad and so I was like, cool, I'm
Speaker 1: major in that. And then I decided I didn't want
Speaker 1: to major in it anymore. But I had something come
Speaker 1: up in my life where if I was going to
Speaker 1: change my major, it would take me an extra year
Speaker 1: to get out of college, which I was all the
Speaker 1: way here for. Just to be clear, I knew that
Speaker 1: the real world was not as advertised, right, right, But
Speaker 1: a couple of things happened. I was like, no, let
Speaker 1: me hurry up and get out of school. So I
Speaker 1: got the economics degree. While I'm finishing my senior year,
Speaker 1: I started freelance writing, and I realized that the media
Speaker 1: space is probably where I wanted to go. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking in terms of writing at that point, that's
Speaker 1: probably where I wanted to go. And so I graduated
Speaker 1: from college. But the right thing wasn't really paying no
Speaker 1: money and I remember I had taken a trip to
Speaker 1: DC because I was going to have a meeting with
Speaker 1: a guy who said he was starting a magazine and
Speaker 1: he was going to feature my work all over and
Speaker 1: I was hearing what he was talking about. He wasn't
Speaker 1: talking about paying me all the money in the world,
Speaker 1: but he was talking about paying me living money. And
Speaker 1: I remember I borrowed some money from my parents to
Speaker 1: get on the road to go up to DC to
Speaker 1: talk to the dude, and he stood me up. I
Speaker 1: didn't hear from him. And I remember I had a moment.
Speaker 1: I was at my buddy's house, was at his mama's house,
Speaker 1: and I'm on the couch and my head's tilted back
Speaker 1: because I'm so stressed that my phone rang and I
Speaker 1: just picked it up, and it was a woman from
Speaker 1: Clairemont Graduate University telling me that they had this fellowship
Speaker 1: that was available and if I wanted to apply for it,
Speaker 1: and this is August, right, this is August of two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. And I was like, well, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I said I'd do it. And then in some subsequent email,
Speaker 1: I said to the woman, I'm like, hey, so this
Speaker 1: is for January, right, She's like, no, this is for
Speaker 1: the fall, like this is in.
Speaker 3: A couple of weeks, four days from now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, basically, And honestly, I wound up doing it
Speaker 1: for two reasons. One I didn't have anything else to do.
Speaker 1: And two I kind of like convinced myself in my
Speaker 1: mind that what I could do is if I got
Speaker 1: this PhD or not have the PhD at that point,
Speaker 1: because I really didn't want to do any more economics,
Speaker 1: like I just I really was trying to get away
Speaker 1: from that. But I'm like, Okay, you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: I'll learned here will probably make me a better writer.
Speaker 1: And so I did that, and then after a year,
Speaker 1: I did pretty well and I took the gr and
Speaker 1: I did really well on that, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe if I got the PhD and I put
Speaker 1: this along with the other stuff, like I could get
Speaker 1: into that public intellectual space that was the rage at
Speaker 1: the top. And so I did that, and then I
Speaker 1: get to Carolina for the PhD program, and I realized
Speaker 1: very quickly that I had a massive degree level of
Speaker 1: curiosity in this stuff. I did not want to do
Speaker 1: the things that I was doing, and it's really hard,
Speaker 1: like it's a lot of work, like just elbow grease
Speaker 1: hours and everything. I don't know. I was in the
Speaker 1: wrong place and I'm doing all the writing and everything.
Speaker 1: But I got myself set up. I had gotten a
Speaker 1: column writing about music for AOL at the time that
Speaker 1: was paid me enough to like live. I bought a
Speaker 1: house at a mortgage. I was taking care of it.
Speaker 1: I was living a life doing all that. Man, I
Speaker 1: fought out of school and a column got camp like
Speaker 1: all at the same time. And so it was funny
Speaker 1: because my parents really would like I would have liked,
Speaker 1: at the very at least one of the kids to
Speaker 1: get a PhD. And I was kind of the last hope,
Speaker 1: and all paper was probably the best hope. And then
Speaker 1: it didn't work out. But yeah, so I wound up
Speaker 1: getting each one of those degrees for entirely different reasons,
Speaker 1: but they all really proved to be very helpful in
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you talked there about about writing and developing a
Speaker 2: passion for that. Now I know that when you started
Speaker 2: you were writing about music and culture primarily. Is that
Speaker 2: what was was initially the most interesting for you or
Speaker 2: what you wanted to focus on.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it was the most, at least in
Speaker 1: my mind, the most available. Like I read a book
Speaker 1: that Chuck d wrote, and he talked about the need
Speaker 1: for strengthening kind of the quality of the music press,
Speaker 1: and that inspired me and made me kind of want
Speaker 1: to go in that direction. But I was writing about
Speaker 1: what it was that I could write about, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I could get an album and write a review
Speaker 1: of that, or I could talk about something that had
Speaker 1: come up. I could see what was going on in
Speaker 1: the world and I could respond to that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: those are the things that I could do. Like getting
Speaker 1: the sports was completely different for me, at least in
Speaker 1: my mind, because I knew enough about sports writing to
Speaker 1: know that there was a way that you got in
Speaker 1: the door, and I did not have access to that door,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I was not a beat writer. I
Speaker 1: had not you know, worked at the student paper. I
Speaker 1: hadn't done any of those things. Like if you were
Speaker 1: to ask me at that time, how do you get
Speaker 1: a job sports writing? I wouldn't like what I would
Speaker 1: have thought. I probably wouldn't have known. I couldn't have
Speaker 1: given you an answer to that. But I got lucky
Speaker 1: that when I was really getting into it in the
Speaker 1: mid aughts. Shall we say it's kind of when the
Speaker 1: Internet was really booming in terms of writting content, and
Speaker 1: the way that people were writing about sports was expanding
Speaker 1: beyond just the things you need to have by getting
Speaker 1: in the arena and like, you know, being a beat writer,
Speaker 1: and I would have never known how to get that
Speaker 1: job or how to go about that, but this other
Speaker 1: stuff I knew how to do was so I kind
Speaker 1: of went in through the backdoor of doing that.
Speaker 3: That's very, very interesting, you know.
Speaker 2: I think about this often now that there is I
Speaker 2: don't know what you'd even call it traditional press or
Speaker 2: traditional sports press. I mean these associated press feeds about
Speaker 2: a game.
Speaker 3: That just occurred.
