Episode 137: WADA's Russia Ban, Year of the Black QB + Interview with Nemesia Hijos on Boca Juniors
This week, Amira, Brenda, and Jessica are very confused about the creepy Raven VR [1:15] before they dive in to WADA's Russia Ban [6:06]. Then Brenda chats with Nemesia Hijos, a feminist leader in Argentine futbol, about major changes in the politics of Boca Juniors, one of the world’s most storied clubs [18:10]. Later the group considers the "Year of the Black QB" [37:32].
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile, [52:48] the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment [1:04:47] and what is good in our worlds [1:07:32].
Links
Russian Doping Blurs Innocence and Guilt, With Olympics Caught in Middle: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/sports/russia-doping-wada-olympics
What the Russia Global Sports Ban Means, and What It Doesn’t: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/sports/olympics/russia-olympics-doping
Wada acts on Russian doping but has it gone far enough?: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/09/wada-acts-russian-doping-has-it-gone-far-enough
Banning Russia's flag and anthem is perfect for WADA, whose only concern is optics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/banning-russias-flag-and-anthem-is-perfect-for-wada-whose-only-concern-is-optics/2019/12/09/23a07c14-1aa5-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story
How black quarterbacks defied a racist past to become the NFL's future: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/sep/20/black-quarterbacks-history-stereotypes1
After decades of struggle, we're in a golden age of black quarterbacks: https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2019/10/04/after-decades-of-struggle-were-in-a-golden-age-of-black-quarterbacks
Welcome to the Year of the Black Quarterback: https://theundefeated.com/features/welcome-to-the-year-of-the-black-quarterback
College football salaries: https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/salaries/football
Predator pipeline: NCAA looks other way as athletes punished for sex offenses play on https://gatehousenews.com/predatorpipeline
Best of the 2019 women's NCAA soccer tournament: Stanford beats UNC in shootout to take College Cup: https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/28059417/best-2019-women-ncaa-soccer-tournament-stanford-beats-unc
Kim Boutin wins 4th career short track World Cup gold in 500 metres: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/winter/speedskating/kim-boutin-short-track-gold-medal-shanghai-1.5388257
Bianca Andreescu caps off banner year with 2019 Lou Marsh Trophy: https://www.sportsnet.ca/tennis/bianca-andreescu-caps-off-banner-year-2019-lou-marsh-award
2019 Sportsperson of the Year: Megan Rapinoe: https://www.si.com/sportsperson/2019/12/09/megan-rapinoe-2019-sportsperson-of-the-year
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It may not be the feminist sports podcast you want, but it’s definitely the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State, and I’m leading the ship today. I’m joined by my co-hosts: Jessica Luther, freelance sports reporter in Austin, Texas, and Brenda Elsey, my fellow historian, associate professor of history at Hofstra University.
And together today we have quite a show for you. First, we’re going to talk about Russia’s WADA ban. Or is it? And then Brenda is gonna chat with Nemesia Hijós, a feminist leader in Argentine football. They’re gonna chat about the major changes in the politics of Boca Juniors, one of the world’s most storied football clubs. And then we’re gonna wrap things up by talking about the so-called year of the Black QB. Of course we’ll be burning some things, we’ll shout out some badass women, and we’ll tell you what’s good in our lives.
Before we dive into all that, I have to ask you guys: did you see this video of that creepy-ass raven at the Ravens’ game? The Ravens are now including…they debuted an augmented reality technology that flew a computerized, lifelike raven through the stadium in the middle of the game. Even when they were tweeting it people were like, what?
Jessica: Yeah, I don’t…I saw it because you sent it to us, I don’t get it! When you’re in the audience you obviously don’t see the raven. Where do you see it? Just on the screen?
Amira: Wait, the audience didn’t see the raven?
Jessica: Well it’s not like, flying over their heads!
Amira: I thought it was, though.
Jessica: How does it work!?
Amira: I thought it WAS! It’s not flying..?
Jessica: VR is normally just a screen. Right? Where you hold the screen up…
Brenda: No, I think they can-
Jessica: It’s in the stadium?!
Amira: Because I just did The Void, which is a new VR game, escape game, like you’re in it. I just did this with Samari, it was Jumanji-themed.
Jessica: Okay.
Amira: I know we have goggles, but it literally feels like you’re in the jungle, that’s all you see. So when I saw this I was convinced…
Jessica: I feel like I need a firsthand account from someone in the audience to understand. They can see it? Above their heads?
Amira: So why would they waste time doing it with just the screen?
Jessica: I have no idea!
Amira: Oh, so the people in the stadium couldn’t see it if they looked up but they could see if they looked on the screen.
Jessica: On the screen. Okay. Why are they doing this?
Amira: I don’t know. They reacted! I feel like there’s been a pitch for technology into stadiums but it’s like, give us wifi in stadiums, not flying ravens!
Jessica: That’d be true technology.
Brenda: All I can think is like, would every stadium try to do this with every mascot, what that might look like.
Amira: No, because then we’d be-
Jessica: Oh, no.
Brenda: Penguins? I was thinking penguins, lions, tigers!
Amira: Go back to that creepy white man mascot problem we talked about before…
Brenda: Yes! Yes. Exactly.
Amira: Because if I see a “Patriot” charge-
Brenda: Washington! Right.
Amira: -I’m out. I’m just gone. I don’t want any part of that.
Jessica: I do want a penguin. I’m pro-penguin.
Brenda: Pro-penguin. It did make me feel like maybe it would bring the native mascotry debate to a new level, like if every stadium tried to do it, I’m like hmm, what about the Cleveland baseball team?
Amira: Right.
Jessica: I would say also thinking about University of Texas where they drug this giant thousand-pound longhorn or whatever and keep him on the side, think of the longhorns they could just augment instead of actually doping and-
Amira: They drug them?
