Episode 133: Don Cherry Debacle, Ridiculous Plays in Sports Movies + Dr. Courtney Cox on Kap, WNBA
Amira, Brenda, Lindsay and Shireen talk about Don Cherry and the work it takes drive out toxicity from sporting spaces. Then Amira interviews Dr. Courtney Cox about her work, Kaepernick's workout + the WNBA. The crew also chats about ridiculous moments in sports movies.
Of course we will also burn some things, shout out some BAWOTW and tell you what's good in our worlds!
Links
Eight games called off as strike in Spanish women's top flight goes ahead: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/nov/16/strike-in-spanish-womens-top-flight-goes-ahead-primera-division-barcelona-atletico-madrid
Muslim woman asked to remove hijab before entering Denver Nuggets game: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2019/11/15/muslim-woman-hijab-pepsi-center-denver-nuggets/
Vera Clemente, Flame-Keeping Widow of Baseball’s Roberto, Dies at 78: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/sports/baseball/vera-clemente-dead.html
‘Strong, resilient, Indigenous’: Women skate to victory at roller derby championships: https://aptnnews.ca/2019/11/19/strong-resilient-indigenous-women-skate-to-victory-at-roller-derby-championships/
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It may not be the feminist sports podcast you want, but it’s the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State University. And I am running the ship today. I am not alone, I’m joined by the most illustrious crew. Lindsay Gibbs, sports reporter based out of Washington, DC, and new writer of Power Plays, a newsletter everyone should be signing up for and reading.
Lindsay: Hi! Although I must admit, I would love to see you just do this yourself.
Amira: Just talking to myself.
Lindsay: Honestly-
Amira: Well, I am a Gemini, so…
Lindsay: I think you could do it. You could totally do it.
Amira: I believe in myself too. I’m also joined by Shireen Ahmed, freelancer up in Toronto, Canada. Shireen, how are you my love?
Shireen: I’m ready. Ready to burn it all down.
Amira: Yeah. Shireen has had a week. We’ll get to that in a second. And Brenda Elsey, my fellow historian, associate professor of history at Hofstra University. Hey, Bren.
Brenda: Hey.
Amira: It’s that time of the semester. How are you holding up?
Brenda: Mmm mmm, I’m drowning in grading.
Amira: Exactly. Exactly. We’re crawling towards break. We’re almost there. Anyways, on the show this week Shireen is gonna walk us through the mess that is Don Cherry, and we’re going to check in with her about what’s been a tumultuous week dealing with Hockey Night in Canada. Then I’m going to talk to Dr. Courtney Cox from the University of Oregon. I’m gonna do a scholar spotlight on her work, and then we’re going to talk about the latest chapter of the Kaepernick saga. Lastly, the crew is gonna come back together and we’re gonna talk about the best, but mostly the worst, depictions of sports in sports movies. So, let’s get it going.
This week in Canada, there was a bit of a mess. Shireen, I’m going to let you take it away and tell us what has been going on up in the north.
Shireen: Okay, so here in Toronto, I’m in Toronto, well outside of it, home of the 2019 NBA Champions, basically last Sunday, for those of you who heard episode 132, I burned Don Cherry’s comments. He’s part of this pivotal show, pivotal sort of meaning “Canadian, iconic” which just means white guys in charge for a really long time unnecessarily. Don Cherry and his cohost Ron Maclean have been on the air since 1982, Maclean joined in ’86. Bad takes, like Don Cherry is trying to represent the blue collar working class, mind you he is a super, super rich, powerful man. He’s sort of performative in his “Oh, I’m just a blue collar Joe just like the rest of yas.” He really puts on the accent, his grammar is terrible. He’s inarticulate, sort of meanders through his thoughts. He appeals to everybody because of his schtick.
So he went on on Remembrance Day in Canada. I didn’t realize that that doesn’t happen in the United States. People wear poppies based on a poem In Flander’s Fields. It’s a poem that all Canadian children in school have to memorize. It’s basically…you wear a poppy out of respect for vets. So Don Cherry, who has very known ties to alt-right political candidates in provincial and municipal elections, he went on to say, you know, “You people,” and this is very important to understand, he said “You people, you come over here, and you take our milk and honey.” So et cetera, et cetera. It’s all over the internet. And embedded into one of the pieces I wrote. This whole thing of “you people,” he’s basically looking at racialized communities and immigrants and saying “You do not respect vets. You did not wear the poppy.”
Okay, first of all, the poppy is environmentally unsound. It falls off all the time. It’s like, he’s basically saying…I don’t know, has he checked the lapels of every newcomer to Canada? It’s just, it was terrible. He is super xenophobic, he is a known racist, misogynist homophobe. He is anti-Indigenous. He is mean to everybody who is not this white Anglo-Saxon Canada. He’s terrible with Russians, he’s made disparaging comments about Swedes. Who makes disparaging comments about Swedes?! Other than Hope Solo. Who does that? Like, who actually does that. The Finns? It’s terrible. He’s got a long history of this. He hates French Canadian players, hates the Montréal Canadiens. He just is not an ally for women’s hockey. You’re like, “Aren’t Canadians supposed to be polite?” but this is the interesting thing, my friends. And this is a Shireen take: Canadians are racist as fuck, and will say no, this guy is allowed to stand here, right to expression, whatever, whatever. So they’ll get all their racism out via Don Cherry. And it’ll be considered okay. Because he’s “part of hockey.”
Anyways, I wrote an op ed for the Globe and Mail on Sunday, right after we recorded Burn It All Down, and it went up Sunday night and hit the Monday morning news cycle. My editor Amberly, thank you for that, she got it up really fast. But he was fired, Don Cherry was fired by Sportsnet, which is owned by Rogers Media as well, on Monday afternoon. So, the country’s been in a tizzy because pro-Don Cherry folks are like, “You don’t care about freedom of speech.” Well, first of all freedom of speech is an American thing. 2(B) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is freedom of expression, which doesn’t apply to corporations. So they need to check their information. So it’s been a week.
One of the most telling things of this week, and the takeaway for a lot of this, is very sincerely the work of people of color who love hockey, who are sportswriters, who are sports journalists, have to do in this country. And how saturated this place is. I went on Canadaland, the show with Jesse Brown, he invited me on to talk about this, but I always get back to this. People are like oh, you’re always complaining. And some of the emails I’ve gotten this week are like, the best. In terms of the most racist, awful terrible. I hit a nerve. I hit a nerve because I called out systems of white supremacy that people in Canada do not like to talk about race, period.
Now last night, because Coach’s Corner the show happens every Saturday between the first and second periods. Ron Maclean the sidekick, who sat there and complicity nodded while Don Cherry was doing his thing, did come out and apologize also, but he came back last night and he did this four minute spiel basically eulogizing Don Cherry the racist. While trying to distance himself from the racist. And also saying “He’s just a fantastic person,” that was like one of the last lines. So miss me with the “he’s a great person, he’s done a lot for people.” He’s a fucking racist. It’s okay to not love a racist. It’s okay to do that. And it’s almost like people feel as if Don Cherry is indebted…like we owe him something. I don’t owe this man anything. I don’t owe him anything and neither do a lot of people in this country.
And I will say it sparked a lot of conversations, and then a gong show, because Canada is dumb when it comes to talking about race. A woman on a show that was modeled after The View, I know you’re all like why would anyone model anything after The View, it’s called The Social. So a woman named Jess Allen talked about her experience with being bullied by white guys, and she said the word “white boys.” This country literally went after her for an apology. They went after her and said her comments were just as racist as Don Cherry’s. Okay Canada, say it with me. RE👏🏽VERSE👏🏽RA👏🏽CI👏🏽SM👏🏽IS👏🏽NOT👏🏽A👏🏽THING. No. Because Canada doesn’t get that. And so, at the end of the day, bitches be laboring. Is what’s happening up here.
Amira: Yeah.
Shireen: It’s people of color that are exhausted, that are sending each other…I can’t tell you how many messages, DMs and text messages of support I got from other journalists of color. And we’re tired. I got calls yesterday from the CBC, and I was like I’m not talking about this. Anymore. I’m done. Y’all don’t deserve it.