Speaker 2: They are the exact same that they were in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three. Like you know, as you set the scene,
Speaker 2: this is where it took place. Here are the stats
Speaker 2: here a few and yeah, like I'm not going to
Speaker 2: give Bill Simmons all the credit in the world, but
Speaker 2: places like grant Land that start around this time where
Speaker 2: you start reading writers who are talking, I mean to
Speaker 2: the point we were just making more pul political or
Speaker 2: historical or putting a game or a person in context
Speaker 2: to something larger than itself, which is obviously, I'm sure
Speaker 2: to you and to me as a consumer as well,
Speaker 2: so much more interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think, you know, to be fair to
Speaker 1: the previous generation of writer, the Internet. A big part
Speaker 1: of what made the Internet a place where you could
Speaker 1: do more of these more expansive things was literally just space, right,
Speaker 1: like the idea that space is infinite on the internet, right,
Speaker 1: you can scroll up and down forever. That newspaper. We
Speaker 1: got this block on this page that we got to fit,
Speaker 1: and we need words in these places, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to make it happen. But I really feel like
Speaker 1: the mid auts because I think it's turning back in
Speaker 1: the other direction now. But that was probably the best
Speaker 1: era of sports writing that we've had. And the reason
Speaker 1: that I say that is it was an explosion of
Speaker 1: so many different things. So we had the train died
Speaker 1: in the wool journalists, right, who are just incredibly important
Speaker 1: to have. But also you had like it was a
Speaker 1: lot of these like the lawyers started getting into the game,
Speaker 1: the professors started getting into it. You just had a
Speaker 1: lot of people who also people who were like well
Speaker 1: known professional writers who just decided they wanted to dabble
Speaker 1: in sports a little bit more like I worked at
Speaker 1: ESPN dot COM's page too, and like Hunter Thompson is
Speaker 1: writing columns, right, Hunter Thompson not a sports writer, but
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter, you know, like you're you know right
Speaker 1: in that page. Show him on a page with a
Speaker 1: hundred Thompson Ralph Wiley. Bill Simmons was the one who rose,
Speaker 1: but I'm there at the same time, and he plays
Speaker 1: a big role in people like me recognizing that there
Speaker 1: might be other ways that you could go about getting
Speaker 1: in and talking about sports. And I think that people
Speaker 1: are going to look back on a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff that was being done in that time and like
Speaker 1: maybe the ten years after that, and it brought the
Speaker 1: world into sports coverage in a way that I don't
Speaker 1: think it really existed previously.
Speaker 2: Once you started writing about sports, both for page two
Speaker 2: and others, does that fairly quickly become your focus as
Speaker 2: opposed to music culture, you know, entertainment, other things like
Speaker 2: is sports it for you where you see your place?
Speaker 1: Not? No? Okay, overall, I would say no. Part of
Speaker 1: why sports became the focus was quite honestly, that other
Speaker 1: stuff just didn't pay a living wage. Like I still
Speaker 1: dabbled in a lot of ways in doing some of
Speaker 1: the other stuff. Like now I'm at the point where
Speaker 1: if I want to write something about music, it's because
Speaker 1: I want to do it, Like I'm I basically do
Speaker 1: that for free if I decide that that's the space
Speaker 1: that I want to go in. I do a lot
Speaker 1: more podcasting now, and so I'm at the point now
Speaker 1: of people knowing me and I guess of being visible
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, that I got leeway
Speaker 1: where I can talk about these other things, like Cason point.
Speaker 1: When COVID hit in twenty twenty, sports podcasts in particular,
Speaker 1: the numbers just all knows did we ain't had no
Speaker 1: games to talk about, Like why would we do this?
Speaker 1: The numbers for my podcast actually went through the roof
Speaker 1: because people understood that without sports, we still had other
Speaker 1: things to talk about, you know. So I figured out
Speaker 1: how to judiciously kind of bring those things into those
Speaker 1: other spaces. Did I do a few little CNN hits
Speaker 1: here and there talk about the politics and stuff if
Speaker 1: I feel like it, because sometimes I just don't like
Speaker 1: that ain't really the most fun stuff to get into.
Speaker 1: Like I went up there one night to do the
Speaker 1: CNN stuff. It was like ten o'clock, and I think
Speaker 1: it was after somebody shot up one of them places.
Speaker 1: I can't remember which one. I feel like Tennessee, but
Speaker 1: it was one of the places that it got shot up,
Speaker 1: and I was like, man, this is saying like we
Speaker 1: just all in here. It is late at night. I'm
Speaker 1: not even getting paid, and this is say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the wheel keeps turn on and on. Just
Speaker 2: the other day, I mean, the same story over and over.
Speaker 2: It It does become like beating your head against the wall, right,
Speaker 2: some of the some of those politics or I don't
Speaker 2: even know politics, current events stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's I think the thing I've learned over time,
Speaker 1: especially the Internet has helped me learn this and a
Speaker 1: lot of times the hard way, Like I ain't got
Speaker 1: to talk about everything right, like I could stop it
Speaker 1: figure out what it is that I do and do
Speaker 1: not want to discuss, which makes I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it a lot more enriching and then a lot
Speaker 1: more fun. But yeah, no, current events especially now that
Speaker 1: like sports coverage has ruined every other kind of coverage.
Speaker 1: And I mean that in the sense that like Jeff
Speaker 1: Zuckery's always talk about this with CNN that he kind
Speaker 1: of want to CNN to be like ESPN. I'm like, well, buddy,
Speaker 1: what you do over there is actually important. Like we
Speaker 1: come up with contrived argument stuff over here because it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a big old barber shop. I'm I
Speaker 1: supposed to do this with the actual news, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's get all stuff. Man, everybody just kind of
Speaker 1: going home and everybody back and forth, and it's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to talk about these things anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I think in a way though
Speaker 2: what he said has happened. It's just they're just different
Speaker 2: barbershops that talk about things in the same way, and unfortunately,
Speaker 2: too often we don't talk about them together or directly together.
Speaker 3: I think that's part of the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And that's where I get kind of lucky
Speaker 1: with a lot of my work because I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know this, but among certain groups of people,
Speaker 1: I'm a bit of a polarizer figure. But while there
Speaker 1: are those that if I'd be at one end of
Speaker 1: that pole, there's a lot of people in the middle
Speaker 1: who kind of and this is where sports in a way,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say it's like a trojan horse necessarily,
Speaker 1: but I got enough credibility of one space that I
Speaker 1: can get people to listen to me about some of
Speaker 1: the other spaces, and they can hear things that they
Speaker 1: really might not hear otherwise. And I don't even mean
Speaker 1: that like in some sort of dogmatic way or like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to beat people over the head with it necessarily,
Speaker 1: but just to huh. I hadn't thought about it like that, right,
Speaker 1: And that's a privilege that's afforded to me, honestly, And
Speaker 1: I'm very fortunate and lucky in that regard, because you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you got to put the medicine in the apple sauce.
Speaker 1: I can do that with them knowing that the medicine
Speaker 1: might be there, and they're still like, oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1: Well if he says that I might want to give something,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe this applesace ain't so bad.
Speaker 2: Do you think that around this time you're writing for
Speaker 2: page two, you start appearing on television shows like Outside
Speaker 2: the Lines, around the Horn, to name a few. First off,
Speaker 2: did you initially like being on camera?
Speaker 3: I mean, you wanted to be a writer. Now suddenly
Speaker 3: you're on camera.
Speaker 1: Yoh, So the camera thing is really interesting in that
Speaker 1: I don't mind being on camera, okay, but I don't
Speaker 1: love being on camera. Like I've taken long stretches of
Speaker 1: time off from being on TV and all of that,
Speaker 1: and I don't ever feel like, man, I really miss
Speaker 1: everybody looking at my face. Like you ever seen that
Speaker 1: movie I think it's called soap Dish, like Sally Field, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you Goldberg, right, you know about the woman and she
Speaker 1: would stage these moments in the mall where somebody would
Speaker 1: be like, oh my gosh, is this such and such
Speaker 1: the sun also sets, right, you know, and just go
Speaker 1: about it because she needed that drug and that attention
Speaker 1: and that rush. And I hate that part right like
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. I think it's because for me, I came
Speaker 1: around a lot of this stuff in my like mid thirties.