Jessica: Yeah, because they’re super dangerous, so they have to keep them calm and I’m pretty sure that’s how they do it. There was this famous video like a year ago, my friend Danny took it, he’s a statesman reporter here in town, it was like the Georgia Bulldogs, some tiny tiny little animal for the other team, and the longhorn went after it.
Amira: Oh, shit.
Jessica: All the reporters and photographers had to get out of the way.
Amira: Oh my god.
Jessica: So that’s another thing, like I agree with Brenda that it could bring this all to a head, but also think of all the little animals, or giant animals, that they could just augment. That would be better.
Amira: Oh my goodness.
Brenda: But it’d be so scary, can you imagine a longhorn running at you in mixed reality…
Jessica: You should look up the video, now everyone has to go look up the video of the longhorn.
Amira: While you’re there also look up my favorite video ever, which is Eric Berry, when he played for the Kansas City Chiefs, again, you know they have racist mascots riding in on a horse, but he’s terrified of horses.
Jessica: Aww.
Amira: So there’s a video from years ago before he had taken leave to deal with his cancer…I love him, as a player, as person. But he’s terrified of horses so they have him mic’d up for one episode and the horse comes in and the whole time that he’s mic’d up he’s like, “Where’s the horse? Oh no, I saw the horse move.” It is the funniest, most endearing thing. So go watch the terrifying longhorn video, and you can chase that with Eric Berry’s scared of horses video. So there you are. Thanks for indulging me on that. I’m glad that you also had no clue what was going on because I feel better about life.
Jessica: We have talked about systemic doping by Russia on the show before; I looked it up like I like to do, so if you want to hear it that’s episode 32 and 73 to be exact. The shortest version, and I really tried here, is that Russia had a sophisticated system to get around drug testing that came to full fruition during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Grigory Rodchenkov, former Moscow lab director, he’s the main whistleblower. The IOC punished Russia just before the 2018 Winter Olympics and then reinstated them three days after. Because why have a spine.
Since then the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, we’ll talk about WADA over and over again, has been going back and forth about what to do about Russia, there’s a lot of stuff in the weeds that I don’t think we necessarily have to get into; just know that Russia was supposed to follow a bunch of rules, it hasn’t. Sometimes a bunch of governing bodies ignore it, sometimes they don’t. A lot is hard to know about what Russia was up to because the Russians have, against the rules, destroyed a ton of data and files about their system.
So the recent big news: earlier this week, WADA banned Russia from international competition, including and especially the Olympics, for the next four years. Which sounds big and major on its face, right? Here’s how the New York Times summarizes the punishment, quote: “Under the ban, Russia’s flag, name and anthem would not be allowed at the Tokyo Games next summer, or the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, though the competitive effects may be minimal. Russian athletes not implicated in doping are expected to be able to compete in the Olympics and other world championships under a neutral flag. The World Anti-Doping Agency also barred Russian sports and government officials from the games. It prohibited the country from hosting international events. The decision, which Russia has 21 days to appeal, will most likely set up a series of confrontations in the coming months and years as Russia fights to have its athletes and teams compete at major events.”
Okay, the point of emphasis is that this bans Russia, the entity of Russia, and not Russian athletes, right? So Russian teams can compete but you can’t have the word “Russia” on your uniform? I don’t know if anyone remembers, but in the Winter Olympics last time they were the OAR, the Olympic Athletes from Russia. So you could say “Russia” there but not just Russia by itself, I don’t know. One of the punishments is that Russia isn’t supposed to host international events – I love all of this, because it’s so stupid. But it’s participating in hosting the Euro 2020, and is allowed to under the ban, because according to this New York Times explainer, the Euro is considered a ‘continental event’ and not a ‘world championship’ or one open to athletes from all over the world. So therefore the ban doesn’t apply. Cool.
As for the World Cup, which is the other big major international competition, they can compete to qualify; if they make it, they can play. Again, they just can’t have “Russia” on their uniform or the flag or the anthem or whatever. Lots of athletes, even people in WADA, have spoken up and said that this is barely a ban and certainly not enough for what Russia has done.
So there’s two things that I think are most interesting here. The way that Russia paints this as a ‘Russia vs. The West’ I think is a very important diplomatic and political thing. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who I honestly forgot existed, I forgot that Russia had a Prime Minister until this, he said that the penalties were a “continuation of anti-Russian hysteria.” I don’t think we need to get into all of it, but I think most people probably have an understand of…lots of people are questioning Russia interfering in their politics in very real ways.
And then of course the hosting of major international tournaments. More and more, as we’ve talked about, these events keep going to authoritarian places, right? Where governments can make unilateral decisions about whether or not they’re going to host them and how they’re going to host them. So pissing off countries like Russia could spell doom in a lot of ways for the future of these competitions, at least how we imagine them now. How decisions around these countries are made, they’re carefully done but also poorly done, because the future of these competitions is so tenuous.
So there’s a lot of stuff here. What did you all think about WADA’s decision? Does it feel like it has any kind of teeth, do you think it will matter, do you care about WADA?
Amira: No, it doesn’t feel particularly toothy. It’s interesting to me, like you said…I don’t know if you all recall last year and earlier this year, besides the doping there’s been allegations, and some of them proven, that Russia also targeted both WADA and the IOC and hacked their systems-
Jessica: That’s right!
