Bomani Jones will admit that, in his previous job as a commentator across ESPN’s various platforms, he sometimes just rolled out of bed and started his day. “Before, I would just get on the radio, you hit a switch, give me 10 minutes, and I just go off the top of my head and give it to you,” he says. But things have clearly changed, as we sit atop a swanky building overlooking the Hudson in his new corner office, listening to the smooth jazz sounds of keyboardist Bob James while morning creeps to the afternoon. Today, Bomani is gearing up for the release of Game Theory, a new HBO late night talk show, and his first ever solo show. For the first time in a long time, he’s feeling pressure. And the trappings around him are constant reminders of evolution in his life: how his assistant places fresh fruit on his desk in the mornings; his bracingly early call-times for hair and makeup; the men on the street who stop him when he’s outside recording skits.
Haven’t you heard? Bomani is big time now. Freed from the corporate prison of ESPN, Bomani has blossomed into something new entirely. He’s no longer just the smart podcaster, the adept TV man, the most insightful sports commentator on television. Now, he’s something bigger than he ever imagined.
It’s a lot of change, but in his mind, it’s worth it, simply because the new product is that good. “This hasn’t been compromised,” he says. “There’s certain – and I don’t know if ‘concessions’ is the right word – but there’s some things you have to do based on the formats that you’re in. Every show has a different purpose to it. People ask me what’s gonna be different about this show than what’s on ESPN?”
That’s a fair question, I say. He shoots me a glance and raises his eyebrows. What? It is!
“Well,” he says, very matter of factly. “ESPN doesn’t make shows like this.”
It isn’t bluster when Bomani says that Game Theory, which HBO picked up for a six-episode run, is something different. That’s because Game Theory is a collection of a few things. It’s got late-night monologues mixed with skits, and commentary mixed with guest appearances (Bomani’s already tapped, Stephen A. Smith, Dawn Staley, and Roy Wood Jr. to stop by). Bomani starts at a desk like he’s a lead man for Outside The Lines before he gets into his material that ranges from jovial barbershop talk to serious topics around economics or racism in athletics, all of which makes for a thirty-minute journey through the mind of one of sports television’s most unique brains.
Some of the act sounds the same, sure: hatin’ on Coach K because all of his uber-white teams crushed our beloved Black ones; skits asking why we let hockey players openly fight for entertainment (“We gonna talk about these white folks like animals like they talk about us,” he cracks), or poking fun at how Ben Simmons’ first comments to the New York press after being traded from Philadelphia sounded like a secret Drake album, so loaded were they with moody subtext. He’s certainly gonna play the hits. The main difference is that it’s his brainchild, a show made in his image and singularly from his imagination. Bomani’s not jockeying for position on a stage with talent he never felt was at his level. On HBO, he’s the center of attention—the sole star with something to say.
“This is everything I’ve asked for,” he tells me. “I took enough body blows along the way to know.”
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It’s been a long road to this moment, for Bomani. A child of Atlanta and Houston, after attending Clark Atlanta University as an undergraduate he went west to be an economist like his mother, getting a master’s at Claremont. But he also kept his identity as a man from the South, pursuing another master’s from the University of North Carolina. He thought he’d get a doctorate, but life changed, as it has a tendency to do when we find our true calling.
At first, he cut his teeth as a music critic online, writing a bit in undergrad, blogging for AOL, and eventually writing columns for ESPN. This launched a decade of wearing a few hats: He hosted a few different radio shows in Raleigh and one in his second bedroom in Durham, in North Carolina; he did YouTube stuff for the sports site SBNation; he dipped into podcasting before it was a “thing”; finally, in 2013, he became a full-time employee at ESPN. He lived in Miami and with his buddy Dan Le Batard and co-hosted the show Highly Questionable until 2017, when it was time for a new challenge.
This time Bomani would get a new show, High Noon, that was more in his vision, with a younger co-host named Pablo Torre. The thought was that they both would flourish, and share the spotlight as the future of what The Mouse could give a growing base of viewers who genuinely wanted their hosts to stop ignoring the fault lines upon which athletics were made. Black folks were in the streets protesting; women were calling out bad actors in the workplace; and the idea was that Pablo and Bomani were the best people suited to make something like this work.
So, Bomani doesn’t like to say that High Noon failed. But he’s certain it didn’t work. And he says it didn’t for the same reasons most shows with two hosts don’t make it. “We did not have chemistry between me and Pablo,” he says. “That’s all it came down to.” After High Noon was canceled in 2020, he was back to the smaller ESPN shows (Around the Horn & Highly Questionable) and new digital upstarts (Parting Shots for OTL ). It was a rough transition, but a necessary one: “We’re gonna learn, right now, who’s bout’ it and who’s not,” he would tell his friends.
