Bomani Jones Calls Himself 'A Winner' Despite Third Canceled Show
When a public figure randomly refers to themselves as a "winner," they are subject to a review as to whether their claim is accurate or not.
Bomani Jones opened himself up to said review last week during an appearance on The Ringer. Jones discussed HBO canceling Game Theory and not renewing his contract earlier this year:
“A, I look at it, and I say this because I think it’s something a lot of people could stand to here, I do think it went as planned on my end. And I view it unequivocally as being successful for me. A, I don’t work for Warner Bros., I don’t know what success is for them. … Them deciding not to bring that show back, if you look at all the other things that they brought back, it’s hard to take it personally. I can’t go look at that and be like, if I had done this, this, this and this differently, they would have kept the show. I have no idea.”
“I can’t say that I was a victim, because I was a winner. I got to do this in the first place. For two years, I could legitimately say that my professional peers were John Oliver, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, up and down the list. And I firmly believe that not only were they my peers, if you looked at the product I put together, I wasn’t as good as those dudes but I wasn’t in a, ‘you got no business being here’ sort of situation.”
Bomani says he doesn't know why HBO canned him. And he's right in that there are several reasons why a network might not continue with a specific series.
But such ambiguity doesn't apply to his case. HBO canceled his show because of its ratings. They were disastrous.
The second season lost, on average, more than 80% of its lead-in audience.
Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery tried to save the show by airing it on HBO's sister station TNT ahead of each NBA doubleheader, hoping there would be a crossover audience.
There wasn't.
In fact, Game Theory failed to register among the top 150 shows on cable during its stint on TNT.
Shows that draw fewer than 100,000 viewers and TV ratings of 0.01 do not tend to be rewarded with future seasons.
Bomani Jones knows that, despite his claims otherwise.

Second, Jones calls himself a "winner" because HBO hired him to do the show in the first place. I get this argument. Sort of.
An executive who failed as a CEO could say that the success was in earning the position.
Yet here's where that argument falls apart for Bomani: he wasn't winning before HBO. He didn't earn a show on HBO.
Before HBO, he hosted a TV show on ESPN called High Noon. ESPN originally aired the program following Stephen A. Smith's First Take at noon ET.
How did it do? Not well.
High Noon lost 75% of Stephen A's audience and set record lows in the time slot. ESPN then moved the show to 4 pm, where it set record lows.
ESPN canceled High Noon in 2020.
Before High Noon, Bomani hosted a show on ESPN Radio. He set record lows there, as well. ESPN canceled his radio show in 2017 after it lost over 90 radio affiliates:
Calling yourself a "winner" after having your last three shows canceled for abysmal ratings is certainly a choice.
A choice Bomani made, nonetheless.
He seems to mistake winning for privilege. Failing up is not an example of winning. It's a privilege.
Executives who are white, as most in the media are, are incentivized by putting people on air to discuss race from a socially acceptable lens.
Bomani provides that.
Last March, he released a monologue with the premise that "white people aren’t always racially biased, but you can never be 100 percent sure.“
He essentially argued that a white person must prove they are not racist before he considers them not a racist.
(Have you proven you are not a racist? If not, maybe a New Year's resolution?)
By putting Jones on air to spew such rhetoric, his bosses can tout they are "dedicated to racial justice and diversity."
And to be fair, Bomani is better at discussing race and calling white people racist than, say, Carron Phillips, Jemele Hill, Mark Jones, Max Kellerman, or Sarah Spain.
He's a better race hustler than the average race hustler in sports media. We respect that about him.
However, viewers reject him. They rejected him on ESPN Radio, ESPN TV, and HBO.
If there's a market for racially-charged sports content, it is not large enough to support an entire show. The career of Bomani Jones proves that.
It's not a coincidence his most successful venture was as the third wheel on Highly Questionable, behind Dan Le Batard and his father.
Jones now hosts a show on YouTube, where he averages about 5,000 views per clip:

By comparison, Pat McAfee averages about 600,000. Stephen A. averages about 50,000. Le Batard averages about 10,000.
But it's unclear if any of them are "winners." Unlike Bomani, they have yet to tell us if they are.
P.S. If Kadarius Toney calls himself a "winner," let us know. We will conduct a similar exercise for him.