Amira: Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about that, but first I wanted to note that this didn’t stay in Canada. As part of his reaction to getting fired, Don Cherry went on Fox News…
Shireen: Yeah.
Amira: Because, duh. He went on Tucker Carlson’s show where Carlson obviously wanted to use him to be part of the xenophobic, anti-speech, whatever that they try to do on his show. And so he had Don Cherry on the show to say what happened and Don Cherry said, “I messed up because I shouldn’t have said ‘people,’ that’s where I really went wrong.” And Tucker Carlson said, “Yeah, you offend everybody. People who are offended are fascist, they’re fake outrage, they have no real feelings.”
And then the rest of the interview, which I watched so you all didn’t have to, ended up being actually really strange. Because you can see Don Cherry is not contrite at all, he’s not necessarily giving Tucker Carlson red meat so that he can go off about fascists. At one point Tucker Carlson goes off on the fascism road saying that people have no feelings, and you can see Don Cherry just sitting there like, uh…This man is actually…There’s degrees to this. Then they ended up both talking about their own racist grievances, but like, not to each other. So Tucker Carlson seemed to have no sense of what hockey was, let alone who Don Cherry was. And Don Cherry was talking about northern Quebec…
Shireen: Oh my god.
Amira: And Carlson had no idea what he was talking about! So what ended up happening was two racist people just talking to themselves, really, past each other, and occasionally smirking at each other. And Carlson ended the show by saying, “Google Don Cherry! He’s a famous man.” And then it was over.
Brenda: Oh, no.
Amira: So it was a shitshow. It was a mess. But it also tells you the fact that there’s a subset of this country and Canada who are looking to each other to embolden and add to their own latent xenophobia. And Don Cherry really encompassed what many here on the right are embodying daily when they are spewing anti-immigrant rhetoric. So you can see their intention was to be in solidarity with each other, but like with most things they just fucked it up. So if you want to ever watch an episode and not lose brain cells, it’s quite humorous, if you can get by all the loads of racism.
But I did want to go back to what Shireen was saying about the labor involved, and the emotion, and I just wanted to offer a check-in, Shireen, and say how are you doing? I think that sometimes we minimize, or we get used to some of the awful words that are sent to us when we dare to speak. I saw you sent a tweet and said White men are maaaaaaaad at me today. Episode #839473663637373. And so I just wanted to give you space to actually be real and emotionally process what this does.
Shireen: Well, I mean what it does and what the attempt here is to other people in the margins from the game. That I’m strong enough of a hockey fan to not let that happen, and dedicated enough to sport not to allow that to be used against me. There’s this attempt…And the great thing about this, I will thank Amira and Brenda for this, very specifically as sport historians, you both have actually changed the way that I look at sports. And using history to understand context is crucial, and in this country and in the history of ice hockey, the Negro Leagues in the Maritimes, Indigenous communities having pick up games and having hockey as a part of their identity is a thing. This idea that white hockey is the only hockey is absolutely factually incorrect and bullshit.
So in terms of reminding everybody that…It’s almost like sometimes you’re shouting into an abyss. It can get exhausting. People were like, “You got Don Cherry fired!” I didn’t get Don Cherry fired! Don Cherry’s fucking xenophobia got Don Cherry fired. And also a couple of other takes about this was that for Sportsnet and Rogers Media, he was a liability, financially. It was time for him to go. The man is 85 years old. Time for him to go! He is literally that racist uncle that’s on TV every Saturday night…
Amira: Yeah. He’s been doing this longer than I’ve been alive.
Shireen: Yeah, exactly!
Amira: So like, go somewhere, please…
Shireen: It’s something that in Hockey Night in Canada, it’s called Coach’s Corner, the segment, was put on by the CBC. They sold the rights, it’s very bizarre. They sold the rights to this specific segment to SportsCentre, Rogers Media. It’s weirdly complicated. But I think the reality is, is that it’s exhausting. So I checked out, Friday night. I was actually in Kingston, Ontario, Queen’s University doing a panel, which I’ll talk about in my What’s Good. And Dr. Courtney Szto, who we’ve had on the show, who is an incredible expert on hockey and identity and race in Canada and beyond, she said something, because I’ve basically been retweeting her all week as well, is that she’s been inundated with media requests, and so was I. But it’s only when shit hits the fan. We’re not structurally embedded into the media. We’re just asked about an opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I was really busy this week and I took it, because your girl needs a Dyson vacuum and is gonna buy one. Also, I think it’s important, like I took…You’re supposed to laugh there.
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Lindsay: Please clap! Please clap.
Shireen: I deserve that vacuum. Because I’ve been working my ass off, and what Amira’s trying to say is it’s not just the work of going and writing and thinking, it’s the emotional toll it takes. Because for every single piece I write about this, the dozens of emails that are xenophobic, absolutely marinated in gendered islamophobia, it does take a toll. I’m really lucky, and I count myself super lucky, not just because of the way my week ended up, being in Kingston, an incredibly powerful BIPOC space, but it’s because I have a support system. For all of you out there doing the work, LGBTQ, Indigenous, Black, Muslim, whatever communities that are out there, you know how important your support network is. You know how much this means. The funniest comment I got, and Amira will appreciate this, is “You’re biased because you’re a Habs fan!” Yes. I went after Don Cherry’s xenophobic, racist, homophobic comments because I love the Canadiens. That’s exactly what this is.
So even the analyses can be vacuous as fuck, but it’s hard. I was expecting to have a fun Sunday last week to do Burn It All Down and watch Parks and Rec and just do laundry. That’s not what happened. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have this platform, because there’s so many people that don’t, so many people of color, biracial folks, who just get lost out there. And who love hockey. This isn’t about not loving hockey. It’s about what hockey deserves, and it deserves everybody, truly.
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean that’s kind of the perfect place to end, but I just wanted to say Shireen, watching you work this week, I mean I’m always in awe of you. But seeing how much you’re able to take on, and for the greater good, is empowering. And I just want to say it’s always an honor to work with you, and I think I get more excited when I see you called up just to talk about like the Toronto Raptors win, because I want to see you utilized not just for these moments of reckoning. But I’m so grateful that your voice is out there.
And seeing Ron Maclean’s meltdown as he’s trying to publicly grieve not having his friend there, it just made me realize how many people think the public space is their personal space. He could do that grieving privately, but he’s not told that anything needs to be private, you know? He’s been told that his feelings are everyone’s feelings, for his entire life, and that was just really frustrating to watch. And to hear. And it’s just…So many people have so much left to learn, and it’s unfortunate that so much of that teaching falls on your shoulders, Shireen.
Amira: Indeed. Well, thank you for the conversation and thank you for your work this week. You’ve taught people a million things, and you’ve taught me that HNIC stands for ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ and not for…
Brenda. Wow. Yeah.
Amira: …What I assumed, if you’re Black, you probably know my confusion…Anyways. So thank you for that. But also, you’re right. Bitches be laboring. I just wanted to take the time to say we see you, we see your fight, we see your tenacity, and we’re covering you in love.
Next up, I’m going to talk to Dr. Courtney Cox, about her scholarship. And we’re probably going to scream into the void a little bit about the Kaepernick workout or whatever the hell clown shitshow that was.
Hey flamethrowers! It’s now my absolute pleasure to sit down with Dr. Courtney Cox. Courtney is an assistant professor of race and sports in the Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies department at the University of Oregon. She is in her first semester, or quarter– I think you’re on the quarter system. So definitely sending hearty congrats to you, I know that first semester/quarter is always trying. But yeah. So Courtney has also worked for ESPN, as well as the NPR affiliate KPCC in the LA area, and spent some time with the LA Sparks. And I just wanted to call up Courtney and do a scholar spotlight on her work and talk about some of the headlines that we’re seeing in the sporting world today. So Courtney, welcome to Burn It All Down!
Courtney: Thank you for having me here. This is incredible, this is like a dream gig for me. I’ve been a longtime listener, first time caller, you know?