Amira: -and their emails, in order to discredit anti-doping measures and articles and things like that. So you see that there’s already a kind of retaliation, when you said that Jess, that’s what it made me think of. A retaliation for these measures, these anti-doping measures, however toothless they might be. I do have to say, this fallout, I experienced this firsthand as I was doing research in Switzerland at the Olympic Studies Centre, because my computer is a university computer and has a lot of firewalls, it sparked all of this concern on their servers because they’re so guarded against Russian hackers. It resulted in a lot of…It was actually a quite terrifying day, because they accused me of cyber-attacking the Olympics, and I’m like I promise you I don’t know how to do that. But part of it was a thorough search of my computer and all this questioning. I didn’t find out until later that they wanted to bring me down to a headquarters to further question me, they wanted to see my passport, it was really…
Some of it was intensified because I’m Black, and I know that to be true from conversations that happened afterward, but one of the things in the wake of this, some people that I worked closely with in the Olympic Studies Centre, was like, “We want to explain some of the anxiety around it, it’s because every day we’re facing threats from Russian hackers who are continuously trying to hack in and find a way to discredit both the doping stuff, but to stockpile claims against…to be able to combat any future measures that are taken against the country or attempts to bar them from international competition.
And so when I say it’s not particularly toothy, there’s a much larger conversation here about A) the importance of international competition for state-building, and if you’ve seen the documentary Icarus you see really compellingly how the correlation between the Russian performance in Sochi correlated with a surge in approval of Putin which correlated to the ability to go on strikes against Ukraine. I think that that’s really important to remember, and it’s also really important to consider the way that a fear of retaliation is ordering some of the steps here. I don’t have any answers, because it feels like a movie, I mean it will all be movies, eventually.
It was hard for me to fully understand and believe a lot of the headlines last year. I was there and I was like, oh, this is real and it’s scary. Then on the other hand, and this was the discussion last year, do you penalize individual athletes who happen to be from Russia, but then also understand that the response to that would be that even if they were found to be doping, the sophistication which the federation fudged tests, is anybody ever really clean? Anyways, those are my initial thoughts. Brenda?
Brenda: You know, it’s interesting. In the case of FIFA, I could speak a little bit to 2022; FIFA administers its own drug tests, blood and urine, so it’ll be interesting to see their interaction with WADA. They consult them, but they do not have any power over them. Which basically means that…Let me backtrack for a second. So when we’re talking about Euros, the Euros are overseen by UEFA, the European Confederation…This gets really complicated! For that, FIFA doesn’t control the drug testing or anything about that particular tournament. It goes to the European Confederation. So it’d be up to them to enforce some kind of ban over that competition. It looks silly, but it’s also true that these bodies have governance over their competitions. So 2022, FIFA may just say they have the unilateral power to be like yeah, it’s fine. Which they won’t! Especially when it comes to Qatar-
Amira: Right, right.
Brenda: -and the policies of the Middle East. They’re not gonna do that. In addition to that, it’ll be interesting to see how some of these doping allegations and things like that in track and field, and I just wanna say one more time: the absolute hypocrisy of saying that you have a doping program to “protect athletes’ bodies from harm and substances”-
Amira: Right, right.
Brenda: -just makes me think Caster Semenya, Caster Semenya, Caster Semenya, Caster Semenya-
Amira: Me too.
Brenda: -until my brain explodes! So there’s so much politics in this, so much weird science, it is like a movie, but I have no faith that any of this will be enforced, personally.
Jessica: Yeah, and I wanted to add Sally Jenkins wrote one of her fiery op-eds in the WaPo about this and she really goes after WADA in it in particular. The governing body making these decisions is not good at what it does. She interviews an expert and he points out that there are more than 300 substances on WADA’s ban list that there’s almost no evidence for performance enhancement for most of them. They have lab failures all over the place, like you Google “WADA lab failure” and you’re gonna find a ton of stuff. They’re not good at regulating themselves-
Amira: Right.
Jessica: -and doing a good job of the very basic thing that they are supposed to do. I don’t think doping is basic, it’s actually incredibly complicated as Brenda just pointed out, there’s a lot of politics involved. But the thing it’s supposed to do, the most basic thing it’s supposed to do, it’s not even that good at. And yet here they are making these decisions in this really complicated socio-diplomatic complicated international political landscape…I don’t know. I’m not even sure what I wanted to say about that, I just wanted to point out that WADA itself is not some neutral body here.
Amira: Right.
Jessica: She also points out that they’re in charge of punishing a state, that that was never the point of WADA in the first place. It’s kind of like, thinking about the NCAA punishing Penn State around Sandusky, they weren’t set up to do that and it sort of all fell apart because of it, because they didn’t care about that, right? That wasn’t the point of this, originally. So where that leads us I don’t know. The headline is easy, “WADA bans Russia for 4 years from international competition,” and everything underneath it though is super complicated and thorny.
Amira: Next up, Brenda interviews Nemesia Hijós.
Brenda: I’m so excited today to be interviewing Nemesia Hijós. She’s an anthropologist from the University of Buenos Aires, and she’s also worked for a very long time with the associations, the fans, and the neighborhoods of the very storied and famous Argentine soccer club, Boca Juniors. Nemesia, welcome to Burn It All Down.
Nemesia: Hi everybody. I’m really excited to be a part of the podcast, I’m really a fan of this so I’m really excited to participate.
Brenda: Well thanks for being here. Before we get into what was an interesting week for the women of Boca Juniors, I just wanna ask you to explain to listeners a little bit about the structure of the clubs. Here in the US the sports clubs are all private, by and large. Could you just explain a little bit why a sports club like Boca Juniors is so important?
Nemesia: Yes, for sure. The main difference is that here in Argentina we have non-profit civil associations, we don’t have clubs as companies as we see, for example, in Europe. In Argentina they were founded…The sports clubs are really important in social activities, in everyday life for people here, for sociability, for education, but also to introduce people into democracy activities, for example related to elections. Also, the clubs here in Argentina are a really important place to share with different classes from different parts of the country, to share places in the same neighborhood.