The pandemic didn’t make life easier for anyone, either. Bomani shut himself into his house, grew that widow’s peak out, and made some decisions about what was going to be next. For a moment, it was possible we no longer needed to see Bomani everyday on our screens, as cancellation can rattle even the most self-assured man. It’s why his tone has changed around the premise of “success.” To Bomani, “the success is that we got here,” he says. “The stuff you get on top of that is gravy. The fact that this even happened in the first place, is a personal victory for me.” This is all new to him, from the first moment HBO called him about a pilot. “I ain’t never sat in a meeting before this that I was in charge of. I’ve never been the person making decisions.”
More than that, the idea of Bomani, whether at ESPN or HBO, is a fresh and revolutionary image. It’s not often—or ever—that we get to watch the son of Black academics, whose name means “warrior” and who reflects his father’s pan-African politics, on primetime television. The shock, bash and brains Bomani brings to the big screen, with a focus on the moments that transcend pure sports into something deeper about society, still makes him a unique talent on sports television. He’s a sterling example of what’s possible in this profession for Black people unwilling to back down from the restrictions that historically bind us to the type of watered-down bullshit that leaves sports TV stale.
Yet, somehow, he doesn’t see himself as the star. Far from it. Instead, he sees himself as a unique asset in a world where Black talent is regularly snuffed out before it even begins. So when Bomani sits behind that showy desk on Sunday nights and channels his inner Black Bob Costas, he promises it will never come at the cost of his authenticity.
He tells a story about a shoot from a few weeks back that took place late at night, out in the cold, where the silly requests to move his body three inches that way or turn your feet in the opposite direction just kept coming, and coming, and coming, until he was ready to push back. He felt his brain splitting. One thing Bomani doesn’t love is being somewhere longer than expected. I see the annoyance building across his brow now as he explains what happened, and points one long finger across the table like the rap executive J-Prince at a peace treaty, about to tell me about how these people HAD THE AUDACITY to bring him a chair to sit in or tie his shoes. He quiets his mind as soon as he remembers how easy it is, when you’re in this position of power, to become a rich asshole—to embody the exact type of person he’s made a living decrying.
If this success had happened in his thirties, “before I’m a formed human being,” he might have become the man in the mirror he doesn’t want to face. But nobody knows Bomani Jones like Bomani Jones. “I know money’s not gonna make me any happier. I know that this stuff is not gonna affirm me and how I view myself. Once you know that, you don’t believe in this stuff in the ways a lot of people do.”
But a new part of him I didn’t recognize was the fear underneath the pride. He hired the staff. He controls the room. His name is on the billboards. There’s no hiding anymore, behind a brand or anyone else. There was no one to answer to other than himself if the product wasn’t to his liking. The blessing between the madness, though, is that I’ve never seen him more grounded. Maybe that’s why his hair finally grew back. “I thought I was going to look like Clyde Drexler,” he tells me, making sure I understand that his hair does grow… just, you know, maybe not in the front. “Instead, it was more like John Shaft.”
The candor is refreshing. Suddenly, Bomani is exactly where he needs to be, and on his time. The show, in that regard, is almost a formality. But not quite. “I’m not gonna pretend like the long-run viability of this show is not gonna be a metric of success. But if the people that I want to think it’s cool don’t think it’s cool, it will be disappointing,” he says. He admits that it’s all part of the game, though. “And that’s their right. But, if it’s anything like the work I’ve been doing the last few years? Then you’ve won. You’re doing something effective.”
I think what I’ve found most appealing about Bomani’s show is his man-on-the-street interviews. In black and white stills from nighttime in Harlem, Bomani shows us his world, if only for a second. Black folks get to interact authentically on camera, from men with ‘fros to bros with attitude. It feels like a Black world I’ve already walked in, content in service of the folks who’ve rocked with Bomani for over a decade now. The skits aid his monologues and bump up his bona fides before he unleashes the long, scripted diatribes HBO’s late night has become famous for. Those moments can be rough, at times—more Bomani as Paul Mooney’s “Negrodamus” than Bomani as the seminal talent we’ve come to enjoy.
That also embodies the beauty of making a show like this. He’s allowed to bounce between formats and flavors. Imagine if Dave Chappelle or Michael Che decided to rap about sports on the old 106 & Park studio , while Just Blaze’s finest beats blared in the background. Crazy, right? As James Davis, one of his executive producers, says, you know who this show is for. When folks see it, “people are going to try and dap up the screen.”
Bomani loves the idea. “If you’ve been watching me on MSNBC and CNN or whatever, you’re gonna probably be shocked by the range of stuff we’re gonna be doing here.” But this isn’t only Bomani’s professional dream come true—it’s the same for the folks he’s brought along.