Amira: Yes! Well I’m so excited to have you on the show. So first I just wanted to do a quick scholar spotlight. I’m really into the work that you’re doing and I just wanted to give you a second to tell us about it. What does it mean to be an assistant professor of race and sports? What are you focusing on? What’s going on, Dr. Cox?
Courtney: So I think for me, as people within academia know, a lot of the beginning of this journey as an assistant professor pre-tenure is about figuring out what happened with that dissertation and what is still useful or viable for a book project. I’m in that phase. And so my dissertation focused on girls and women competing, in basketball specifically, all around the world. So each chapter focused on a different context. And I really wanted to think about what women’s basketball means in a contemporary moment, especially thinking globally, like basketball is such a global sport and there’s so much research that dedicated thinking about what we call soccer here in the US, and globally it’s called football, there’s so many ways in which people are thinking about global flows of labor, people, products, ideas, in a particular way that I don’t think basketball has really gotten the same amount of shine
And so for me, I was thinking gender and global flows in a way that focused on basketball, a sport that is invented in the US, that men and women start playing around the same time. There’s only a few weeks when it’s a men’s only sport. And thinking about what that means in a contemporary moment where we have WNBA players who are playing overseas, where we have an influx of new, fresh NCAA talent that’s playing in the US. I’m thinking about the various ways in which there are all these people moving across various borders because of sport, and there’s ways in which there’s also this local flavor of sport. And so that’s my work. I’m thinking about that through all of these incredible athletes, journalists, people who are promoting the sport around the world and thinking about how they’re in conversation with each other. So that’s one of my projects right now.
Amira: Yeah, it’s really interesting and compelling to think about…You know I’ve been thinking about this issue of migrant labor and how we can think about it in terms of athletics, and so within that it seems to me like part of what you’re paying attention to is this kind of labor aspect of sport. The last few days on Twitter we’ve watched in real time the next chapter of the Kaepernick saga play out and it’s been not only in the kind of live tweeting and reporting of his clown show sham of a workout, then his audible move and change of the location, to really what we’re in now is day 3 of hot takes and threads, and now since it’s Monday morning we got all the morning show takes and clips and all of this stuff. Can we just rap about this for a little bit, like where are you falling in all of this, what are we missing in this conversation, what is sticking out to you as you’re watching all of this unfold?
Courtney: Yeah, I mean it’s super interesting because I’m kind of finding my footing, kind of finding this thread across all of my work, which a lot of times feels really different. A lot of times I’m thinking about sports in very different contexts but kind of the thread across that is labor, and I think the weird thing about my work, and I would say I also see this in your work as well, is both that this connection…And maybe there’s a fraught relationship between labor and pleasure in sport, because I think whether we’re thinking about Kaepernick or anyone else is that some of it is that we know the NFL to be this very visceral symbol of American capitalism in a particular way.
But we cannot separate that from the pleasure that sport gives us as fans, as athletes, as journalists to consume or create media around it. And so some of that relationship, those tensions are where I like to live, and so thinking about this idea of…There’s a way that we think about why Kaepernick would want to be back in this league. There’s so many things we could critique about the NFL in terms of just his own body, right? His own labor, his own health and safety, let alone the politics of how he’s been treated. But I think there’s also a way we can think about what sport gives to us, right? It gives us this platform to talk about things that we may not really engage with.
There’s so many instances we should be talking about in terms of like our own labor, or our own relationship to unions for example. And sport gives us this language to talk about things in a particular way I think is really important, which is why I think many of us study sports. Because it makes plain these issues that we can all sit and grapple with, and the Monday morning sweep of all these talking heads, mostly man heads, right, that are talking about…This issue has been so interesting, because I think Kaepernick is not only rooted in this articulation of representaiton, right? Starting with the silent protest, and what that can mean, whether the protest represents how it’s tied to the anthem, or the ways that we’re trying to disentangle it from the anthem.
There’s the ways in which there’s also the labor component about who can play, who should play, the way it’s litigated and the legal aspect, as well as what we’re talking about now, this waiver and what this future litigation could be for Kaepernick, the fallout of this. And then the media aspect, right? And so Stephen A. Smith is bearing a lot of this. A lot of the anger that people have is towards him, rightfully so, but I also think it’s fascinating to think about all of the other Black men that have been talking about this for the past 72 hours, let alone the past 3 years. And the ways in which they have been vastly disappointed.
Amira: Yeah. Right. Yo, yes, yes. I really appreciate you saying that because I feel that disappointment on such a visceral level, because for me it’s not just the commentary– the paid commentators. It’s the folks on the corner, the barbershop, it’s your distant Facebook friends. It’s become a stand in, a conduit really, for all these other issues, actually, baked in to Kaepernick. It reveals all these other fault lines and tensions about fundamental disagreements about how you get free, and what freedom looks like, and what the state of Blackness is now. I think a huge part of that for me, definitely, is how does that look if it’s always mediated and articulated through the voices of Black men? You know? Which is so true. It’s so true.
Courtney: I mean this is your work! This is in many ways, and I should say…When I’m speaking and writing, I interview women who are not Black but we have to understand like for me, thinking about my basketball project, basketball is a Black sport. It did not start that way per se, it was very exclusionary. But there is a way that it represents a particular urban space the way certain bodies are read. For me, thinking about it as a Black masculine space and what Black women need in that space globally is really important.
And I think you also do that, I was reading the other day your Medium piece on Rose Robinson and I was thinking about her and Gwen Berry, even Wyomia Tyus, right? So thinking about the various ways we have these men in our lives, right? Dr. Harry Edwards, Howard Bryant, people that are very important in this longer lineage, but even Howard Bryant is writing this book The Heritage and it is a masculine project. This idea of ‘who can get us free?’ And so this idea of our job as kind of a recuperative history, especially for your work, right, is thinking about there are all these women that are doing the work. There are WNBA players that are protesting before Kaepernick, right? And so there’s both the lack of visibility that is just as reflected in social movements across history, especially in this country, right?
And so there’s ways in which there is that neglect, but then there’s also who can talk about it, and who I’ve seen talk about it. And who I’ve been surprised by. Some of it is like, the surprise of like Max Kellerman today…
Amira: Yo, yes. To have him be the one who’s making sense? And like Damien Woody…Talk about that disappointment! Talk about that. And I was thinking about that today when I was thinking, Stephen A Smith months ago was talking about Nessa, who’s Kap’s girl, approaching him to clarify something important. And I was rewatching that clip today because it was retweeted or something onto my timeline, and even how that was shaped. It was all around the fact that this beautiful young lady came up, and she’s very respectful, and she wanted to clarify points. And so she clarified them because she has this firsthand knowledge. But it never lead to a concession of the fact that his NFL sources were bogus and wrong. It never lead to admission that she had facts and arguments and all of these things, it just boiled down to that she’s a nice respectful girl holding her man down. And so thinking about even Nessa’s role in this narrative, that we never talk about, but it has been a huge piece of what this three-year-plus saga has been. Especially when Kap’s been silent, right? It’s been his curated team around him speaking, and so much of that focus has been on Eric Reid, has been on tensions between him and Malcolm Jenkins. Again, it returns us to that question of like, is that an incomplete conversation?
Courtney: Yeah, and there was also this stuff really early on, going back to like 2016, maybe early 2017, where people were blaming Nessa for radicalizing him, right?
Amira: Right!
Courtney: Like, “You need to stop letting your girl block you from your blessings…” And so there’s a way that she’s spun as this person that is, in a sense, influencing him in one particular way. But also not crediting her with this idea of being an integral part of this project. No one is saying, wow, I wonder if Kaepernick spent the summer watching WNBA players protest police brutality, and thought “Hey, what is my role here?” Right? There’s no way that there is a lineage that is crediting that, it’s always about who took a knee after him, right? This idea of doing solidarity work, and even what it means in women’s sports, right? You know, Megan Rapinoe is really doing a masterclass right now in allyship.
Amira: In how to be an ally, exactly.
Courtney: You know? And I’m thinking about her but I’m also thinking about WNBA players where, in the NFL, you don’t see white players kneeling with Black players.
