You’ve said before that the win for you was just getting a TV show. But now that you’ve done that and it’s been going on for more than a year. Is the show going in a direction you thought it was going to go? What are your aspirations vis à vis we are different and we want to put something different out there?

Jones: “Well for me going forward, you just try to make the best show that you can. Is it going the way we thought it would? Probably not. In large part because we started off doing a one hour show at noon and it moved on to being a half hour taped show at 4 o’clock. There’s a lot of differences you are going to have in terms of how a show is built and structured and the audience it has to serve and all of those things. So we definitely have to go about it differently than we initially had planned.

But the game at this point is to make the show better. At every point you are just trying to make this into as good of a show as it can be. And I don’t know if there will ever be a point, in terms of how I’m wired, where I’m like ‘yeah that’s good enough.’ That’s probably not going to be it.”

Torre: “Yeah, I agree with the whole we are constantly trying to be better and evolve. But I will say, something that I’ve hoped for and has been delivered is the reality that we are saying things and having conversations that I don’t hear on television period. Let alone on sports television. I’m deeply proud of that dynamic that we have where we tackle subjects that I just don’t hear otherwise.”

It is their perspectives on issues around race and the societal impact of sports that both men handle with aplomb that sets them apart from others. There is a way they think and react to the game within the game, and what is at the core of many sports stories.

There is obviously a perspective they share as members of an “other” or racialized minority. But for Jones and Torre it’s more than that. Their brains seem predisposed or conditioned to parse through clutter and noise and get to the elements that allow for an elevated discussion.

“It’s both of our brains colliding as you saw today, and producing stuff that tends to be at it’s best, when it’s spontaneous and really energized,” Torre said. “That’s been the great gift for me, is that we get to do that. So it’s not having theTVt on mute and saying ‘look what they’re doing, look at what they look like.’ It’s, these guys are saying stuff that other people aren’t saying.”

Still, two men of color leading a show on linear television is not common and something they are aware of.

It’s been more than a year doing High Noon. What has that meant to you guys, in terms of being minorities having your own show and how it has been received?

Jones: “I don’t know if I’ve really thought of it so much in that particular context. I suppose there are certain representation issues, and this is a show that looks a little different than most shows you’re going to see on television. But the biggest reason we got this show, at least I’d like to think so, is we’re pretty good at what we’re doing. So that for me has always been the primary thing. Is that for a long grind of trying to figure this out, to even be in a position to do this at all. There are but so many slots for anybody to do this, regardless of other circumstances.There aren’t many people with two feet that have something like this.”

Torre: “I will say for me it’s all kind of novel. This is my first, five day a week co-hosting job and I get told a lot, and I feel it a lot that it means something for me to be an Asian dude. To be an Asian anything because that doesn’t really exist in many of these five day a week slots. So I have been enjoying what that is because that is something I have not felt acutely until now. When you realize ‘oh shit yeah’, that’s kind of different.”

You said it’s more important that we have a show more so than the minority led element. But, there aren’t many people that look like us and have their own show with their names on the marquee. Sports that are mostly dominated by people of color, have an overwhelming majority of White people who are the authors of their history. Is it important to have people who look like the athletes talking about it?

Jones: “Oh yeah. One thing about this industry, is that there are plenty of Black men who are in it. Overwhelmingly they are former players, so basically what you wind up with is those guys come on because they have an experience that is very particular. But then it becomes we can just find some White dude to talk about this other stuff. That’s what seems to be conveyed in that message.

But it is necessary, generally, to have a broad range of insights on these matters because all of us in our personal experiences will give us insight that allow us to see things differently than perhaps the next person can. So, there’s going to be a lot of topics where in part because of my background, I’ll have insight on.

But another reason why I’ve got the insight on those things is because I put in a lot of work to know and understand what those things are. So, it is not simply to me about the value of having somebody that looks like me or has the experiences there it’s having the insight that is particular to the experiences of those people. It just so happens that you are more likely to have that, if you’re a member of that group, because in all likelihood that is what has moved you to pay more attention to the matters that are there.”

Torre: “It’s also crucial to have credibility in the world of sports. Bomani has a long resumé that goes beyond sports. But he also knows sports history as much as any human being that I have ever met. He was a columnist on ESPN’s Page 2, in the era of David Halberstam and Ralph Wiley. I come from Sports Illustrated where I learned magazines and was a reporter. For us, it’s as much about having the credibility and the resumé and then synthesizing that through the particular perspectives that we have, and that’s why you land on a show that actually is doing stuff that may feel kind of new and different.”