“I’ve always wanted to work on a show like this,” says Stuart Miller, an executive producer for Game Theory who used to be an EP for The Daily Show and Bill Simmons’ short-lived Any Given Wednesday. “When you get people like Jon Stewart or Trevor Noah, they own it. It’s their voice, and the show is a by-product of the host. Bo has such a unique point of view and is such a force of nature that the entire show follows that lead. We’re not searching for the right take on something; he knows exactly what to say and what to do. Those types of people blossom in late night television. When he’s up there, sitting on that set, there is no doubt.”
The way the Game Theory crew sees it, no one is really doing weekly, live-to-tape shows in the way they’ve envisioned.“Network TV can be very cookie cutter, and without depth,” Priya Desai, a writer on Game Theory who left Sports Illustrated to join the staff, tells me. “It takes a certain type of personality to create something that isn’t what you see all the time. And that was him from moment one.” It also helps that this is the most diverse working atmosphere Desai’s every encountered working in the media. “My agent told me this was only for 10 weeks,” she says. “There’s not a lot of people I’d do that for in this industry. And I definitely wouldn’t do it for a white dude. No matter what happens with this show, I’ll feel like I’ve learned something here for the first time in years.”
That attitude exists across Game Theory’s staff. Tommy Craggs, a delightful curmudgeon of a writer who used to work for Deadspin, HuffPost and Mother Jones, came over because of the excitement of the project and the chance to do something other than stodgy news reporting. “A guy like Bomani – with his sensibilities and background, with his voice – doesn’t get a show like this very often,” he says. “He brought his perspective from his background to sports commentary. Black radicals don’t get shows on HBO.” He leans over and cracks his knuckles nervously. “I desperately want the show to work. I want it to get picked up and get more seasons.”
Perhaps that’s why the early attempts—both the very first test pilot they produced, and a preview of what will end up being the season premiere—have been rougher than Bomani prefers. If you ask him, he’ll tell you: When this started he still had no clue what he was doing. When he originally did the pilot, it was a lot of him spittin’ other people’s rhymes. He had to get fully up to speed on what something this required from him. Even a few weeks before the premiere, the jokes are still bumpy, the transitions still uneven.
But that will come with time. His longtime friend Rod Morrow, a writer from Charlotte who moved to New York for Game Theory, thinks of it this way: Bomani should’ve been on this stage by now. “I think you see a lot of mediocre ass people get bigger pushes behind them,” he says. “There’s no such thing as ‘deserve,’ but you definitely get that ‘wait, how’d they get that?’ feeling. For Bo, as well as for a lot of excellent Black people, you always find yourself asking, ‘When is it gonna be their turn?’ For so long we’ve seen Bomani with other people, as an extension of the power of a network or podcast. Truthfully, this moment should’ve happened years ago.
“It’s overdue,” Morrow admits. “He shoulda been had it. But,” he smiles, “We here now. So we gonna make noise now.”
The show Bomani makes is one thing; the response it gets will be another. We don’t often give Black shows the space to find their footing on mainstream television. Chris Rock couldn’t make it work. Arsenio Hall started strong, and was thriving, but quickly burnt out after ratings took a nosedive. Chappelle walked away from millions at Comedy Central. And HBO isn’t the first place you’d look to find a sports show.
Bomani is adamant about how he knows he can only speak for himself. But he’s starting to see the fruits of the larger context where he exists. It’s no longer just great that he’s Bomani Jones, the smart Black man on sports TV. He now has to transcend his own position, and be better than the best version of himself he’s put out to the world for the last decade plus. He has to give something back to the game that looks at him both with pride and bewilderment. “I have every confidence that if it’s not this, it’s gonna be something,” Craggs says. “Bomani Jones will have his moment.”
And as much as he says he doesn’t, Bomani does care if you don’t like this show. Come on now. He promises he’s not listening to what we think, but I know he’ll be nervous the night Game Theory premieres.
“I’m not a dreamer. I acknowledge that that is who I am. I don’t get wistful and pie in the sky about anything,” he says. “This right here, though, is a dream. If someone asked me what I wanted to do in the business, this is the thing that I would want to do. I’m just thrilled to have a chance to do it. Maybe it works. Maybe it don’t. But the chance to do this at 41 years old?” He grows a little solemn now, that he’s said that fact out loud. “I do want people to like it,” he admits. “I do want people to enjoy it and years later remember it. I want…”
He takes a moment. “I don’t know if I’ve thought about how people will receive this,” he continues. “In the end, I hope it’s something that people will find enjoyable.” He shrugs. “I’m not trying to inspire anybody or give the kids something to look up to.” But if they love the show? If this is something that makes them look up with pride? “It matters,” he says. “That’s a huge win—even if they cancel us after two shows.”