Amira: Exactly.
Courtney: The WNBA had that allyship. And some of that might be rooted in that marginalization of that sport, period.
Amira: Right.
Courtney: There’s a way of understanding those struggles, but it’s still an important contribution. I don’t want to make this about who isn’t included, because I think there is a whole dialogue to just be made about what Kaepernick is doing, which I think is important on those three fronts in terms of representation, labor and media. But also our visceral response either way, whether it’s this articulation of like, “I’m gonna buy the Kaepernick jersey,” right? I’m gonna literally buy something the NFL will make money off of in order to support him. Which will make a statement in terms of this is a top selling jersey, right? And then you see all these people out in Atlanta, right, that are wearing their jerseys
There’s a way that’s a representation, but there’s also this idea of like, okay, I won’t watch the NFL. We know so many reasons we should not have been watching the NFL for years now, right? Domestic violence, CTE, retired players’ funding, there’s all these ways we should’ve known better. But I’m interested in how this is sometimes people’s final stand. Which I think is important, right? When we’re just like, “We’re so fed up, we cannot do this anymore in good conscience.” So I think these things surrounding him have been so interesting in many ways framed as a distraction versus, to me, it’s a discourse. What Stephen A is saying is important to me because he represents a faction that isn’t just him, it’s a lot of men I’m seeing on Twitter. There’s a way in which I’m seeing these Max Kellermans, these Megan Rapinoes, and then I’m also seeing tons of the other more expected responses to him.
And also the way that lawyers are speaking up and saying these waivers were bogus to start from, it would be malpractice if a lawyer allowed him to sign in the first place, right? The way that he has called for media to be witness to what’s happening, so moving the location, it’s so many things that embody this country in a very American sport that for us, as scholars, some of it is exhausting, right?
Amira: Yo, yes.
Courtney: It’s like…I’m immersed in it, and I can’t look away from it because to me it embodies so many important things that are so 2016 and 2019, right?
Amira: Right!
Courtney: In terms of who we are.
Amira: Yeah, and I wood be interested to know…That immersion is real, and actually I want to revisit the waivers, and have you maybe tell folks who weren’t following this every minute what the waiver situation is, but I think that that actually speaks to the immersion that sometimes I forget that I am in this and consuming every bit of it, and actually when you step back you see how this disinformation campaign is really effective and really working. Because then I’ll talk to somebody, whether it’s a student or a colleague who’s less sports-focused, and they’ll be like “Oh, but he doesn’t seem like he wants to play? Because they gave him a standard waiver and everything he wanted.” And you’re like oh, those narratives really held water with people. For people who only see Kap headlines and aren’t on Twitter, aren’t tapped into these same networks, aren’t having some of the conversations we’re having. And therefore actually running with narratives that we know on its face to be false. So I think that immersion part is really crucial. Could you just tell our listeners who are less up to speed with the workout situation, could you break down what was going on with these waivers?
Courtney: Right. So most people received the memo that there had been a settlement involving Kaepernick before, in terms of previous litigation involving his employment. And so the idea of this sham workout situation…Most people that understand that a Saturday workout, just in terms of scheduling, is not conducive to a league like the NFL, which plays on Sundays. And Mondays. And Thursdays.
Amira: That’s why they do everything on Tuesdays…
Courtney: Tuesday’s the day, right! So just starting from that standpoint of the way that everything’s set up where there was an understanding that a Tuesday work out, most of the time when you watch the NFL you’ll see that someone will be brought in to discuss someone being signed after that Tuesday workout, right. Saturday’s just not a day that works for anyone. And so some of it is like, that date matters, in terms of how serious we’re taking this workout. I think the timeframe of what it means this many seasons out matters because people get brought in for workouts all the time and if you watch the NFL you’ve seen a lot of really bad quarterbacks over the past couple of years on multiple teams.
So the idea of this being an NFL-sanctioned event does matter in terms of framing the backdrop of what this waiver means, and the waiver being wildly specific in dealing with this idea of not being able to seek future litigation regarding this being a fair shake at this is really what a lot of people have been writing about in terms of standard language. Standard language for a waiver is a single one-page policy about, “Hey, if you get hurt we’re not going to cover your injuries.” Right? Your insurance will have to cover you in this example. Which is not unlike the kind of waivers that people sign to do recreational things that might injure them.
And so this idea that there’s all these employment-specific notions that are attached to this document is what gave his lawyer pause, and one of the lawyers I saw that was one of the sports agents I saw tweeting was like “Some lawyers would consider it malpractice if you allow your client to sign something like this,” because it covers so much more than what this particular tryout or workout is supposed to represent. And so anything that seems excessive is something that should not be part of this.
This idea of like okay, you told us this was going to happen, you told us we’d have a list of receivers, you told us all of these things, you told us media would be allowed. All of these things that are suddenly being rolled back within this very tight 72-hour window, and then there’s this scrambling, right? So there’s a need to, in many ways, bear witness to how this is even evolving over time because, like you said, there will be a master narrative of what happened. It is in our best interests to have this continuous record. The downfall is Twitter, right? There’s this constantly updating feed, and so many narratives about who is standing outside this stadium, and holding these signs, wearing these jerseys, and all the Kappa elders, and all this stuff happening. It’s taking us away from the fundamental aspect that there are people that sue their employer all the time and go back to work.
The idea of…What does a win look like for Kaepernick? For him playing back in the NFL, and the danger that this league has, potentially, for him on his body and his mind. I think he has all these contributions he’s made since then, so the idea of the Know Your Rights campaign, the NFL has already raised consciousness in a particular way. The protest itself has already done work that’s very important. And so some of it is, in doing this, he has called attention to so many things. Isn’t that already a win. Regardless of what happens.
And then this idea of distrust of the league, right? Some people are like, “You don’t want to play because you don’t trust the league.” I saw Dan Le Batard really break down what that means in terms of like, Tom Brady didn’t trust the league. No matter how you feel about Deflategate, I really thought it was telling that Le Batard points to, why should anyone trust this league based on how they have treated their athletes with a very weak CBA and a weak player association. It has not protected its players on things that have way less political leanings, right?
Amira: Yes, exactly.
Courtney: So the idea of like, Tom Brady can’t even trust the NFL, and rules have been changed because of him.
Amira: Then nobody can trust them.
Courtney: Right! How is Kaepernick supposed to even operate within that space. And how many of us also go to work every day and are supposed to think, “Oh, I’m just gonna trust the administration, or my boss, or…”
Amira: Yeah, I have oodles of trust for Penn State…
Courtney: Right! I’m sure that administration…I’m sure that all of us have these grievances, right, that are not on public display and a 24-hour rotation of talking heads. But we all have this distrust because it’s built into the very fabric of our labor. And so if we make this about our labor versus the ways that it’s been contorted into all of these other various things. We make it a protest about police brutality, not the anthem or the troops or whoever else wants to get involved in that fray. And if we make this particular stand about what it means to be employable, what it means to be a viable candidate, and show proof of that.
This idea that he doesn’t want to play, yet he’s somehow maintained impeccable NFL shape for years. How can we dispute these visual things we can represent, like we can see this for ourselves. And you’re right, this disinformation continues to plague us. In this case as well as everything else, you know, I felt the other day, the whole flat Earthers thing of like, “How can this be!?” They’re having conferences about a flat Earth, right! There’s this wild disinformation and a lack of belief in what I’m gonna call facts, facts we can view for ourselves. We have experts. It’s kind of this disinformation stage that we’re at that Kaepernick is so indicative of right now in terms of how people are reading into this particular moment.
Amira: Yeah. That’s such a good point. I really appreciate the labor aspect of this because it’s a labor issue. And because we’ve layered all these narratives, in the moment, sometimes we can lose sight of the baseline, of the basic facts. Which doesn’t mean that we discount our other narratives, we don’t look at protests and police brutality and all this stuff…I think you’re right in that it occasionally does cloud some of the issues at hand. And so what we’re left with is essentially what we saw: a sham of a workout. Somebody said they wanted him to cook a gourmet meal and didn’t even tell him what ingredients he had to work with.