Speaker 1: I was a foreign person. I was good with who
Speaker 1: I was, So like being on camera. There's a level
Speaker 1: of like looseness with it that I have to learn
Speaker 1: at different points, in part I admit, because I'm afraid
Speaker 1: people are gonna be like, boy, he sure loves being
Speaker 1: on camera a little bit too much, Like you know
Speaker 1: that that's not the natural part of me. I like
Speaker 1: being on the microphone though, like I really there's something
Speaker 1: that hits me if I'm doing in a podcast or
Speaker 1: doing a radio show and I'm talking like I like that,
Speaker 1: And it's not because of the attention as much as
Speaker 1: I really just enjoyed the act of putting those ideas
Speaker 1: together and figuring out how to present it largely exceptoraneously.
Speaker 1: But like, I really I dig doing that part. TV boy.
Speaker 1: It's interesting though. It's a drug, Like you watch how
Speaker 1: people respond to that drug and it it can it
Speaker 1: can get people, like I've realized pretty quickly off the TV, like, Hey,
Speaker 1: you kind of gotta dabble in this. You gotta you know,
Speaker 1: you need to be You can't. You can't just slam this.
Speaker 1: You'll be messed up for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: You know it always and I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know him obviously being in southern California for
Speaker 2: a long time. Uh, and maybe you won't even want
Speaker 2: to respond, you know, Platchki always Uh. He comes across
Speaker 2: to me as someone who really loves being on TV.
Speaker 3: He really loves being on TV.
Speaker 1: That is an interesting thing that I don't know if
Speaker 1: I had fully thought about, like how much he loves it.
Speaker 1: I love that guy, by the way, Justin and.
Speaker 2: I'm not speaking any Oh yeah I do. When I
Speaker 2: watch him, I'm like, oh, he loves being on TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well. The thing is the reason I say that, though,
Speaker 1: is I like Bill Plashey so much as a person
Speaker 1: that I reflexively, no matter who I'm talking to, if
Speaker 1: you say Bill Plashky, I go, man, I love that guy.
Speaker 1: Like that's just that's It's one of the more unexpected
Speaker 1: developments of my life is how much I like him,
Speaker 1: like as a person, but like what he page, that
Speaker 1: guy loves being all camera. Yeah, that one's that one's
Speaker 1: fair to say. I do think I think Bill is
Speaker 1: probably one as most of the guys on around the
Speaker 1: Horn work because they were all we got to remember,
Speaker 1: they're all newspaper guys, and this is before we were
Speaker 1: putting all those guys on camera. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of them had to get comfortable with the idea that
Speaker 1: they are now people on camera. Because they also had
Speaker 1: a value system that had them thinking that, like, there's
Speaker 1: room for judgment in this, right, like they had always
Speaker 1: looked down on the TV people, right.
Speaker 3: That's very very interesting. I never I never. I don't
Speaker 3: know why that never occurred to me before.
Speaker 2: But also they there's an anonymity to these columnists writing
Speaker 2: for newspapers and dispensing their opinions and or judgments on
Speaker 2: players or coaches or front office people. That of course
Speaker 2: those people know who they are because they're beat writers
Speaker 2: or they're around the stadiums or whatever. But as a reader,
Speaker 2: you're not fully you don't have a relationship with that
Speaker 2: person like when you're seeing them on TV. And that
Speaker 2: show did really adjust that, which is literally because now
Speaker 2: when I read Bill Plashke, I'm I am taking what
Speaker 2: I can see about him and his personality and the
Speaker 2: little comment that I just made that he likes being
Speaker 2: on TV, that there are certain things that now when
Speaker 2: I read his work has changed the way that I
Speaker 2: read his work because I see him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what's interesting to me about that is I
Speaker 1: always say about my time on Around the Horn is
Speaker 1: that I was maybe the first regular Around the Horn
Speaker 1: panelists who for lack of a better term, grew up
Speaker 1: watching Around the Horn, like it started coming on when
Speaker 1: I was in graduate school. So I became familiar with
Speaker 1: those people as the people they were on television. And
Speaker 1: so over the course of I guess we'll call it
Speaker 1: a decade, I got to know the people on TV,
Speaker 1: Like I had to divorce myself from what I may
Speaker 1: have thought not necessarily bad, but just preconceived notions I
Speaker 1: had of these people based on television and then actually
Speaker 1: get to know them as people and be like, oh wow,
Speaker 1: I had this completely wrong about insert person here. Did
Speaker 1: I think from watching on television the Jim callistalls the
Speaker 1: dude that goes to radiohead shows with his son never
Speaker 1: would again.
Speaker 3: That's who he is, right, That's interesting.
Speaker 2: Do you think that for you because this is now
Speaker 2: you start or you're on televis like it or not?
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that gives you more power in
Speaker 2: the other things that you're doing?
Speaker 1: Yes, it does a couple things. One, boy, people sure
Speaker 1: do call you back a lot faster as the dude
Speaker 1: on television. But number two, and this is a big
Speaker 1: thing being on ESPN regularly, Like I had a stretch
Speaker 1: of seven years that I was on ESPN at least
Speaker 1: five times a week, Like sometimes it'd be more because
Speaker 1: I do this one show and they going to do
Speaker 1: another on the same day. Like men in this country
Speaker 1: know who I am. Like English speaking men in this
Speaker 1: country are very, very very familiar with me, and so
Speaker 1: when I started doing stuff like I did the HBO
Speaker 1: show with some of the things I'm trying to get,
Speaker 1: you know, going after having done that, there's rooms where
Speaker 1: people know who I am at the very least they
Speaker 1: know my name. That isn't the case if I do
Speaker 1: this really in any other space or any other media,
Speaker 1: right Like, I can calls, I can get meetings. I
Speaker 1: have been able to make legitimate friendships with like people
Speaker 1: I grew up idolizing because I'm the guy on TV
Speaker 1: now the guy and he you know as the guy
Speaker 1: on ESPN. And that's something that I realized very quickly.
Speaker 1: People still really care a lot about the fact that
Speaker 1: you were on television. Even in this day and time.
Speaker 1: They're like, Oh, the kids o't really care about this,
Speaker 1: They just care about streaming. Let what are these streaming people?
Speaker 1: Wind up with a TV show and they gonna act
Speaker 1: like it's different, Like it's it's a powerful currency in
Speaker 1: this society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you eventually began co hosting highly questionable of course,
Speaker 2: with Dan Levatard. Talk to me about that gig, because
Speaker 2: here's the thing that it seems to me by a
Speaker 2: lot of the work for you from the outside that
Speaker 2: comes after it game theory on HBO being forefront. You know,
Speaker 2: love him, like him, am ambivalent toward him. Dan has
Speaker 2: found a way to really focus on a cross section
Speaker 2: of sports and fun. I guess entertainment that it feels
Speaker 2: like influenced you moving forward, true or false.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: if your familiarity with me comes from seeing me on
Speaker 1: TV and not having like heard my radio stuff or
Speaker 1: read the stuff I'd written before, you might get a
Speaker 1: narrow view of kind of how I do it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, I'm doing this showed up on a
Speaker 1: Round the Horn and the second time that he won
Speaker 1: and broke out a championship belt like I'm here for
Speaker 1: the good time in its own way. But what highly
Speaker 1: questionable had that no other show has ever had or
Speaker 1: probably ever will have, is Dan mocking the whole concept
Speaker 1: of sports television by saying, I can put my father
Speaker 1: up here and we can still make a show out
Speaker 1: of it. Right, I can have him say what is off?
