I think it’s kinda douchey he plays the “I’m rich, I can buy you” card as much as he does. For someone who is intelligent as he is, I think he should be above doing that. Just my . I would just avoid the morons.
guarantee you he scans the reply guy timeline to get a feel if they are rightwing, unless he obviously stops at dogavi the he twists the knife where he knows they have an insecurity to exploit based off that. Doubt he has a genuinely held belief about money. Just that an aggie maga guy being poorer than a black man cuts the deepest.
There’s also a really good chance he knows that guy. He was a stud baseball player here when bomani was growing up so he probably enjoys dunking on him more. https://www.chron.com/news/article/Rice-bounces-back-to-top-Wake-Forest-2008674.php
By Jason Zinoman Jan. 18, 2023, 10:02 a.m. ET You know Bomani Jones is about to say something funny, deadly serious or both when he spits out a sentence like “The question is simple” or “Let me tell you a secret” or, in this case, “Here’s the thing.” Explaining why he no longer regularly debates sports with people on television, Jones, 42, paused dramatically, his lanky frame swimming in sweatpants as he sat on the sofa of his Harlem apartment. “Don’t no one want to argue with me on television,” he said, a snap in his voice, dropping into a baritone. “Ain’t a whole lot of people going to come out a winner. As a result, I don’t come out a winner. I just come out a bully.” What’s characteristic here is the mix of swagger and self-awareness, and also how quickly he shifted angles when making a point. Jones did it again with his final thought: “You can make an argument that I should let them win now and again,” he said, before another one of those punchy setups: “I’ll be honest.” Pause. “I’m not that good at that.” Bomani Jones has been arguing with sports journalists on ESPN shows like “Around the Horn” and “Highly Questionable” for nearly two decades. “Game Theory With Bomani Jones,” entering its second season on HBO on Friday, is the first time he is sitting at his own desk alone. And while he’s got more than enough charisma and dynamism for the job, the real challenge is pulling off something that, he will be the first to tell you, almost never works: a comic show about sports. John Oliver, mixing long, intricate, forceful arguments with knowing jokes, and while Jones speaks gushingly about that host (whose offices are right across the hall), it’s a comparison he balks at. Jones is harder to pin down ideologically, and as he pointed out, unlike Oliver, he doesn’t do explainers. Jones aims to jump right into the issue, one his viewers already know, and make them look at it a new way. take that appears prescient. Asked for his favorite segment, Jones pointed to the very first episode, when he commemorated the retirement of Duke’s legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski with a historical deep dive into how and why Black fans hate his teams, quipping that if they played the Ku Klux Klan, “we would have rooted for a zero-zero tie.” Jones, who went to Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college, said that while he wanted to appeal to all viewers, he paid particular attention to, as he put it, “never boxing Black people out.” If only the white writers in his room laugh at a joke, he won’t use it. But if only the Black ones do, he’ll think about it. “What I mean for that segment of the audience is different,” he said. “When I walk down the street and am stopped, it’s ‘thank you for what you do.’ It’s far more essential there.” Jones, who called this show his dream job, talks as if he’s only now getting the hang of it. He’s supremely confident in his voice, but fitting it into a talk show is tricky. This is the first time he’s used a writing staff that includes veteran joke writers along with a small news department. But he is convinced that he’s at his best and funniest when he sounds as if he’s speaking off the top of his head. “One thing Season 1 didn’t have enough of is just me cooking,” he said. You hear this most clearly on his podcast, “The Right Time,” in which he can find all kinds of unexpected laughs just thinking aloud. Jones has the cadence of a natural comic even when the subject is serious. That’s why in Season 2, “Game Theory” tweaked the format of its topical segment, changing it from a script to bullet points to allow him to riff. “That’s his superpower,” said Stuart Miller, an executive producer of the series who worked on “The Daily Show” for 13 years. “Black Bush” used a simple premise (what if George W. Bush were Black?) to make layered jokes. “Dave is always coding it on many levels,” Jones said. “The joke is landing is so many different ways.” The simplicity is as important as the complexity. “If I find