Courtney: Yeah.
Amira: You have a sham of a workout, you now have new footage, a 90 second clip of him talking. You have Eric Reid and Stephen A going back and forth, you have everybody and their mama commenting on it again. And here we are, 3+ years out, in many ways having the same iteration of a conversation that started then, and really started long before that, but certainly has been made more visible and more vocal under Kaepernick. So I think that it probably is not the last time we’ll end up talking about him, but I appreciate your insight on this moment.
I would be remiss to let you come on and spit bars on this pod and not ask you a basketball-specific question. We’re in a moment where the WNBA is not only showing incredible activism, Maya and Natasha are really just doing remarkable work. I think about that, I think about just the state of the WNBA and the women’s game, and obviously equal pay, maternal rights, there’s a lot of things on the table, trying to get the CBA done, et cetera. But I want to know for you, what is one aspect of the fight that is in front of WNBA players that you’re paying close attention to?
Courtney: Yeah, for me, one of the things…I know that there’s been a lot of buzz around Team USA losing to Oregon. I’m here in Eugene so obviously there’s a lot of energy around that and around the larger conversation. I even saw about Sabrina and her jersey selling out and the ways in which the popularity and growth of women’s basketball is largely constantly questioned or, in many ways, deflected and disrespected. And so there is a way that the game itself is growing, right? And then we see that from…I’m even thinking about the Becky Hammon thing the other day when Popovich got ejected. There’s ways in which women’s basketball is very much embedded into the fabric of sports culture, mainstream sports culture, but it’s kind of also disrespected, disregarded. Even as it’s doing the very same things we’re talking about, whether it’s about protest, collective bargaining agreements, and then this travel thing lately that’s struck…You can look at it from the WNBA level in terms of getting stuck various places, riding coach. I think the All Star game and Brittney Griner getting a middle seat on an economy flight is really a visual…
Amira: Yeah. In what world does Brittney Griner fit in a damn middle seat.
Courtney: Right! The ways that we can visually see these discrepancies in terms of how this operates, and the difference between how, for example, the WNBA, a league that’s over 70% Black women, is viewed very differently in terms of their struggle in terms of labor versus the US Women’s National Team, right? Even in thinking about how the way that those discussions in terms of labor and equality are framed differently for those two leagues, and two sports, really. And so a few of the things I’m interested in, the CBA is going to be very interesting, I’m interested in how Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird are part of the group negotiating for Team USA to pay to keep them and Nneka Ogwumike here to do this tour around the US, and globally, they were in Argentina. To sell the team going into Tokyo 2020. And so for them to get stuck…
This is also the time that Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, their 30 For 30 podcast on their experiences playing overseas in Russia comes out. Also at the same time, this moment where we have these world-class athletes, the best basketball players in the world, are stuck on their way to play this game, to represent this country that sells itself as this beacon of freedom and equality and all of these things, and have to do this long 8-9 hour ride to reach their destination to then play a game and to then be dominant, right?
I’ve been thinking about that in terms of what that means, both on the WNBA level, and if you think about college level, and that 30 For 30 podcast with Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi talked about this. UConn, you’re flying in luxury, right? And so for a lot of these college programs, the top caliber programs, you’re flying private, you’re flying first class, you’re flying in this incredible situation. You go to the WNBA or even Team USA and there are all these barriers to just moving throughout the country or moving around the world to begin to compete.
And so that’s just, to me, so fascinating to think about what it means in terms of being able to move about the country, move about the world, and represent a country that you feel like oftentimes heralds itself in a way that, as many people have pointed out, Diana Taurasi most recently, the idea that capitalism is upheld…Whereas they go to Russia and get paid crazy amounts of money to play compared to the WNBA. I think that the travel thing would be huge in the next CBA but I think something about it is just so symbolic in terms of movement, right?
For me and my work I kind of use the crossover, the basketball movement crossover, to think about people crossing over borders. I think about the ways that this crossover appeal of women, like who can be appealing, who can sell in a particular way. And so Skylar Diggins-Smith and her recent hard discussions around maternal health and parental leave in the league is interesting because she can no longer be used as this very attractive standard of basketball, because she’s like no, I have things to say as well. And all of them aren’t gonna make the WNBA money, right?
I’m so fascinated in this particular moment about the concept of the crossover and what it means as people are trying to cross over to just compete, as well as the way their labor is kind of used to sell a certain idea of Americanness for example, a certain idea of women’s sport. And also what that means as they’re kind of maneuvering and using platforms like social media, they’re using their own books, Devereaux Peters is creating her own platform to just talk, similar to Uninterrupted, to create a platform that’s just about women’s basketball. I’m so empowered to think about what the crossover, as this very deceptive basketball move, what that means in terms of the way they’re also creating these narratives. For themselves and for each other and kind of creating space
You think about how you cross someone over, you break a couple ankles, the ways that you’re also creating space of yourself or for other people, right? For me it’s a very amazing way to think about these subversive things that these athletes are doing and the journalists that support them are doing in this particular moment because thinking about it as labor, I think, helps to think about labor as valued or not valued. Especially as women. And then I’m thinking about also what it means, largely in terms of life, our own connections like we talked about earlier, to migrant labor. Thinking about how their labor is valued in various places that aren’t the US.
As well as what it means as we approach this Olympics, right, the Olympics has his refugee Olympic team, and so thinking about how we are rethinking citizenship in a particular way. Also, hi Kaepernick. And what it means to be a good citizen, a good athlete, all of these things to me are constantly kind of bouncing around in my head. Because it’s revealing things that are outside of sport, as it always has. And now it’s harder and harder because of social media, a lot of people would argue, and I would too. But that’s why. We’re unable to escape the larger narrative because we have all these other ways of accessing these actual athlete voices, which I think are important, as well as all the various experts that tell us what’s really happening.
Amira: Yeah. Precisely. And I think that that’s the point about social media and how it changes how we have these conversations, and perhaps just to circle back to when we were talking about the voices that we hear talking about Kaepernick, thinking about the way that Twitter and social media in many ways has been democratizing and has opened up lanes where before there wasn’t one, and it’s interesting to see who engages with each other.
But I see Ava Duvernay coming through with haymakers and posting Stephen A Smith…It muddies the waters a little bit. It muddies the lanes and I think that that has the ability to amplify more voices, in many ways. Social media has definitely changed a lot of the context of conversations, even just who gets to talk. And I for one am so pleased to have your voice in the middle of that fray. Thank you so much for coming on Burn It All Down and sharing with us your insight and your expertise, and I hope this is not the last time we have you on, but I appreciate you taking the time.
Courtney: Of course, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here, and please call me back anytime! This is like, my favorite thing.
Amira: Yes!
Okay, I have a sort of fun segment that I want to do, if you guys will indulge me. I don’t know how many of you saw this tweet by Ryan Rinehart, who is the host of a KU sports podcast. As many of you might have seen, probably have seen, because ESPN personalities have been tweeting out about Disney+. Very contractually bound, apparently. Disney+ is here, I do have it, only because I already had Hulu and ESPN so, pro tip, if you already have Hulu and ESPN adding Disney+ is actually only a dollar a month.
So anyways, part of the rollout included access to old Disney Channel original movies that, if you are an older millennial with access to cable, you might remember and be very nostalgic for, including the one terribly named Double Team.
Lindsay: Not an x-rated film!
Amira: If you remember, Double Team is based on a true story about twins playing basketball, but Ryan Rinehart offered in a tweet the funniest breakdown of the final play in Double Team, where he very aptly critiqued the actual basketball being played. Especially the part where she miraculously, without taking a single step, moves from half court to the three point line and then doing this little shuffle where she’s alternating ankles but not doing anything…
Shireen: Isn’t that a travel, anyway?
Amira: Yeah! And then she travels, and he’s right, he’s absolutely right. It’s a terrible, terrible…The basketball itself is terrible. The game is so unbelievable. You see the shot clock is at five seconds and then the scene unfolds for two minutes! But it was hilarious. It got me thinking about the sports movies and TV where actual playing of the games looks good and when it really doesn’t. So Shireen, I know you love Bend It Like Beckham, but it really made me want to ask you, is the football good in it?