Since the moment when immigrants arrived to Argentina, from Italy or from Spain, especially in the neighborhood of Buenos Aires related to the puerto, they came from Genoa, from Italy, since like 100 years ago. These clubs like Boca Juniors were a place to share values, life ties, and customs also. So since that moment 100 years ago, Boca Juniors is still a non-profit civil association. But since Mauricio Macri arrived as a president of the club in 1995, this structure, this legal model, was changed to a company structure, because he came from a business place. He’s a businessman, his family is also related to business.
The main idea, the perfect model of the club has been built related to the administrative way to organize the clubs. He thinks especially changing this legal model was the best option to stop with the barrabarras, the violence in Argentina. Also it was the best way to stop the corruption here in Argentina. I think that when Mauricio Macri was elected president of the club in 1995, he was thinking in a different model of a club and started introducing modernization decisions in the club, for example he created departments and areas specially dedicated to commercialize the image of the club.
Brenda: So basically he wanted to brand…
Nemesia: Yes, exactly.
Brenda: To make the brand the same as the sort of private sports club that the Premier League would do, or something.
Nemesia: Exactly. Especially with the buying places in the stadium, the creation of the museum, but it was related with a business grab. It wasn’t really representing the identity of the neighborhood that is a really poor place in our city here in Buenos Aires. So in that moment I think some members of the club started to feel tensions. Some mobilizations, some associations started to be founded also, in that period. But I think that in that moment Mauricio Macri was also related with really important sport results, especially in men’s football.
Brenda: Take away the social function of the club by emphasizing the commodity, the brand, by making structural changes in the stadium like the VIP seats. At the time they were winning-
Nemesia: Yes.
Brenda: -and so it sort of overshadowed what he was doing.
Nemesia: Exactly.
Brenda: Even though groups formed, they didn’t really give him too hard a time.
Nemesia: Mm-hmm (affirmative). With all this panorama related with modernization processes in the club, reorganizing the club as a company but without changing the legal model, Macri managed to position himself as a skilled leader, you know, with knowledge related to management, which prompted him to start a career as a recognized politician. He won the elections in 2007, while he was the president of Boca Juniors. So he continued his career until 2015, in that place related with municipal policy. And then he became president of our country until two weeks ago.
So I think that all these sports results related to men’s football were really important to position himself as a political leader, as a man who was able to manage a really important place, for a club. Here in Argentina we know that the football clubs have a really strong place in politics, so I think that this place and his career in Boca Juniors were really important to jump to national politics.
Brenda: So just for our listeners, again, here he is: he starts as president of Boca, then he goes on to basically a major of Buenos Aires…
Nemesia: Yes, exactly.
Brenda: And then he jumps to being the president of the whole country.
Nemesia: Yes, in 2015.
Brenda: He’s been president now and served his term, his first term, and his government looked a lot like what he was trying to do with Boca Juniors too, right? Which is to emphasize a kind of corporate restructuring. What happened recently with the elections in the country and the elections in Boca?
Nemesia: 2019 was a really important year in political issues in Argentina. In October we had national elections, and we have been choosing between the continuations of the neoliberal model, represented by Mauricio Macri, and then the more popular model represented by Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Being president of Boca Juniors, maybe River Plate also, maybe is one of the biggest places here with the love, huge responsibilities, and expositions here in Argentina, maybe more than other places in politics in Argentina.
I think that maybe last week, especially last Sunday, had one of the most important events here in Argentina, because the members of Boca Juniors had the possibility of ending the Macri period of the club. We must remember that since 1995 when Mauricio Macri started his political career in Boca Juniors, and until tomorrow because we are going to change the position tomorrow, all the presidents of Boca Juniors were representing the same political direction. Mauricio Macri was replaced in 2008 by Pedro Pompilio, and then he died. He passed away and was replaced by Jorge Amor Ameal, he was the man who won the elections last Sunday. He continues the work in the same line of Mauricio Macri, but he was not representing that model, because he was only the government of a man who was passed away, who was dead.
So in the last years since 2011 until last Sunday, Daniel Angelici was the man who really represented the political line of Mauricio Macri. He is a friend of him, and he’s also a businessman related to loss in the city of Buenos Aires; he was in charge also to elect and to form another political leader, in this case Cristian Gribaudo was the man who pretended to be the president elected by Mauricio Macri, and also by Daniel Angelici. But this Sunday things really changed in the club. Jorge Amor Ameal, that man who replaced Pedro Pompilio, joined Mario Pergolini: that is a man really related to journalism, radio and TV here in Argentina. Maybe you know him.
But this strong decision in this formula, this political formula to end the Macri period, was to to include Juan Román Riquelme. Juan Román Riquelme is one of the biggest idols of the club and also the national football in Argentina. He had some differences with Macri and Angelici around his career because of his contract – the sport results are really important to win or to lose an election. This period with Daniel Angelici being president without any championships or really important results with the Libertadores…I’m talking about in men’s football, only that point they pay attention to.
So maybe those things not having really important sports results didn’t give the opportunity to continue this line as Mauricio Macri or Daniel Angelici. Another model, maybe representing another line, was the formula that was elected this last Sunday. I think that maybe this year 2019 here in Argentina, we have a really important role with women on the street asking for more rights, and also that movement was really important in the clubs. I think that these movements and these groups and associations were arriving to the clubs and some gender commissions and organizations and departments were incorporated in some clubs.
Not especially in Boca Juniors, because the structure is really different from another social club’s model, for example, but Boca wanted - or the political leader wanted - to include some of these points to have more representation of women there.
Brenda: Okay. When you look then at Boca Juniors and you see this new group of leaders that are on the verge of being elected, how can we understand the very dynamic, new leadership of women in these clubs in South America? What’s going on?