Speaker 1: It's what he things, but it's often the same thing
Speaker 1: you're a local columnist is saying, But it's my dad
Speaker 1: that's doing the thing. Where I was helpful to Dan
Speaker 1: though in that regard is Dan doesn't get that people
Speaker 1: do want to take this fort stuff seriously, and so
Speaker 1: you can dismiss that idea all that you want. You
Speaker 1: still got to give them some of the serious stuff
Speaker 1: because that is why they're here. They just don't need
Speaker 1: it to be as serious as it is in some
Speaker 1: of the other places. But yet Dan. Working with Dan
Speaker 1: was very helpful and having a reminder that you don't
Speaker 1: have to make this scene more serious than it is. Like,
Speaker 1: if this part of it is a joke, then you
Speaker 1: can kind of ride out with the idea that this
Speaker 1: part of it is a joke.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Like for him, he's a large child, so he kind
Speaker 1: of wants everything to be like it's not work. Like
Speaker 1: I'm the person that's there to remind him there are stakes.
Speaker 1: This is real. We have to be grown ups from
Speaker 1: time to time. Right, But at the same time, there
Speaker 1: is some value from having this large, sweaty child near you.
Speaker 2: Well, what I have always admired about your work is, yes,
Speaker 2: the fun, but really the thoughtfulness that you put into
Speaker 2: your takes for lack of a better word, or for
Speaker 2: you helping to contextualize a moment that is happening or
Speaker 2: a series that is happening, that may pass, that may
Speaker 2: be larger than one game or one series. You were
Speaker 2: able to have fun with it. But also ticket seriously,
Speaker 2: I do want to ask you about the hot take
Speaker 2: for me, is in a lot of ways destroying the
Speaker 2: experience of sports journalism. And I feel like you have
Speaker 2: largely avoided feeling like you need to do that to
Speaker 2: get attention. Talk to me a little bit, if you would,
Speaker 2: about your feelings about this, And of course I'm talking
Speaker 2: most famously about Undisputed with Skip Bayless and First Take
Speaker 2: with mister Smith.
Speaker 1: All right, So I will say for me personally, I
Speaker 1: have recognized for the better part of my life that
Speaker 1: when I start talking, people listen. So I never felt
Speaker 1: like I needed to say something contrived in order to
Speaker 1: hold people's attention or anything like that. Now, with the
Speaker 1: industry of television, I agree with you that what most
Speaker 1: people would term the hot take is a problem, right,
Speaker 1: And I think there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: feel like they need to have this thing to say,
Speaker 1: and that's what's going to make people jump out and
Speaker 1: get it. Now, I don't mind your hot take. Like
Speaker 1: my good friend Nick Right, for example, what he is
Speaker 1: brilliant at is. It's a different form of what I
Speaker 1: call the Bill burd model, with Bill Burr is so
Speaker 1: good at starting off with some crazy premise that makes
Speaker 1: you all comfortable. It's like, why not let me explain?
Speaker 1: And then you start explaining and you're like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: not nearly as crazy as I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. At the beginning, I thought we were all
Speaker 1: going to get fired. I thought I was going to
Speaker 1: get fired just having a ticket to this shit right right.
Speaker 1: My buddy Nick is very similar to that, where he
Speaker 1: says crazy thing, but he always has like a real
Speaker 1: defense that comes behind it. Where I get worried about
Speaker 1: the hot take stuff for me. And this is really
Speaker 1: a conclusion I've come to more recently than anything else,
Speaker 1: is that is us making the story about ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: is us making it about our ability to win some
Speaker 1: kind of argument and go back and forth. And what
Speaker 1: I think gets lost in the grand scheme of that
Speaker 1: is how much like the people that we cover are incredible,
Speaker 1: Like the people that we cover are better at their
Speaker 1: jobs than ninety nine point nine percent of us are
Speaker 1: at our jobs. And we don't spend nearly enough time
Speaker 1: just talking about how much we enjoy watching these people
Speaker 1: do these incredible things that we buy and large of
Speaker 1: ourselves try to like reproduce a reasonable fact simile of
Speaker 1: like we don't do enough of that now. Like with
Speaker 1: those two shows, Skip Bayless is that person and stephen
Speaker 1: A is the person that you see there. Like neither
Speaker 1: of them are particularly contrived. I watch First Take a
Speaker 1: lot more than I watch Undisputed, and I will actually
Speaker 1: say I think that Stephen A is more thoughtful and
Speaker 1: measured than he gets credit for. But also he is
Speaker 1: understanding of the fact that he is expected to drive,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, the entertainment of that show,
Speaker 1: and we'll dial it up and we'll get to these
Speaker 1: places and will seem kind of loud and everything else.
Speaker 1: But rarely. The only times I see Steven A talk
Speaker 1: about something on TV and I feel like I don't
Speaker 1: know if he knows what he's talking about, is because
Speaker 1: that man works so many hours in a given day,
Speaker 1: in a given week that now they threw something out
Speaker 1: there because they need it for business, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to carry that sort of thing too. Skip Bayless believes
Speaker 1: that he was put on his earth to argue about
Speaker 1: sports like he believes that this is a god given path.
Speaker 1: I have read him saying this, so he goes about
Speaker 1: this and sees it in a much, much, much different way.
Speaker 1: But there was a point I guess it was about
Speaker 1: ten years ago, like that was when Richard Sherman went
Speaker 1: on and hit them with them better at life than You,
Speaker 1: and Janel Rose hit skipped with the thing about being
Speaker 1: on junior varsity. It had gotten so ramped up and
Speaker 1: it had gotten so hyped up that it is defined
Speaker 1: that whole genre of television in a way that I
Speaker 1: honestly think it is largely moved away from. They had
Speaker 1: people have the back and forth, but you don't have
Speaker 1: nearly as many and like the shouting matches and stuff
Speaker 1: that you would see people having on television back then,
Speaker 1: you don't have nearly as many of those. But I
Speaker 1: also think that this current time that we're in post Kaepernick,
Speaker 1: where we had all this stuff come up with Kaepernick
Speaker 1: and people, you know, the whole stick to sports thing,
Speaker 1: need stick sports and needs to stick to sports. But
Speaker 1: I don't think people realize how far that went. Like
Speaker 1: I think it was one thing when you were just
Speaker 1: saying that to get people to not talk about the police.
Speaker 1: But now when you look at it, so much of
Speaker 1: this stuff that sports is really just just sticking pall.
Speaker 1: That's it, And that's not like I don't think that's
Speaker 1: really that interesting either, And I think to your point,
Speaker 1: that takes away from the ability to talk about things
Speaker 1: and more nuanced way, because how much nuance can you
Speaker 1: have just talking about the sports, right?
Speaker 3: I think nuance is great.