Shireen: Yeah, that’s a very fair question. And before we start this segment, which I totally appreciate and I’m excited about, Amira, so thank you. We all know that Bend It Like Beckham is the greatest film in cinematic history. So I think what’s critical here is when you look at the football there’s a part of us that watches sports movies for those of us that love sports, and we kind of put that aside.
Amira: I’m going to say the answer is no, the football is not good!
Shireen: Okay, you try, so you can absorb the plot and the story, so what I do is with Bend It Like Beckham, the terminology…They capture the culture of what the clubs look like and the emotions so well. Basically, to get Jess to dribble into the six yard box, where are the defenders here? And I’m a forward. So when Jess and Jules are up there they’re literally playing football about five feet away from the net. Which doesn’t happen. So technically…I mean, if you get an opportunity to dribble into the net, then that’s great. But for the other team, I mean what are they doing. Are they comatose? Where is everybody. But I mean, when they were practicing the drills that they did, they actually had technical support come and work. And Gurinder Chadha talked about this because she herself knows nothing about football, she’s said this.
So they had technical people come for drills and preparation. So very little of the actual story in the film was in play, it was more about leading up to it. But when they’re on, Jess in in that iconic moment where she takes a free kick, the way that the ball curves, they didn’t actually show the ball. They showed the camera in the ball. That was a really great way to get around that. So I think there was tricks and stuff used…To answer your question simply, the football was not fantastic, but leading up to it one of the trainers that worked with Keira Knightley said she was doing stuff because of her tenacity and willingness, she works really hard in whatever role she’s doing. She was doing stuff that semi pro players were doing. Just in terms of…So I appreciated that. Yeah. You’re not a footballer, the way you’re going to kick is not going to be the way one does. That notwithstanding, it’s still the best movie ever.
Amira: Okay. Bren, what about you?
Brenda: Okay, so my film blows anything out of the water. I’m just going to tell you right now, even Double Team. Even Double Team. And it is the 1981 Escape to Victory. Which is, oh my god. Have you guys seen it? You haven’t seen it. Holy shit, okay. So it’s Sylvester Stallone and Pelé.
Shireen: What?!
Brenda: I’m just gonna…Okay, here’s the plot for people who haven’t seen it: it’s World War II, and Nazis want to use…
Amira: Oh my god.
Lindsay: What! I did not expect Nazis to be in the movie!
Amira: Me neither!
Brenda: If you didn’t expect Nazis, you’d be wrong. So, the Nazis wanna use football to spread their propaganda. It’s 1981 and the Nazis put together a team and they want to play prisoners of war from the Allies.
Shireen: Wait, it’s 1981?
Brenda: No, the film comes out in 1981. Sorry. The film comes out in 1981; I believe the film is more or less set in 1942.
Shireen: Okay.
Amira: Is is based on a true story?
Brenda: Hell no! Everybody wants to make it into a true story, it’s like, are you kidding? These are prisoners in a Nazi prison, and they look great. Like, everybody…
Amira: Oh my god.
Brenda: Stallone looks like he’s in on a 5000-calorie a day diet. It’s so crazy. So anyway, it’s Michael Caine as the coach.
Shireen: Oh my god.
Brenda: Pelé is supposedly from Trinidad. That is the most unlikely part of the entire thing. Except…That Sylvester Stallone is the goalie. You just have to get into it. I cannot do justice to how truly bad the film is, but it is really worth Youtube-ing. The one thing I would say about it is that Pelé does a really lovely bicycle kick and it’s absolutely believable.
Amira: Because it’s Pelé.
Brenda: Right. I mean everything he does is believable. But there is…Okay, last thing, I promise. There’s a point in there where Sylvester Stallone has never been a goalie before but he wants to escape, because they’re planning this escape through this soccer game, which eventually they do. And he’s never played goalie before but is able to catch a kick from Pelé. And it’s so soft. Anyway. It’s just amazing. Yeah. I’ll just stop there. Don’t wanna ruin it for you all!
Amira: It sounds like something we should all get high and watch. Can we not say that? Legally. We’ll go to Colorado.
Shireen: Come to Canada.
Brenda: Massachusetts!
Amira: Okay. All the places except for Pennsylvania.
Lindsay: A tour.
Brenda: Not that we’ve ever thought about it.
Amira: Okay. I’ll go briefly. Love and Basketball, which I adore, even though I know people have problems with it. They at least have Monica’s signature thing when she throws up a shot, she keeps her arm in the air, and it becomes a plot point later in the movie when she finally gets to college and she does that and the girl runs past her and scores. And her coach makes her stand with her arms in the air. Even with that, the way that she considers every shot after it happens has always driven me crazy. And it’s not just that she celebrates, but she stands there, watches as it goes in, celebrates, trash talks, and it’s like, baby girl, you have to keep moving! This is basketball!
So that was a minor part of the movie that always drove me up a wall. Because I was always just like, you can do all of that AND move. West Wing can figure out how to shoot like a walk and talk through hallways, I swear Love and Basketball could’ve figured out how to have her running back and still making the same face. But she was always just standing still, and that got under my skin. I don’t know why. So I thought about that this week.
I have to say, sports done well in movies for me is Quidditch, and I know that that’s maybe not a real sport, but I find that the way that they shoot Quidditch matches incredibly compelling to the point that obviously it’s inspired whole leagues and people like myself to say like, if I wasn’t a history professor I would totally, totally be a history of Quidditch…critical Quidditch studies professor at Hogwarts. I think that you know, that has large part to do with the way that the camera angles really brought the game to life. So that’s just me, and Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. I always think in sports movies that they just make the field of competition so much bigger than it actually is! You think back to The Mighty Ducks scenes, the ice rink is not that big! To form the V, to have it go like that, you’d already be at the other goal! So that stuff always sticks out to me. Time and space don’t really exist, fully, in sports movies. Obviously I understand why, but the classics like Bring It On where it’ll go to the close up, that’s obviously not the main character doing all this tumbling. And then you’re back to the wide shot and those camera tricks always kill me because, you know, I get it. I don’t expect Gabrielle Union to do all that stuff, but it’s just so funny.
Amira: Right! But I’m so happy you said Bring It On Linz, because the other thing that I was thinking about is how, in the movies, we often are forced to believe that when you watch the end of Bring It On…I know that I shouldn’t say this, I’m like, whispering…I’m scared to say this out loud. But like, the Black girls didn’t…They weren’t better at the last scene! They weren’t.
Shireen: Amira, I don’t think you can say that!
Amira: Okay, but they weren’t!
Lindsay: I can’t…I can’t say anything.
Amira: They weren’t better, and the white team should’ve been disqualified because they were stealing shit, they shouldn’t have had the chance to play again, or be in the competition that year. But their routine was a mashup of multiple things, and I know that they had to…I know that the Clovers had to win, but I just…Secretly I’d be like, but for real, though? Okay.
Shireen: Well I didn’t get enough hate mail this week! Burn It All Down’s gonna get more hate mail this week!
Amira: It’s true!
Brenda: We’re doomed. Anyways, Lindsay, keep going.
Lindsay: I’m good…
Amira: Somebody say something else! Change the topic!
Shireen: Okay! Best sports movie that I’ve seen: Air Bud. That dog is technically legit.
Brenda: That’s uncontroversial.
Shireen: That’s not controversial.
Amira: And this is a great time to remind everybody, as I’ve discovered on the show like a year ago, there is so many Air Bud movies, including volleyball! I need you all to run…Maybe they’re even on Disney+!
Lindsay: Oh, I’m sure they are.
Amira: “Air Bud: Spikes Back.”
Shireen: There’s like 8 of them.
Amira: There’s many. Many. Yes. Anyways, alright, moving on.
Time for everybody’s favorite segment, the burn pile. Bren, what are you burning this week?