a basic idea that people aren’t thinking about it, that’s it,” he said. “If I need to go a long way to get there, it probably won’t work.” What makes doing political commentary about sports a balancing act is that fans watch games to escape. Jones understands this well, carefully managing the amount of humor in his arguments while trying to avoid dogmatism. “I don’t know how many interesting screeds are left,” he said, making a subtle point about how television has evolved in the last two decades. “Think of how impactful Olbermann’s screeds were in 2006,” he said of the sports broadcaster who shifted into politics. “Do it now and it doesn’t hit the same. You have to be more sophisticated.” That sophistication should not be mistaken for snobbery. Jones’s focus is not on who wins or loses games, but he doesn’t look down on anyone who cares deeply about that. “The place sports exist in people’s lives is important, and we get ourselves in trouble as high-minded commentators when we trivialize that,” he said. “No one would say music isn’t important. It’s a big part of the fabric of our lives. It matters. Sports is the same.” On Comedy column since 2011. @zinoman
Marcus talking about a lot of black folks in Baton Rouge (and Louisiana ingeneral) not being down with LSU until Nick came along is very true. It’s one of the reasons why Nick has had such a stronghold on New Orleans for so long. He was the one to extended the olive branch to schools like Edna Karr and St.Aug The relationship between Southern Univ and LSU hasn’t always been a good one. My grandpa and his eight siblings all attended Southern and then five of them went to grad school at LSU in the late 50s (Black folks were let in for grad school but not undergrad). I can remember hearing the stories about people throwing fried chicken bones at Southern Univ presidents feet when he would go up to the capital to speak on behalf of SU receiving state funds.
I like the content. I just wish they didn't have the studio audience on shows like this. Makes the different speeches sound weirder to me. Especially having listened to/watched Bomani on so many platforms without it.
I could do without the entire first monologue. You can’t tell the parts he didn’t write and it’s a little awkward.
My buddy formerly wrote for game theory, he said they let almost all the writers go because they were moving away from scripts and towards just bullet points for Bo to riff off of.
I listen to all his podcasts and follow him on Twitter, so I think I have the unpopular opinion that I find Game Theory redundant and generally uninteresting.
The Mahomes/Burrow stuff is a repeat of his pod with Foxworth. I don’t blame him since it was just a day ago but I see what you mean. Did not expect Bomani to be friendly with Kyle Brandt or whatever his name is
Yea, my buddy agreed that it wasn’t a great structure for the show and that it was super hard to write for Bo’s speaking style.
He has two options here: 1) Give him the attention he’s looking for but absolutely bury him 2) Bury the footage and deprive him of the attention he craves And I’m honestly not sure which he is going to do.
30 minutes of talking about who you wouldn’t want to fight in sports / Sports media was a bit rough today. Don’t think I’ve ever tuned out of a Foxworth Friday before edit - and right back in with the smokin on that Joe burrow talk lol
I liked it. They said they had no idea where to take this and Dominique’s story about fucking around and finding out made me laugh.
Bomani saying Michael Smith to Foxworth saying Chris Canty (who is 6’7”) made me laugh. My dad has a good story about sitting next to Canty on a flight. He would agree with Dominique about how nice he is
Paraphrasing but lost at: Marcus Spears is from Baton Rouge which means he’s like from New Orleans but with something to prove.
Just started listening. Did Bomani really say Filet o Fish was for healthy people? I know he was just riffing there, but he did not think that one through
As a BR native whose roots go deep in New Orleans (My family has been in the city since the 1880s), I felt that statement lol. Also, Bo got that Peach bowl fight backward. LSU kicked Miami's ass so badly in that bowl game that Miami dudes started getting chippy in the 4th qtr and spilled into the tunnel.
"There might be a punk from nola somewhere out there but I ain't met him yet." killed me. Lived there a few years when I was in my early 20s and he's not wrong. Meterie, Kenner, and the Northshore don't count. Nola proper is a tough place with amazing people.
2 things i hate doing: - cleaning my apartment - cardio workouts 2 weeks ago i made a rule I'd save bomani pods for the times I do both. Now Im about to run a couple miles around the lake and my place has never been cleaner Im a genius