Though he was popular on local radio and as the wisecracking youngster on Around the Horn, most sports fans didn’t get a full taste for Bomani Jones until he took over as cohost of Highly Questionable with Dan Le Batard in 2013.
Jones was a perfect partner for Le Batard’s father, Gonzalo “Papi” Le Batard, while also balancing Le Batard’s perspective on some of the more sophisticated conversations the Miami-based host would bring to air. After four years together, Jones left HQ in 2017 to launch his own show in New York.
And from the sound of it, Jones didn’t always love the way Le Batard related to him. Jones is known among audiences and his colleagues as one of the more high-minded and knowledgeable people in sports media. But Jones felt that Le Batard’s praise sometimes came across as patronizing.
In a recent interview on The Matt Jones Show, Jones explained how he became the go-to “Black voice” in Le Batard’s universe. And when he spoke thoughtfully on a topic covering race or culture, Le Batard would go overboard with how impressed he was.
“I think I served that purpose for Dan Le Batard, in many ways,” Jones said. “But it was, in part, also because I think Dan was very fascinated by the idea that a Black person could be this smart … I think Dan couldn’t believe that this happened. It was like, ‘Wow, look at that fish riding a bicycle.’ And to be fair to him, he lives in Miami. He don’t see no smart people at all, let alone Black ones.”
The conversation resulted from Matt Jones sharing a story in which he had called Bomani Jones for perspective on a racial story, only for Bomani Jones to reject the request.
“White people don’t realize this, that there’s a tendency to take the Black person you know, and that Black person be the spokesperson for all Black people,” Bomani Jones explained. “And I can’t speak for all of them.”
Of course, whether it’s CNN, ESPN’s Outside the Lines, or the podcast sphere, Jones is, in fact, one of the more nuanced and pointed voices at the intersection of sports and society. So much so that he worked alongside Bob Costas at HBO and created a sports talk show named after an economic theory.
The problem is, Jones doesn’t want to be put in a box as a commentator, brought on specifically to give a perspective to fill a network’s quota. And with Le Batard, Jones often felt that was the case. For years before they linked up on Highly Questionable, Jones was a regular guest host on Le Batard’s Miami radio show. So Jones played with his role and often zigzagged in a different direction to keep Le Batard and his audience on their toes.
“You can sign me up to be the person that speaks for Black people, but you have no idea what’s coming after you do that,” Jones explained. “Todo es posible in that moment. That would happen for Dan actually, where he would call me on his to be the Black person, and he would not necessarily get the thing that he thought was coming.”