Brenda: I am burning a blog post by Jaelene Hinkle, the North Carolina Courage player, who doubled down on her decision to not wear the rainbow shirt when she was called up for the women’s national team. And you can read the post and see what you think; I would like to burn the post. Basically it’s a post full of euphemisms about her homophobia and saying that she still feels as though this decision wasn’t hers, it was God’s, God doesn’t want her to wear the shirt. And I just can’t even with it. I mean, at a certain point she’s feeling so sorry for herself, she sees herself as such a martyr, you know, constantly comparing herself to Jesus, which I think you’re not supposed to really do…I mean, I was raised Catholic so forgive me about my ignorance towards Protestantism but I’m fairly certain that that’s not cool. And then she says, one quote is, “Crosses used in the days of Jesus weighed 300 pounds…”
Amira: Wait. That’s a quote that she wrote?
Brenda: Yeah. She wrote that.
Amira: Was she saying that like, so I can carry this burden too?
Lindsay: Yes, that’s what she said.
Brenda: Well, she said she struggled under the burden until she realized that she had given it up to Jesus to carry! Which is like, now you’re giving him the cross again? I mean the whole thing is just a convoluted way to both appease her fellow homophobic Christians and to maybe try to soften the position in which she appears in The 700 Club or whatever. And in the end it comes out exactly the same. So I just want to burn her attempt at wishy-washy homophobia
Lindsay: Very quickly, she does call Ashlyn Harris “Satan” in the middle of it, too.
Shireen: I know, I’m so done.
Lindsay: She says, “This summer Satan came back and reminded me…” That was very clearly talking about Ashlyn Harris’s tweets which were referencing Jaelene Hinkle not being on the team because she wouldn’t wear the jersey, because she was intolerant.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Yeah, for my burn pile this week I want to set flames to Stephen A Smith’s Twitter rant.
Brenda: Yes! Yes.
Amira: And his video regarding Kaepernick’s situation. Look, I’ve heard from, and I know that Stephen A has been very vital in the pipeline for developing Black talent at ESPN and I want to respect that. But also…Shutting the fuck up is also an option. My mans like literally woke up, must’ve glanced at what was happening with Kaepernick, and recorded a video so full of inaccuracies and ridiculousness, I can’t even deal with it. I just don’t understand why you’re holding water for this league. Your tweets, your back and forth with Eric Reid, your assertion that Colin doesn’t want to play, he just wants to be a martyr, it’s damaging, it’s built on falsehoods.
Your argument boils down to the fact that you are mad that moved a workout, and that’s an example of him not wanting to play? You want him to have faith in a league that offers no transparency, that wanted to not tell him what receivers were there, what coaches were gonna be there, that gave him 72 hours to do all of this workout in the first place, then tried to make him sign a waiver that’s not a normal waiver of liability, but a waiver that has all of this legalese about not ever doing legal action, pursuit of employment…It’s not normal. And this is the league you wanna cap for? Why are you repeatedly carrying water for them? Your sources time and time again from quote unquote “inside the NFL” are feeding you wrong information. And yet you continue to spew it! And this is just the way this iteration
It’s unfortunately a narrative that I’ve now seen parroted, and especially with people who can point to him now and say oh, Stephen A Smith is on TV, an esteemed talking head, a journalist, and most importantly a Black voice, that is co-signing my position that Kaepernick wants to be a martyr, is not interested in playing, and this whole thing is a sham. The sham is how the NFL is proceeding. This whole workout was a sham and the fact that you’re taking time out of your day to make a cute little video carrying water and caping for them is Whitlockian, it’s unnecessary, it’s damaging, and I’m over it. I just wanna burn it down.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Shireen, what do you got?
Shireen: Yeah, I want to burn, in addition to those very important burns, I wanted to draw attention to a woman named Gazella Bensreiti, who is a Muslim woman, who went to the Denver Nuggets’ Pepsi Center on November 5th. And what ended up happening was she was there because her daughter was part of the choir singing the national anthem. Now, Gazella Bensreiti wears a headscarf, she wears a hijab, but that day she was wearing it more like turban-style, she’s fashionable. And aware. And it’s her preference. She got there but she was basically harassed by the Pepsi Center staff.
She had a thread about it which I shared on Twitter, she had one particular staffer named Dorothea who went after her, and Bensreiti said there were men in front of her with baseball caps on, white guys, and nothing. They weren’t asked, they weren’t asked to remove their caps for a security check, because before you go into the Pepsi Center you have to go through a security check. There’s usually metal detector, that kind of thing, they check your purses, your bags, whatever. So she was really humiliated, she was very, very specifically targeted. And the tickets that she had were at will call, so they had tickets to go. And she said she was refused and subsequently subjected to public humiliation in front of staff, students, and other parents. Until her daughter became distraught, believing her mom would not be allowed to see her perform, and that’s what the news released.
CAIR got involved, the Council for American-Islamic Relations got involved. And as a side note, I reached out to the Pepsi Center and the Nuggets, I got no response. But finally a spokeswoman for Kroenke Sports and Entertainment who I guess are in charge of this said that the security agent didn’t recognize that Bensreiti was wearing a hijab. But that’s actually not true because she told them that it was for religious reasons, that it’s her headscarf, it’s her hijab. She said this. She did inform them and they didn’t care. They told her she had to take it off which is so, it’s so upsetting. It’s a form of violence and she said “I can take it off in a private room for you but I don’t want to expose myself here,” she was just ridiculed. That is so violent and it is so jarring and upsetting. I want to burn this.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Certainly. Lindsay, take us home.
Lindsay: Yeah, I’ll be quick. NCAA, you’re back on the burn pile. I just had you on here last week but, you know, lifetime achievement award I guess. Let’s talk about transfers. The NCAA has officially rejected, now twice, because they rejected the appeal, of Evina Westbrook’s transfer from Tennessee to UConn. Of course, the coaching staff had changed, she was clearly very unhappy with the Tennessee coaching staff and now it is taking away an entire year of…Not a year of eligibility, but it’s forcing her to the sidelines for an entire year. This is a player who has WNBA pro potential and it’s staggering that the NCAA would A) not let a player like this make any money, and then B) control their ability to switch schools, which is something that students do every single day. It’s a very normal thing for students to transfer schools.
And so, once again, they’re treating these students like employees and yet not giving them any of the benefits of employment. And it’s not just Evina, but that’s the most kind of high profile example in my world. And Geno has come forward and he’s been very upset about it, he said “If she was in an environment that wasn’t necessarily healthy, an environment that if you knew what the environment was, which I can’t say, you would not want your kid in that environment.” And it just goes to show, these rules end up punishing these young athletes. It’s sickening, it just makes me nauseous. So NCAA, once again, burn.
Group: Burn.
Amira: They are always there. God, they’re awful.
After all that burning it’s time to recognize some badass women of the week. First, I want to recognize and acknowledge the passing of Doña Vera Cristina Zabala Clemente, for those of you who don’t know her or don’t recognize the name, she was the surviving widow of Pittsburgh Pirates’ Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican all star, somebody who is so meaningful for so many of us. And after Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve, 1972, as he was bringing disaster relief supplies to Nicaragua. His wife really stepped up and carried the torch of his legacy. She made his mission as a baseball player, but moreover as a man, as a humanitarian, as a person, to continue. She said, in ’94, she reflected, “That was his special mission. I admire him for that. So his image I keep alive, I’m happy doing what I’m doing.” She was an ambassador for Major League Baseball and somebody who just embodied so much of what’s right in the world. So Doña, alabanza, and farewell.
So honorable mentions this week include Spanish women professional soccer players, who are striking for better wages and conditions. We see you, in solidarity and love.
We also want to shoutout all the athletes competing this weekend in the Para Athletics World Championships taking place in Dubai.
This weekend we also have the 2019 international Roller Derby Championships, the WFTDA, and we don’t know the champions yet because the games take place later today; at the time we’re recording it’s the morning, still. But we did want to send a special shoutout to those who competed in the We Are a Nation: a Game Without Borders, if you remember when Shireen talked to Raven in episode 129, we previewed this match, and I did want to send a special shoutout to Team Indigenous Rising and Team Jewish roller derby teams, who played this historic game on Saturday, November 16th. Team Indigenous won 138-119. But we wanted to send a special shoutout to both teams that competed and everybody competing at WFTDA this weekend.