Nemesia: I think that women are really the protagonists in the slogans and also the institutional photos in pictures, but they are not really included to dispute politics in the clubs, because football is still a space related with a macho logic, you know? I think that maybe the movement and the reorganization of the clubs and the politics in Argentina is going in another line, you know? They are pushing to introduce some changes and movements in the clubs and restructure the institutions, but because the men are still in charge of the politics they don’t have real representaiton in places there.
We are trying to push them to make them follow the law, you know here we have a sports law, since 2015, and this law has a point that says we must include in institutions related with social or sport activities, that 20% of these institutions must include women and young people. But nobody is following that law. These movements in Argentina related with the rights of women, not only with legal abortion but to have more rights, they are pushing these political leaders in institutions and clubs to follow this law and also to represent and incorporate, in a really good and genuine way, women, and also the places to include them, to give them the importance that we need.
Because I think that Boca, for example, all this year, was really thinking about including and considering women, but I think that they include them in a marketing way, you know? They put them on the front page or on social media, they were talking for example about how this club is the only club where we have 23 professional contracts of the players of the Gladiadoras, the women’s team. And they were promising more matches of the Gladiators in La Bombonera, but they were only in a marketing place, you know?
Brenda: So Nemesia, what else is new about this election?
Nemesia: Yes, I think this election was also important because there were around 84,000 members of the club ready to vote, it was estimated that more or less half of that amount were to participate, because a lot of members of the clubs are in the provinces of the country, and last Sunday we didn’t have many at the stadium. It was not really possible for all the members from the other provinces to start traveling to the club. We don’t have digital elections, we have only the possibility to travel to the club, to the stadium, to vote. So despite all these difficult situations, we found that a new record was marked in the history of the clubs in Argentina with the participation of more than 38,000 members, and especially women have a really important place in this last election, because they elect and they vote for Jorge Amor Ameal or Mario Pergolini, and also for Juan Román Riquelme. This difference of the elections were really important for the women, because 20,000 votes or around 54% of the total amount of members’ votes were for Jorge Amor Ameal. And in the other election, the election in 2015, we found that around 26,000 people voted. So in this election more than 12,000 more people voted than the last. And also we found that more women were participating in this last election. I think with all this movement with #NiUnaMenos, with legal abortion, with #MeToo, we have a lot of women joining to participate and to decide and to be a part of the political everyday life of the club, and also to start choosing different kinds of values to put a stop to this Macri period in the club. We found that a lot of women were participating in associations like corridas de hinchas, like Boca Pueblo, Boca Nuestro, different associations related with identity to preserve the stadium, to give more importance to the neighborhood, to pay more attention to the Gladiadoras, to the women’s football, to start participating in the elections and the everyday life of the club. So I think that women were really the point of change and to stop Macri’s period of 24 years at Boca Juniors.
Brenda: Good luck with Boca Juniors, and thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down.
Nemesia: Thank you for all this opportunity, I had a really good time with you. I hope you enjoyed it.
Amira: Alright. I don’t know how many of y’all watch SNL anymore, or…
Jessica: Tell us about it.
Amira: I just see clips on Twitter.
Jessica: Same.
Amira: One of the clips on Twitter from last night, Saturday December whatever, 14th, was a clip of all the conversations around all these mythical holiday tables…On the Black family table you had a great line that said, “Lord, thank you for the not one, not two, not three Black quarterbacks, that have beaten Tom Brady this season; Colin Kaepernick, you move in mysterious ways.” And I thought that was a great entry point into a discussion of the Black quarterback. Many are calling this year ‘The Year of the Black Quarterback.’ For those of you who aren’t following the NFL, we talked a little bit last week about Lamar Jackson, it even got Jessica to watch an NFL game…
Jessica: Yeah, it really did.
Amira: First time in a while. But yeah, so if you’re not following, the reigning MVP is a Black quarterback, the highest-paid player in the league is a Black quarterback, #1 draft and future MVP is a Black quarterback. This is certainly a time of heightened visibility on the backs of Russell Wilson, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson of course, Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson. It certainly feels like a more visible time for Black play-callers.
This has led to, as you can expect, a number of pieces, SNL skits and stuff like that, but I guess I wanted to have a conversation about…Personally, for me, the ways that I still see ideas around Black men’s inability to play quarterback still cropping up in the analyses of these quarterbacks, but also thinking about my big question that we can build to, whether the rhetoric around crowning this ‘the year of the Black quarterback’ a way to obfuscate the treatment of one Black quarterback who’s no longer in the league and never will be again. So, there’s that, we can build to it. But what say you, friends? Is this the year of the Black quarterback?
Jessica: Well, yeah, I mean, it is in lots of ways, and one thing I wanted to bring up quickly was last week Amira, your burn was about racist commentary around Lamar Jackson…Was that last week? Two weeks ago?
Amira: It was last week.
Brenda: Last week.
Jessica: Yeah, and then since then we’ve had…Doug Gottlieb, I mean, burn. I’m sad to even mention him. He made these ridiculous statements about picking Sam Darnold over Lamar Jackson because…Let me get it right…“It’s the long-term play. If you want to tell me that Lamar Jackson is a good long term play then you’re going to tell me that Cam Newton was a good long term play.”
What? You’re using Cam Newton, an NFL MVP, someone who took his team to the Super Bowl, as a negative measure? Of course a Black quarterback who got a lot of shit for his quote unquote “attitude” or whatever, as the negative that you’re comparing Lamar Jackson to in order to hold up this mediocre white man as quarterback?! The racism that comes when as soon as we see all these Black men playing quarterback, which is this revered ‘brainy’ position in football, we are also…that means of course dealing with the other side with all these ridiculously public, racist statements about these men.
Amira: Right.
Jessica: Both end up happening at the same time.
Amira: Exactly.
Jessica: I hate that dynamic.
Amira: And the idea that Lamar Jackson’s having the season that he’s having, and there’s still questions!