Speaker 2: I think I think having an opinion is great, and
Speaker 2: particularly from people like you who watch and experience and
Speaker 2: are hearing things going on behind the scenes and contextualizing
Speaker 2: it within at times, as you just mentioned, larger socio
Speaker 2: political things I think are incredibly interesting.
Speaker 3: But brock Purty is Jesus, Like what like? What like? What?
Speaker 3: What like? What like? What is this? Like? Why? Why
Speaker 3: are why are we? You know?
Speaker 2: And then an all out fight ensuing about whether or
Speaker 2: not brock Purty is Jesus uh I'm talking about before
Speaker 2: the season is absurd to me.
Speaker 1: But the funniest thing like party Party creates what I
Speaker 1: think is a great example to look at because there's
Speaker 1: this divide of football fans that doesn't get discussed enough,
Speaker 1: which is about how much college football you actually watch,
Speaker 1: because if you or a college football watcher. You had
Speaker 1: opinions on what the Brock Party Show was because he's
Speaker 1: a two time All conference quarterback and it was a
Speaker 1: roller coaster ride, right. And so he gets in the
Speaker 1: NFL and I look up and all these people are
Speaker 1: talking about him like he's just a game manager guy
Speaker 1: that just makes all the throws. And we're like, baby,
Speaker 1: you got no idea. What's coming in the last three
Speaker 1: weeks have been Oh that's the guy we saw at
Speaker 1: I was stayed. But the NFL people had no idea.
Speaker 1: So all they had to lean on was every trope
Speaker 1: and cliche that they ever had. It's like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: not that big, he's a white dude. He's gotta be smart.
Speaker 1: Otherwise how could do the seventh round pick still be
Speaker 1: getting this? And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, you're ready,
Speaker 1: You're in. He's gonna do a lot of dumb stuff.
Speaker 1: You're gonna see He's gonna do some stuff that blows
Speaker 1: your mind too, but old dumb stuff is all the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of all of let's call it major sports. What
Speaker 2: do you consider yourself to be? Well, what's your favorite
Speaker 2: and what do you feel like is you are the
Speaker 2: most knowledgeable at or in.
Speaker 1: Okay, I would say if you were to ask me,
Speaker 1: like knowledgeable on the history of it would probably be
Speaker 1: college football because college football is just so fascinating, with
Speaker 1: little to do with the actual football itself, just the
Speaker 1: crazy people who are around it and the crazy things
Speaker 1: that they do. I mean, after all, I let you
Speaker 1: up on the wiki. You went to college at a
Speaker 1: place that when you got there didn't have a football
Speaker 1: because crazy people were doing crazy things, you know, So
Speaker 1: like on that level, they're basketball, probably just because it's
Speaker 1: a game. I think it's easier to understand. I got
Speaker 1: probably more participatory knowledge of doing that. But like college football,
Speaker 1: and it is really a wild thing. Becase I've had
Speaker 1: this problem in the entirety of my career because people
Speaker 1: think the college football is kind of like the exclusive
Speaker 1: purview of white men. Like I could. I never could
Speaker 1: get people. I'd be like, yeah, I'm really into college football,
Speaker 1: but really I didn't. I didn't think that, Like what
Speaker 1: what what is the reason that you didn't think that?
Speaker 1: If I, I mean, if I said baseball, they would
Speaker 1: have had less of a surprise. But I enjoy talking
Speaker 1: about college football more than anything else because you just
Speaker 1: wind up with these wild stories are like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy tried to get that guy fired so he could
Speaker 1: stay there because if he stayed there one more year,
Speaker 1: he would have ten years in the state system and
Speaker 1: then he could get a pension. Oh okay, I'm.
Speaker 2: In, Well, what should and what is going to happen
Speaker 2: to Jim Harbaugh.
Speaker 1: So this is a situation where and I think the
Speaker 1: longer we all live, the more we realize the number
Speaker 1: one thing that gets you fired is when your boss
Speaker 1: wants to fire you. That's all it comes down to,
Speaker 1: does your boss want to fire you? Because they don't
Speaker 1: have to fire him for what's going going on with
Speaker 1: the signs, stealing and all of that. They don't have to.
Speaker 1: But Ohio State also didn't have to fire Jim Tressel
Speaker 1: over those tattoos. They wanted to because they thought they
Speaker 1: could get Urban Meyer. Urban Meyer ain't walking through the
Speaker 1: door from Michigan, right, So I think they'll probably get
Speaker 1: some other suspension in the NCAA will try to wallop
Speaker 1: him just to try to prove some sort of point.
Speaker 1: Because look, now that the kids can get paid, they
Speaker 1: don't really got nothing to do. They gotta be bored
Speaker 1: as hell now that they can't just stop the kids
Speaker 1: from getting paid so they don't have to come down
Speaker 1: on somebody like hardball and make it happen. And it's
Speaker 1: just wow, this is the nonsensical nature of college football.
Speaker 1: We're here because some dude was stealing signs. That's the
Speaker 1: controversy that we got. But just a couple months ago
Speaker 1: they said at Northwestern the boys were slapping each other
Speaker 1: with they meet, and we didn't have no time to
Speaker 1: really delve into that. I don't really understand what we're
Speaker 1: doing out here these days. It's sports coverage?
Speaker 3: Is it? Because it's Michigan and Jim.
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of it. Is his
Speaker 1: personality that rubs people. I'm fascinated by him because I
Speaker 1: find him to be so sincere and I think in
Speaker 1: this where it gets interesting is people feel like he's
Speaker 1: lying to them at various points, and I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he believes what he's saying. It may not be true.
Speaker 1: I don't know what mental gymnastics he has used to
Speaker 1: work himself around, right, But Jim is he is what
Speaker 1: he is like. I learned to really like Barabad when
Speaker 1: he first came out. When Kaepernick did his thing, and
Speaker 1: he was like, I don't stand by what he's doing
Speaker 1: or the message, and then went back and was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I overreacted, and then wrote so other for Time magazine
Speaker 1: about how he had overreacted and how he started doing
Speaker 1: work with people about trying to make sure the folks
Speaker 1: have proper legal representation when they have to go into
Speaker 1: the system and everything else. And I don't agree with
Speaker 1: him on this, but he is a pretty staunch anti
Speaker 1: abortion guy. And he had given some talk where he
Speaker 1: talked about how he just doesn't think that people should
Speaker 1: have abortions, which I mean as just that right there.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a nonsensical premise until you add
Speaker 1: all the real world factors into it. Like I could
Speaker 1: see how somebody would get there and somebody says something
Speaker 1: to him about, well, who's going to take care of
Speaker 1: these unwanted kids, and he was like, well, if you
Speaker 1: don't want them, bring them to my house. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you right now, he meant that if you showed
Speaker 1: up in his house and put a baby in a
Speaker 1: basket and said you said, leave this kid here. He
Speaker 1: is crazy enough that I think that he might take
Speaker 1: that kid in there and be like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: eighteen more years, this is what we're gonna do. Right,
Speaker 1: But he's so intense, and he runs so many people
Speaker 1: the wrong way, and he's one of the few personalities
Speaker 1: left in college football that anybody has a passionate opinion about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, see, to me, as we've been talking
Speaker 2: about the variety of things that we're talking about about,
Speaker 2: it's it's sticks and balls, but it's politics, there's culture,
Speaker 2: there's race, there's I mean, to me, this story, the
Speaker 2: part of this story that's so fascinating, which I haven't
Speaker 2: heard anybody right about because I'm not a writer. The
Speaker 2: NCAA moves like a slug holding on to a turtle,
Speaker 2: so there's no way anything's gonna happen there. So really,
Speaker 2: as I understand it, the only way they can get
Speaker 2: punished is by the Big Ten, which has a financial
Speaker 2: so it's in not punishing even if they don't like
Speaker 2: him and he rubs them the wrong way. They need
Speaker 2: Michigan to get into the College Football Playoff and get
Speaker 2: that big payday.