Also, the Japanese Football Association just announced they’re going to establish a new professional women’s soccer league, starting in 2021. There’s expected to be 6-8 teams and they’re hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the Tokyo Olympics.
We want to send a heart congratulations to 14-year old tackle football player Mya Sluban of St.Joseph Catholic High School in Ottawa who was the first girl to ever score a varsity touchdown.
Shoutout to the 30,661 dedicated fans watched Lyonnais feminin beat Paris Saint Germain women in France. Lyonnais won 1-0, the crowd was riveted, and it was the first time ever that over 30,000 have watched a domestic women's league match. And they say women’s sports don’t sell seats. Blasphemy. Anyways…
Can I get a drum roll please?
Our badass women of the week this week are the Chilean national women’s soccer team for their public support towards the democracy movement and the statements against police brutality shown against protesters there. Last week they played a double header, but before the match the women posed, holding a poster that read, “Chilean democracy tortures, rapes, maims and kills its citizens.” So shout out to you, you are our badass women of the week. Woo!
Alright y’all, what’s good in your worlds? Brenda?
Brenda: What’s good for me this week? Well, over the past week I went to Duke University and got to discuss my book that I co-authored with Joshua Nadel who’s at University of North Carolina Central. And it was thrilling, because I don’t get to see him all that often. And it just makes it so much more fun when we can be in the same place. So friend of the show Laurent Dubois brought us and it was a really great time at The Regulator, which is a bookstore in Durham. Some nice Burn It All Down fans showed up too, thanks to Adam for coming out. And Grant Farred also presented on his new book, so that was awesome. And, let’s see, going forward I get to see Shireen, December 7th and 8th at Princeton, for their soccer conference! So I don’t know, that’s all pretty good for me.
Amira: Alright, Lindsay, what’s good for you?
Lindsay: Yeah. This week I went to the Athlete Ally Action Awards and it was a really inspiring evening. Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger were given the one of the many awards…I also saw MLS player Collin Martin be awarded and, for me, one of the most moving was to see the trans student athletes and activists Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller take the stage, they’re both still in high school, they’re track athletes and they are the subject of so much scrutiny and hate, and I got to talk to Terry for a minute, and one of the things she said that really stuck with me was I said, how are you dealing with all of this, and she said, “It’s coming from the parents.” It’s just not coming from her fellow students, fellow competitors. The hate is coming from the parents, from adults.
And so just wanted to give a shoutout to Andraya and Terry, we are with you, we are supporting you, and it was an honor to meet both of you. And it was so cool to see their friendship, how much they’d been able to help each other through all of this. That was just a wonderful evening. I want to thank Athlete Ally, and so many people came up to me and said they listen to the podcast or subscribe to Power Plays and it was just so cool.
Amira: Yes. Shireen, what is good with you?
Shireen: I was in Kingston at a panel called Muslim Femininities in Sport, and I’ve done tons of panels, y’all know this, but this is the first time I’ve ever done a panel on sports with all Muslim women on it. It was me, Amina Mohamed, who is somebody I love, she is actually somebody who runs my website, I used to coach her in soccer, she is a lifelong hockey player, her family is Somali-Kenyan, she’s amazing. She’s an incredible hockey player. And with Sarah Abood, who just started this amazing modest sportswear company that makes hijabs for women and turbans for Sikh men. She’s amazing. She’s been collaborating with different communities, it was just such an honor to be there and learn from these young women.
And so, it was organized by Dr. Courtney Szto, and Dr. Shobhana Xavier who are both at Queens University and we had a BIPOC potluck and it was just awesome to be there in that space, and they taught me something new, not calling it a safe space but calling it a brave space. That’s something at one point I want to expand on on the show, just to talk about how ‘safe space’ is used as a shield by white folks against racialized people to say, freedom of expression, whatever, but saying brave space is…You can be who you are, and create spaces where you can be brave, and it was a lot of learning for me.
Also, this is really fun: there is a Tunisian-Californian artist Samya Zitouni who I found on Instagram, and she literally made an animated version of a photo I sent to her of myself.
Amira: Oh yeah, I saw it! It was so cool.
Shireen: It was so fun. It was literally so much fun. And I’m doing this thing where I’m trying to get art, instead of going to Zara and buying sweaters that I don’t need. I’m trying to get interesting things and just get stuff from women. Whether it’s art or whatnot. Entrepreneurial-wise, women are just amazing, particularly women of color. She did a great job and I’m so, so excited and apparently she got at least 20 requests for more, so I was very happy with that.
Amira: Wow. That’s awesome. So my what’s good is I’m back from my travels. I was in Hawaii for the American Studies Association conference and I love seeing the sport studies caucus there. It’s really some amazing work being done in radical sports studies, and coming together with the folks there to talk about that. I was on a panel about the Black Pacific which was really fun to talk and think about, Black bodies and racialized Black bodies in the Pacific world in Micronesia and Hawaii and all over Polynesia. That was a thrilling panel to be a part of and just to catch up with all of my academic folks there. It was a good time, and also it was warm, and I like not being cold, so that was ideal.
And then I headed to Bloomsburg University for a conversation about race and athletic protests, and I had the ultimate honor of hanging out and doing the panel with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who protested in 2001 in the NBA, then was blackballed by the league for refusing to stand for the anthem. As well as Gwen Berry, who remember we’ve talked about on the show before, a hammer thrower who protested at the Pan Am Games, and Matt Spolar, who’s the PBS producer of the Retro Report. We had a wonderful discussion, and it was just an honor to sit and chat with them about their athletic protests and their journey to that space.
And lastly, I wanted to highlight and shout out Bill Russell. Bill Russell, Celtics great, and just overall phenomenal human being. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975 but he refused to accept it, and to take his ring and be inducted in, back then. And part of the reason he gave was that he felt like there was other people who should go in before him, who paved the path to his ability to do that. And so, one of those people was Chuck Cooper, Chuck Cooper was the first African-American player drafted by the NBA back in 1950. And Chuck Cooper was finally inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, so Bill Russell decided that he would finally accept his ring. So he tweeted out a picture with his wife and his friends, including Ann Meyers and Bill Walton and Alonzo Mourning. He said, “I accepted my #HOF ring. In ‘75 I refused being the 1st black player to go into the Hall of Fame. I felt others before me should have that honor. Good to see progress.” And then he acknowledged Chuck Cooper, and then he posts a picture with his ring. So I just wanted to shout out Bill Russell, and Chuck Cooper, and that ring looks good.
And before we end the show, one last what’s good from all of us, is that it’s our dear co-host Jessica Luther’s birthday, at the time we’re recording, when you hear this it’ll be a few days after, but we wanted to send a very special happy birthday shoutout to Jess. You’re amazing, you’re a rockstar, and we hope your day is absolutely as wonderful as you are.
That’s it for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down. Burn It All Down is Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, iTunes, TuneIn, Google Play, anywhere you get your podcasts. Find it, rate it, review it, share it, we love to hear from you. You also can find us on Instagram, and Twitter, Facebook, and on our website, burnitalldownpod.com. There you’ll find a link to our Patreon, shoutout to our patrons, you keep us in this game. We love you. And it’s never too late to become a patron, for as low as $2 a month you will be included in our community over there, you’ll get extra content. Lindsay just had an awesome video last month where she did behind the scenes questions with other folks covering WNBA media, it was phenomenal. You’ll also be entered to win drawings, giveaways, if you’re over $5 a month. And you can ask us questions directly there. Please join the campaign, we have a lot of fun with our Patreon community. On our website you’ll also find show notes, transcripts, and a link to our merchandise store; we have warm weather apparel leaving the merch shop soon, so if you’re in cold weather places and gearing up for the changes in season or getting ready for the holidays, bounce over there and check out what we have for you. I can’t remember if there’s anything else I need to say. So I will just sign off by saying that’s it from me, Amira Rose Davis, Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs, and Shireen Ahmed. Burn on, not out. And we’ll see you next week, flamethrowers.