Jessica: He’s setting records!
Amira: Yeah. Nobody does this when white quarterbacks have a record-setting year. They don’t immediately go, “How long is this gonna last?!”
Jessica: Right! Right.
Amira: Or “Is this about long term stuff?” Or “This is all gonna come crashing down!”
Jessica: It’s the NFL! People only last so long anyway.
Amira: Right! Exactly. The very space afforded to continue questions about Lamar Jackson is despite the fact that he’s proving all the scouts, everybody, wrong, is really, really, really indicative of the fact that yeah, there may be more Black quarterbacks but that hasn’t changed people’s minds about Black quarterbacks whatsoever. You can see this in how much people continue to say oh, he’s a running quarterback, or he just plays in that style of play…
Jessica: Yes, they talk about it so much.
Amira: But it’s so coded. And I think that's the thing that you still see, and with more of them it’s amplified even more. This language and racist rhetoric around playing styles, around their longevity, around their decision-making, around their attitude, all of that is steeped in and embedded with racism and racist thought that is still here, that we’re seeing each week and every time somebody writes another piece or makes an offhand comment about the “camouflage of the ball” or scrutinizes if they’ll be able to do this again next year…These are not football questions, largely. It’s just a lot. Brenda?
Jessica: Can I mention one quick thing on this?
Amira: Yeah.
Jessica: Going back to Cam Newton, I remember there was a game that Cam Newton played in, and he was…I don’t know if ‘targeted’ is the right word, because there’s an actual rule against targeting, but hit really hard, like six different times where people were like, why wasn’t there a flag?
Amira: Yeah, yeah.
Jessica: Right? Which again we can go back to who gets calls, who’s considered more…Like they’re wearing armor, like that they don’t need as much protection, all these sorts of things, there’s racism built into that too.
Amira: Exactly.
Jessica: And so the idea like Cam Newton isn’t playing now because he’s been so injured, but he also didn’t get calls when he should’ve gotten calls and teams went after him harder than maybe they’ve gone after, I don’t know, maybe a white quarterback. Something like that, right? So all of these things…It’s not as simple as like…As you were talking, I was thinking about that particular game with Cam Newton, and that’s another thing that he faces as a Black quarterback on the field.
Amira: Yes, certainly. Bren?
Brenda: Yeah, I found this to be a really compelling story, and you know I don’t want anything to save the NFL, so when everybody’s like, “3 Black quarterbacks! Are they here to save the NFL?” I’m like, please don’t! Damn it, you charismatic young men! But anyway, I did hear Lamar Jackson…Did you hear what he said after, I can’t remember which game it was, where he said, “Not bad for a running back.”
Amira: Yeah, yeah.
Brenda: And it was just so fascinating how he knew, like how he read…He knows very well what’s being said about him. They’re so conscious of it in a way that I feel is just very intelligent and very articulate, and how do you respond to it, you know?
Amira: Right.
Brenda: And I know they’re all gonna say “It motivates me” because all these guys say that. But it’s also gotta wear on you. I just thought that was fascinating when they were reading out the stats of the games, and he said “Not bad for a running back.” And then I just wanted to ask, what was the thing about Tom Brady challenging him to a race? Bring me up to speed on that. Amira?
Amira: So, Tom was really self-deprecating about the fact that he can’t run, like his entire thing-
Brenda: The only thing he can be self-deprecating about!
Amira: No, he’s self-deprecating about a bunch of stuff.
Jessica: Okay, okay…
Amira: This was a particular running joke, so after the Ravens beat the Pats he was joking with Lamar and was saying, “Let’s do a 40-yard dash, but he has to be on roller blades on the grass.” He was saying, “Put it on Pay Per View, who would tune in to watch?” As a way to be like, how can we make it an even race? Obviously he can’t run at all. And they have some back and forth joking…
Brenda: Got it.
Amira: Yeah. So the other two things, besides the players playing, there’s conversations around two Black quarterbacks who aren’t playing that I think informs and can be brought into this discussion. One of them of course is Kaepernick, I alluded to this in the beginning about how…Are we gonna see these folks become the face of the NFL and kind of save them from continued critique, especially in the wake of the botched whatever workout it was, and Goodell’s statements saying, you know, “That was his chance, he’ll never play in the NFL,” etc, etc, the NFL is quote unquote “moving on” from Colin Kaepernick, so that’s certainly one piece of it.
But the other piece is a conversation that was animated this week over the discussion of Mike Vick, another prominent Black quarterback, of course, who served time. Charges related to a dog ring, dogfighting, and abuse towards the animals. He did his time and obviously reentered the league, and it emerged this week he was up to be celebrity guest captain for the Pro Bowl. This was met with a petition that circulated so that he wouldn’t be-
Jessica: Multiple.
Amira: Multiple petitions.
Jessica: I read like three of them.
Amira: Right. So that he won’t be Pro Bowl captain, in light of his previous offenses. I just think this is certainly part of this conversation. Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, I was thinking a lot about Michael Vick this week, especially once we were gonna talk about Black quarterbacks. There’s nothing easy to say about this because yeah, he went to prison for doing a horrible thing, right? There’s this amazing Washington Post piece just a few months ago about all the dogs, the legacy of the actual dogs that were rescued, it’s a really great piece. So it’s one of those where you’re like, I don’t endorse what he did, obviously, but he paid the price that we as a society have set out as the price that you pay. Right? He lost his job for a while, he was in prison, he’s apologized repeatedly, and he’s actually taken up the cause of animal welfare and put up his name and his money behind undoing the work that he was a part of. It’s kind of like, what else are you gonna ask, at this point? And I know that there are people who are gonna ask that he not be anywhere anymore, but this is also the same league that…He played on the same team as Ben Roethlisberger!