Speaker 3: For their conference. Yeah, so they're not going to punish him.
Speaker 2: And it's just to me that that's what's fascinating about sports.
Speaker 1: Well, Also, the eighties and early nineties were a different
Speaker 1: time with the NCAA where they were willing to do
Speaker 1: the thing that really hurt, which was take you off
Speaker 1: of television. Right, you know, a joke with you about
Speaker 1: the SMU thing. But that whole Southwest conference they went
Speaker 1: through and got everybody just about at every point, even
Speaker 1: the big boys, they were pulling them off television. Alabama
Speaker 1: got to the brink of the death penalty at one
Speaker 1: point they were willing to do that, and then they realized, Man,
Speaker 1: all that's doing is costing people money. Ain't doing that
Speaker 1: no more crazy, you know, So they decided they were
Speaker 1: gonna stop doing that. And so you're absolutely right. Is
Speaker 1: there any real incentive for there to be any real
Speaker 1: like mechanized punishment against Michigan. Probably not. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you're not gonna get me all bored with
Speaker 1: well you really got to shut them down for this
Speaker 1: science stealing thing.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yeah, having a.
Speaker 2: Hard time getting me to care boys, Right, you've managed
Speaker 2: to be a strong voice for racial justice in this
Speaker 2: field that, as we've talked about often once to just
Speaker 2: put their head down and focus on the sticks and balls.
Speaker 3: Do you think that your voice has been welcomed by
Speaker 3: and large, or do you feel like it has been
Speaker 3: not appreciated.
Speaker 1: I think it has been appreciated by Honestly, if it's
Speaker 1: appreciated by one person, then I probably does some good, right.
Speaker 1: But I actually think it's been appreciated by a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And I think that I talked to Tanna
Speaker 1: hoose Coats about this once and he made the point
Speaker 1: that I said a little earlier, it's just like you're
Speaker 1: getting people who somebody like him could never reach because
Speaker 1: they're not coming to the Atlantic or wherever the places
Speaker 1: are that he might be. Like, I'm able to come
Speaker 1: to where people are. And I think that people who
Speaker 1: thought they would not appreciate it at first ultimately did
Speaker 1: come to appreciate it, because I think they came to
Speaker 1: respect the way that I choose to go about this.
Speaker 1: My brother made a point to me when I first
Speaker 1: started writing that has been a guiding light in my career,
Speaker 1: which was a good argument is not one that a
Speaker 1: genius cannot refute. It is one that a fool cannot refute.
Speaker 1: And so I've given example. This is when I was
Speaker 1: working in North Carolina and it was one of those
Speaker 1: Confederate flag stories that come up, like I think South
Speaker 1: Carolina was doing their Confederate flag thing and the ACC
Speaker 1: was supposed to have some event there and yeah, it
Speaker 1: was all I'll never forget. Yeah, yeah, And I remember
Speaker 1: I did a tournament, you're right. And I remember I
Speaker 1: did some event or some show in South Carolina where
Speaker 1: a guy who'd always been very nice to me on
Speaker 1: Twitter asked me to come on. He had three names,
Speaker 1: like he's that kind of country like I want to say,
Speaker 1: it's like Alan Wayne or something like that, and he
Speaker 1: had me come on and then next thing I know,
Speaker 1: he's like the ACC or as I called them, the
Speaker 1: acc PC, and he just started rolling and said in
Speaker 1: the N double ACP said this, bonbonni? Why did the
Speaker 1: N double ACP do that? And I go, you talking
Speaker 1: to me? He says yeah. I was like, my bad,
Speaker 1: I don't work for them. I don't know, right. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, what's going on here? And so I
Speaker 1: came on my show and I know how people feel
Speaker 1: about that flag. And honestly, I grew up in Texas
Speaker 1: and like had a next door neighbor who had stars
Speaker 1: and bars, bumper sticker, but it was always very nice
Speaker 1: to me. Whenever we talked in the driveway, like I didn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't hit It didn't hit me viscerally in the
Speaker 1: ways that he hits a lot of other people. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to talk about this because
Speaker 1: I'm not buying the arguments that people are getting back
Speaker 1: from me. And I never felt more accomplished in my
Speaker 1: career than this moment. So I get on the mic
Speaker 1: and I say, hey, I understand that a lot of
Speaker 1: you are making this argument that the Confederate flag for you,
Speaker 1: is an emblem of Southern pride, and that's really all
Speaker 1: you're trying to say. You're not jumping off for slavery,
Speaker 1: you're not supporting any of that, You're just supporting your
Speaker 1: Southern identity. And I said, that's cool. I get that,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I as a very proud Southern to
Speaker 1: feel the exact same way that you do. So I
Speaker 1: just want you to tell me, why don't you come
Speaker 1: up with something for Southern pride that we can all
Speaker 1: get with? Like, you know why I can't get with that?
Speaker 1: So why don't you come up with something that we
Speaker 1: can all get with? And I went to the commercial break.
Speaker 1: You know, people love to call the show, right, And
Speaker 1: I went in, and people love to call me happy,
Speaker 1: they love to call me mad, they love to call
Speaker 1: me anyway they wanted to. And we went to the
Speaker 1: commercial break and I said, all right, cool, well, anybody
Speaker 1: want to give us a call and let us know,
Speaker 1: just like, why can't you come up with something that
Speaker 1: we could all share? And I looked over at that
Speaker 1: phone for those four or five minutes of that commercial break,
Speaker 1: and it did not rain. One time. I had stumped them.
Speaker 1: I had completely left them flumixed and left them in
Speaker 1: a place where they had to say to themselves, damn,
Speaker 1: he's got a point, right. Those people who did not
Speaker 1: call probably didn't think that they would appreciate me. I
Speaker 1: bet you in that moment, a lot of them did.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people get mad, and a lot of people say the
Speaker 1: angry things, and they may say all kinds of things
Speaker 1: about me that I think are like accusatory and inaccurate.
Speaker 1: But I think that there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are quiet, and the folks realize who would say
Speaker 1: that they have appreciated some of the perspective that I've
Speaker 1: offered on these things. Because I'm not. I don't intend
Speaker 1: to badger every individual about it because I know it's
Speaker 1: a lot bigger than them. But you can listen, and
Speaker 1: I think that if you deal with people the right way,
Speaker 1: you can get them to do so that's awesome.
Speaker 2: I have to mention your father, who was You mentioned
Speaker 2: it briefly before. He was one of the Southern University
Speaker 2: sixteen arrested and then banned from public colleges in Louisiana
Speaker 2: for organizing anti segregation cit ins. Do you think, well,
Speaker 2: did he talk about his activism with you and do
Speaker 2: you think that that has shaped you today?
