By Ronda Racha Penrice
“Make ‘em, make ‘em, make ‘em clap to this” from Eric B & Rakim’s hip-hop classic, “Eric B. Is President,” thunders familiarly over the airwaves just before Bomani Jones eases back into the topics at hand — Drake’s performance at VH1’s Hip Hop Honors, why Trojan should do STD commercials and reasons taking your girl with you to the World Cup isn’t a bad idea. Believe it or not, all of this fits neatly within Jones’s sports-centered show, “The Morning Jones”, which broadcasts from Toronto but is hosted in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham area.
Sports may be the main dish cooking at “The Morning Jones” but music is an essential ingredient. After all, it’s no secret that music and sports have a pretty good marriage and so far this recipe has worked well for the show. Accompanied by Canadian sidekicks Corey Erdman and Sacha Kargl, Jones hosts the show from 7 am to 10 am EST for Canada’s Hardcore Sports Radio, heard on Sirius Channel 98 and available for free through iTunes.
Since its debut in January 2010 “The Morning Jones” has made a steady climb in popularity. While the program is far from the mainstream, Jones’s many appearances on ESPN, particularly on “Outside the Lines”, indicate that he is indeed one to watch. This is a very surprising turn of events for a former Ph.D. candidate in economics.
When one considers that Jones is still a few months shy of 30 the accomplishment becomes more impressive. With both parents working as college professors and holding two advanced degrees himself, Jones had his sights set on continuing the family tradition.
How he detoured from ambitions of being the next public intellectual in the vein of Michael Eric Dyson or Cornel West, might be called an accident. Although his father, esteemed political scientist Dr. Mack Jones, instilled a fanatical love of sports and his childhood was filled with endless sports activity, Jones never dreamed of a career in this area.
“I never considered doing anything in sports professionally until 2004, 2005,” said Jones, who began writing in 2000 while still an undergraduate at Clark Atlanta University. Music was his topic of choice then and he landed paying gigs with sites like Salon.com and eventually secured his own weekly column, “For Myself and Others,” on AOL’s Black Voices.
He liked writing but as graduation approached, he chose the safer bet of grad school. Writing about sports didn’t occur to him until a friend met one of Jones’s long-term idols, legendary sportswriter Ralph Wiley, at a book signing in 2003. Contact information was exchanged and, via frequent emails, Wiley and Jones established a virtual mentorship.
One day Jones suggested a topic for Wiley to tackle. Instead of penning the piece himself, Wiley shared it with his editors at ESPN.com who gave Jones a crack at it. Even as Jones submitted the piece he believed that it would be his one and only for the sports goliath. But they liked what they saw and approached him about helping to improve the offerings of Page 3, the portion of the site focusing on the intersection of sports and popular culture.
Given Jones’s early music work and passion for sports, he was a natural. Page 3 didn’t last but Jones did, regularly contributing to Page 2, which features opinion and humorous pieces.
Contributing to ESPN.com opened a floodgate of opportunity for Jones. “By being affiliated with ESPN, you start getting emails or you start getting phone calls from people, ‘Hey I just read something that you wrote, would you like to appear on my radio show?,’” Jones said. Because it was “a way to get my name out there, to talk to more people, [plus] it was cool just being asked to be on the radio.” Jones jumped at the offers.