Brenda: Yes, yes.
Jessica: There are people outside the stadium holding up signs against Vick when they have someone who’s been reported multiple times for rape behind the center making the passes!
Amira: Exactly.
Brenda: It’s just so hard to hold all of that and to see the brunt that Vick takes. Again, I understand the people who have a lot of feelings and they differ from us, but we do talk a lot about what do you have to do to make amends. To me, Vick has done basically everything you can ask of him except disappear.
Amira: Exactly.
Jessica: And the fact that he’s the one that’s being asked to disappear, at the same time that they have disappeared Colin Kaepernick.
Amira: Right.
Jessica: And it pains me because Roger Goodell, who I don’t ever want to agree with on anything, has backed Vick up and has said, quote, “He’s paid every price for that, he’s been accountable for it, he worked aggressively with the humane society and other institutions to deal with animal rights and to make sure people don’t make the same mistake he had, and I admire that. I know that there are people out there who will never forgive him, and he knows that.” And the fact that I agree with Goodell on anything…But in this case, I really do feel like it’s hard.
If you don’t remember and you weren’t there, Michael Vick before any of this happened faced incredible racism from the point that he was at Virginia Tech to when he became the Atlanta Falcons quarterback, which was a very Black city, they were very excited about him and he just faced so much racism before any of this happened. I don’t know. Thinking about the futures for Russell Wilson and Lamar Jackson, and Dak Prescott, all these guys at this point, Deshaun Watson: what would we be saying about them in ten years from now? Where will they be in our society? Hopefully they’re not making choices like Michael Vick did, but I just feel it tells us something about how we think about these men.
Amira: Certainly, and I really liked your line about who’s disposable and who’s not, and who’s being asked to disappear. I think that’s really salient. The other thing with Vick and the thing that it feels like to a lot of Black folks who watch, and even who weren’t supporters of him, but the amount of care and empathy and all of this stuff for animals, on the part of white people, feels very distinct to the empathy afforded to little Black children who get killed by police. So the petitions that immediately circled around on behalf and in the defense of dogs, I think feels very similar to this running feeling like, if you want white people on board, mess with their animals.
But these same people who get very worked up…I know, I saw there was this back and forth between Sarah Spain and somebody around this, and obviously there’s many people who critique Vick and also have a documented history of robustly talking about police brutality, etc, etc. But I think that it’s a feeling that’s not easily dismissed, and it goes to what you were saying, Jess, it’s like this is what people get mad about? The fact that there’s rapists and murderers and all of these things, having elicited a similar emotional bond, longstanding kind of backlash, is revealing. We will continue to see as this plays out and we move towards the NFL postseason.
Alright, it’s time for everybody’s favorite segment, the burn pile. Brenda, what are you burning today?
Brenda: This week I’m dragging a classic burn pile character back on the incinerator, but with a new twist. I am metaphorically burning Nick Saban, University of Alabama’s football coach! I know it will shock everyone.
Jessica: I love the pep, Bren.
Brenda: Thank you. You need it to take on this guy week after week. So yeah, I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up on trying to spawn Nick Saban hate among our listeners and the world in general. But this time it’s not for taking an immorally high salary – the highest in the country for a public employee, except for…I can’t remember, that other coach that takes an immorally high salary – but also spreading his patronage and corruption with an “internship program” that works like this:
You’re a big time college coach that gets fired. Sad face. 😢 To keep receiving your undeserved, exorbitant salary, you usually have a clause that says you have to try to get another job to get your payoff, your fired payoff. So guess what you do? You get your buddy Nick Saban to hire you as an “analyst.”
Jessica: Ohh. Shit.
Brenda: So I’ll just give you an example of the fired coaches that are “interning” under Nick Saban, an educator. Former Houston head coach Major Applewhite, who makes $43,350. $43,000 you ask yourself, my, that’s a very low salary! But don’t worry because he’s getting millions of dollars in buyouts that he now doesn’t have to deal with because he’s technically got a job. Arizona head coach Mike Stoops clocks in at $76,500, and former – get this, this is my favorite – former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones, who’s making $35,000. That seems much lower! But don’t worry, because he’s getting $8.3 million from University of Tennessee through 2021.
Amira: Oh my goodness.
Brenda: Bargain, Nick Saban! And I just wanna let you know, when Nick Saban was asked about former Tennessee head coach Butch Jones’ job, he said, quote, “He’s an intern.” End of quote!
Amira: Oh my goodness.
Jessica: Oh my god.
Brenda: Last piece of information: analysts are called analysts (these intern analysts) because they can serve as staff in addition to the ten assistant coaches that are allowed per school under NCAA rules.
Jessica: Oh my gosh.
Brenda: So it doesn’t in any way infringe upon Nick Saban’s ability to pay his ten assistant coaches $7.5 million this year, making them the nation’s highest paid staff among public schools. So I would like to throw on the burn pile…Oh, and there are schools that are following suit! Many other coaches have noticed Nick Saban’s fantastic internship program and have started internship programs of their own, also hiring former defamed college coaches. So I would like to throw on the burn pile Nick Saban, of course only metaphorically, but not metaphorically this internship program, and the graft and corruption that is college football. Burn.
Group: Burn.
Amira: My goodness.
Brenda: Fuck him.
Amira: Yikes. I’ll go next. So, over the past week you saw a conversation incited by Lizzo’s appearance at a Lakers game, they were playing the Timberwolves. She had a black dress on; in the front it was chillin, party was on in the back. It was like a cut-out circle around her ass. And she twerked in a thong. Which resulted in seemingly endless think pieces and tweets calling out her behavior, and…I’m not saying the dress wasn’t ugly, I found myself, personally, it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. There was just a hole in the back of the dress.