Speaker 1: So what's interesting when you mentioned that is my mother's
Speaker 1: actually a little bit more gangster than him when it
Speaker 1: comes to that. My mother, when she was fifteen years old,
Speaker 1: was the face of the city in movement in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 1: And it's these, I want to say, the second like
Speaker 1: second city in movement in America. The first one was
Speaker 1: in Wichita. This is the second one. So if you're
Speaker 1: ever here in the Kanye West songs where he talks
Speaker 1: about his mom being arrested at the age of six
Speaker 1: at the city ins, these are the city ins that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. And so I bet my dad was
Speaker 1: ready to brag to my mama when they met in
Speaker 1: graduate school about his revolutionary bona fides, and she was
Speaker 1: right there to tell him no. Actually, I spoke at
Speaker 1: the national NAACP convention in nineteen sixty and so what
Speaker 1: is interesting about that though, is generally yes, but specifically no.
Speaker 1: I've learned probably more about my parents on that front
Speaker 1: as an adult than I knew and really understood growing
Speaker 1: up at any point. Like I knew my mother was
Speaker 1: involved in these sit ins. I knew my father had
Speaker 1: been put out of school behind those, But I think
Speaker 1: I had to truly get older to like really appreciating
Speaker 1: grasp the magnitude of both what they had done. But
Speaker 1: I also think for them that it was important. They
Speaker 1: are not at all self aggrandizing people, and I think
Speaker 1: that it's honestly a humility that comes from it. Like
Speaker 1: when we left that we moved out of the house
Speaker 1: in Houston in ninety seven, I remember we were going
Speaker 1: through some drawer and we came across, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those cardboard cylinders and like, oh, I it was
Speaker 1: in there, and we look at it and as my
Speaker 1: dad's PhD, you know, like you know, like we're going
Speaker 1: about it a little bit differently here, but no, it
Speaker 1: was my dad made a point about his father that
Speaker 1: makes me understand him in a way. He's and he
Speaker 1: said himself, he's medaled over years, but like what he
Speaker 1: learned from his father was if there was something to
Speaker 1: be done, he did it. Consequences be damned, and that's
Speaker 1: how he winds up getting kicked out of school. He
Speaker 1: doesn't exactly view it that same way. But what I
Speaker 1: got from them, more than anything else, is a real
Speaker 1: picture of people who've done the real work. So now
Speaker 1: when you see everybody who thinks they some kind of
Speaker 1: god damn activist on Twitter just because they said something
Speaker 1: that made somebody mad, No, I've seen the real thing, right, Like,
Speaker 1: think you think you about this revolution, you think you
Speaker 1: about changing the world. No, no, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 1: I've met people who got stories that will blow your mind.
Speaker 1: In that regard, I mean people that have had to
Speaker 1: take they fight to the Supreme Court and shootouts with
Speaker 1: the federal government. I've I've met a different caliber of
Speaker 1: person when it comes to this, and that's, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: the perspective of understanding what it takes to really get
Speaker 1: it done. Has been really helpful.
Speaker 2: I started podcasting a few years ago. It seems like
Speaker 2: a long time for me now, four ishs five years ago.
Speaker 2: You've been doing it basically since the beginning, your first podcast,
Speaker 2: The Evening Jones.
Speaker 3: Going strong since twenty eleven. What do you like about it?
Speaker 1: You know, it's so funny because I started doing The
Speaker 1: even Jones because I worked for a company where I
Speaker 1: was doing a radio show out of my house, doing
Speaker 1: ID in line and every now and then, then every
Speaker 1: now and then they would forget to pay the bill
Speaker 1: and so it would take like three or four days
Speaker 1: to get it up. But my people wanted content, So
Speaker 1: I started doing this just to make sure that the
Speaker 1: people had content. And what I liked about that was
Speaker 1: because that one is like it's a live webcast, right,
Speaker 1: like I take questions from people. I really liked the
Speaker 1: intimacy in the back and forth of it, right. What
Speaker 1: I liked about podcasts from the very beginning though, was
Speaker 1: the portability of it. Like when I first started doing radio,
Speaker 1: I was trying to push to people like, hey, how
Speaker 1: do I get this out of the podcast because I
Speaker 1: knew that would be the best promotion, Like I rather
Speaker 1: than being beholden whether or not somebody was in the radio,
Speaker 1: you know, in the car listen to radio at a
Speaker 1: specific point in time, like, let me get this to
Speaker 1: them in little bite and they could go get it
Speaker 1: and then as time went on. What I like about
Speaker 1: doing a podcast now after having done many different forms
Speaker 1: of television, is it's an opt in product. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: I need to be conscientious in terms of my topicality
Speaker 1: and not go too far off the beaten path and
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. But I'm dealing with people who
Speaker 1: decided to come here. I have more leeway, I have
Speaker 1: more flexibility. I can go in more directions. So if
Speaker 1: all of my sports podcasts, my buddy Joel Anderson as
Speaker 1: Slate just got through doing four podcast series on Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 1: then we can talk about that series for forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Because the people who are here trust me enough that
Speaker 1: they know, Okay, this isn't sports, but it must be
Speaker 1: worth something that Bomani's willing to talk about it for
Speaker 1: forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's that, you know. It's that it's I know that
Speaker 1: if you're here, you're here for me to forget about
Speaker 1: life for a while. You know, like I absolutely, I'm
Speaker 1: very aware of what this is.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Your podcast The Right Time just relaunched after eight years
Speaker 2: at the proverbial mothership ESPN. You're now back on wave.
Speaker 2: Are you excited to be You do this three three
Speaker 2: days a week, you do video, you do you do
Speaker 2: it all? Are you Are you excited to be back?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I was excited to be back. If for no
Speaker 1: other reason, then, like not working for three months makes
Speaker 1: me realize how much work you do, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Right? I enjoy the hour of doing it,
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes there's other things that are hassles
Speaker 1: and everything else, but I like when I know it's
Speaker 1: me and this audience that's talking, I enjoy getting gone
Speaker 1: and doing that. And so I was glad to get back.
Speaker 1: I'd work with ESPN in various capacities for the better
Speaker 1: part of the last twenty years. So I'm not a
Speaker 1: person that leaves there and has all these terrible things
Speaker 1: to say about the place.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I changed my life in a lot of ways, But
Speaker 1: I think for a podcast, this is going to be
Speaker 1: a much better chance for success, to get more eyeballs
Speaker 1: on it, and at a place that I think for
Speaker 1: the medium itself is more concerned. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to be back.
Speaker 2: Do you think you're gonna have more freedom? And I'm
Speaker 2: not asking you to talk crap about Oh oh.
Speaker 1: No, I get it in theory, yes, but ay, but
Speaker 1: don't nobody really pay attention to what you're doing in
Speaker 1: the first place. You got more freedom than you realize, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no more freedom to do it a Saturday morning
Speaker 1: radio or Saturday night radio show. You boss, ain't listening,
Speaker 1: Ain't nobody calling, Like there's no more freedom than that.
Speaker 1: But I have learned over time, and I've always been
Speaker 1: able to figure out how to say exactly what I
Speaker 1: wanted to say within any constraint that somebody has, And
Speaker 1: so I probably have the freedom to say something stupid
Speaker 1: in a way that I didn't have before. And I
Speaker 1: prefer not to flex that, you know, But I've I
Speaker 1: truly feel like, yeah, I mean, I truly feel like
Speaker 1: I learned how to do this stuff in such a
Speaker 1: way that now that I'm here, I'm kind of like,
Speaker 1: was I really losing anything? Like, oh, I can curse more.
Speaker 1: I probably should have been Like thing you learn while
Speaker 1: doing it, HBO show, it actually turns you into approove
Speaker 1: right because everybody is like, ooh hbo, let me write
Speaker 1: fuck and they put it in as many times. You're like, guys,
Speaker 1: we don't need the.
Speaker 3: Curse that much, all right, rapid fire. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm just inventing this in the moment college football team
Speaker 3: you root for.
Speaker 1: I used to root for the University of Texas, and
Speaker 1: then I had to stop because of that odds at
Speaker 1: Texas thing where black people are like, hey, you find
Speaker 1: this song very offensive. We're like, oh, black boys are
Speaker 1: going to sing that song, dammit. So I have backed
Speaker 1: out on them. I wish that Miami could get good again,
Speaker 1: so I could go back to rooting for Miami because
Speaker 1: that was Come on, rooting for Miami was a great time.
Speaker 3: You're from Atlanta, come on.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know. The Georgia. The Georgia
Speaker 1: thing is interesting. I do think they have the best
Speaker 1: looking uniforms. That is. That is where I will always go.
Speaker 1: My problem with Georgia right now is they're so good,
Speaker 1: but it's no fun. They're just super good, right, like's like,
Speaker 1: let's I just need them to be a little more fun.
Speaker 1: That's all I need is just give you a little
Speaker 1: more fun because they are a destroying machine. They are.
Speaker 1: And by the way, what ified that clause in the
Speaker 1: laws of the State of Georgia that say the University
Speaker 1: of Georgia is not allowed to run a single pass
Speaker 1: play without at least one white person throwing in or catching.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've called a play in the history
Speaker 1: of that school. How one of those things being the case?
Speaker 1: You have to think about it. Well, no, but the
Speaker 1: year there'sckly year.
Speaker 3: There was yes, and also uh uh.
Speaker 2: And because he became a trader, because he decided to
Speaker 2: leave because he didn't like being understand in the fields
Speaker 2: fields there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was gonna be throwing the lad or
Speaker 1: brock or one of those, like at least the lads
Speaker 1: and brocks are good now. He used to always be
Speaker 1: the one where they be like, oh, that's Matthew Safford's roommate.
Speaker 1: You always throwing out there like that.
Speaker 2: I recently saw your take. I find him so fascinating. Wimby,
Speaker 2: I mean, is it the most exciting rookie? Said Shack.
Speaker 1: That's more closest example that I can get to. It's
Speaker 1: more exciting for me than lebron was. And Shaq I
Speaker 1: think is a good example because Shaq had done three
Speaker 1: years of college, so there was reason to think that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's gonna jump like that's back when rookies of that
Speaker 1: caliber could jump in and be NBA players. And Shaq
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I've never seen anything like this before,
Speaker 1: but not like this. I've never seen anything like I
Speaker 1: didn't know, Like you didn't think a human life shack
Speaker 1: was likely, but it seemed possible in its own way, right,
Speaker 1: Like you've seen really big guys, you've seen really tall guys.
Speaker 1: It could be both at once, right, I couldn't believe,
Speaker 1: like all the things I see this guy do, I
Speaker 1: just can't believe. Like I say, he looked like it's
Speaker 1: a grand opening, right, like them plastic things with the
Speaker 1: wind gets them, except he can really, really really play basketball.
Speaker 1: And he's an orderisme bitch too, like he's flexing at people,
Speaker 1: and shit, imbody did teach you all that in friends?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, French, the French people can be nasty. We
Speaker 3: know this.
Speaker 1: Come on again, I didn't know they were doing it
Speaker 1: in basketball though, you.
Speaker 2: Know, no, I I know, I know the whole idea
Speaker 2: of like, oh, seeing somebody in person, seeing somebody in person.
Speaker 3: I want to see him in person.
Speaker 2: It's different, like I want to I want to sit
Speaker 2: down there near the court and I want to I
Speaker 2: want to watch him operate.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something. I went to Summer League
Speaker 1: in Vegas this year for that second reason. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be there for the game. And the internet had
Speaker 1: all the jokes about his first game. We did not
Speaker 1: have jokes in the building. We could not believe what
Speaker 1: it was that we were saying. You were watching a
Speaker 1: seven foot five dude out here, dribbler like Kyrie Irving
Speaker 1: like it just it was. It was stunning and shocking
Speaker 1: to see. You know, it is a difference seeing something
Speaker 1: like this in person. Television just takes some away, Like
Speaker 1: football is the biggest one where if you ever go
Speaker 1: watch football game from the sideline, honestly, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you've ever been in a car and your
Speaker 1: car broke down on the side of the interstate, you
Speaker 1: really don't know how fast the cars are going until
Speaker 1: running past you, right, same thing. No, I want to
Speaker 1: see this with my own eyes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: Good luck on the relaunch of the right time. I
Speaker 2: absolutely will be watching. Congratulations on your continued success all
Speaker 2: across the podcast panel.
Speaker 3: I find you.
Speaker 2: I find you refreshing because of your depth and intelligence
Speaker 2: to listen to you always. So thank you so much
Speaker 2: for coming on here, and thank you for forgiving well
Speaker 2: for giving Southerners a good name.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you having me on. Man would have to
Speaker 1: do this.
Speaker 2: Again, absolutely, I appreciate it. Good luck the rest of
Speaker 2: the way. Oh wait, who are the best two teams
Speaker 2: in the AFC?
Speaker 1: The best two teams in the AFC are the Chiefs
Speaker 1: and shockingly, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Speaker 3: Interesting, are the Jets going to make a playoff run?
Speaker 1: I hope they do. I'm actually enjoying that. It's making me.
Speaker 1: It's a fun little run. They're a little into that could,
Speaker 1: and you never get to be that in New York.
Speaker 1: They are a little into that could. I went through
Speaker 1: five years. It's some really terrible football on over the
Speaker 1: air television here. I am just glad to have interesting teams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, I can't wait to see your takes
Speaker 2: as we continue along.
Speaker 3: Best of luck to you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you bad all right.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Bomani, Thank you so much, buddy. It was great getting
Speaker 2: to know you today. I love what you said about
Speaker 2: podcasting being an opt in medium. It is so true
Speaker 2: and I am going to continue to opt in to
Speaker 2: your show. And you're very astute analysis. Everybody, you too
Speaker 2: should opt in to the right time to hear more
Speaker 2: from Bomani. And thank you all for opting in to
Speaker 2: hear me today. I hope you'll come back next time.
Speaker 2: Until then, feel good and have a great week.
Speaker 1: Off.
Speaker 2: The Beat is hosted and executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner,
Speaker 2: alongside our executive producer lingg Lee. Our senior producer is
Speaker 2: Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and
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