But a lot of the pushback to it, for me, seems not to be rooted at all in what she wore or the fact that she danced, but how she looked. She’s unapologetically a fat Black woman, who just does not give a fuck what you think about her body. The fact that she is so unabashedly herself in her skin, I think really frustrates a lot of people. The reason why I know that is a lot of critique of her had this little phrase that sent me up a wall. It was like, “How can Lizzo do this, in a family-friendly environment!”
Jessica: Oh no.
Amira: The Lakers game?! The Lakers game is a family-friendly environment? She was more clothed than the Lakers girls usually are, first and foremost.
Brenda: Yup.
Amira: Second of all, have you ever attended a sporting event? They’re not fucking family friendly. When I bring my kids to sporting events from college level to professional level, I’m consciously aware of the fact that around them is craziness happening. That being said, that was the giveaway. Just say that you don’t like the fact that she has the audacity to be fat and Black and full of herself and into it. Have the audacity to say that! You’re telling on yourself by trying to cite a ‘family-friendly environment’ as the reason. It’s a time and a place…What are you talking about?
This is not a family-friendly environment. Sports arenas see unspeakable levels of alcohol consumption, of swearing, of racist behavior, of fan abuse of players, of interactions with scantily-clad ladies. What are you talking about? You’re just revealing yourself to be trash, quite honestly. And so all of that rhetoric and the double standard that we have fr a body that doesn’t conform to what we think is conventionally attractive, the audacity that Lizzo has to be fat and loud and not just quietly sulking somewhere in a corner is tripping people out. I wish that they would all shut up, and in the meantime I’ll burn it down.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Alright Jess, take us home.
Jessica: Okay. I mentioned a while back while burning the fact that Youngstown State hired a person to coach their men’s and women’s tennis teams who had previously been punished by that exact school for previously assaulting a fellow student, that the reporter who uncovered what happened at Youngstown, Kenny Jacoby, he promised that he’d have more fuel for the burn pile. Or I assumed that he would. Well, the fuel is here. This week Jacoby rolled out a four-part investigative series at USA Today. There’s one major stab that’s the backbone of the entire thing, quote: “An investigation by the USA TODAY Network identified at least 28 current and former athletes since 2014 who transferred to NCAA schools despite being administratively disciplined for a sexual offense at another college. It found an additional five who continued playing after being convicted or disciplined for such offenses through the courts.”
And the reason this is possible is because the NCAA itself has no mechanism of accountability. It leaves it up to the schools, and as Jacoby’s reporting shows, coaches claim ignorance because they mainly rely on each other to pass along necessary information. Quote, “Most schools lack formal background check policies, instead relying on former coaches’ words and a questionnaire called a ‘transfer trace’ that often fails to capture past disciplinary problems.” This is excellent reporting again from Kenny. As someone who has been writing and talking about the ease of transferring to avoid accountability for at least five years, it’s nice to see these numbers.
But his reporting also shows how difficult it is to get access to this information, to make any kind of exhaustive count, how almost no one involved in this decision-making, including the NCAA, and almost all coaches and university administrators, won’t talk publicly. When I tweeted this out I tweeted it out with like, “decline to comment, decline to comment,” like I was quoting all the moments when no one would talk to him. It points out the way that the system is actually set up to allow this ease of transfer. That’s really important. Quote, “Players regularly exploit the NCAA’s own loopholes” – actually, I would say it’s set up this way – “to circumvent its one meaningful penalty for those who transfer while suspended or expelled: a year of bench time. Athletes can go to a junior college for a minimum of one semester before returning to a Division I school. Or they can transfer to another NCAA school before the discipline takes effect.”
So Kenny calls those ‘loopholes,’ I kind of just think it’s set up this way on purpose. In Power Plays last week, Lindsay focused on how many of the survivors in Jacoby’s reporting who reported athletes were actually athletes themselves. This is something I wrote about in my book and it’s actually how I ended the chapter where I write about how the NCAA doesn’t care about gendered violence, I focus on the athletes who report other athletes. I always find these particularly devastating, because it reveals which athletes matter to the organizational body theoretically tasked with protecting the welfare of all athletes.
And then there’s the story that Kenny uncovered where Betsy Devos, her department of education stepped in to help a football player who was expelled from Oregon after being found responsible for assaulting two students. From Kenny’s reporting, quote: “In part because of the “apparent predatory nature” of the acts, the university had marked Wallace’s transcript with a rarely used notation that would alert other schools to his actions, records show. “Expelled for sexual misconduct,” his transcript read.”
The player’s mother appealed to the office for civil rights at the department of education, which I’ve burned before, for the way they are changing all of these things in order to be…It’s tougher to hold anyone accountable. And the department of education removed that wording from his transcript. He transferred to a community college in Texas, where he spent a year on the team before transferring to Prairie View A&M, where he is on the roster today. He’s very good. You might see him in the NFL.
I don’t think there’s easy answers here and Jacoby did end the series looking at the work of Brenda Tracy, who we’ve talked with on the show, who I’ve interviewed for this show, about how Tracy is trying to get the NCAA and schools to do something to close the loopholes that allow players to bounce around from school to school. I’m cynical about what can be done, or if anything actually will be, but no matter what, and once again, I want to burn the NCAA for washing their hands of all of this, for their cowardly behavior when it comes to dealing with real issues. So I want to burn it.
Group: Burn.
Amira: After all that burning it’s time to shout out some badass women of the week. First, our honorable mentions. Ana Paula Oliveira, the first woman to be named head of the Referee Commission at the Paulista Football Federation, one of the world’s largest, in Brazil.
Also, shoutout to Olympian (and flamethrower!) Elana Meyers Taylor, who posted a video of herself doing back squats with 130kg which is 286 lbs, I think, on the bar. She is over 6 months pregnant and doing 3 sets of 4 squats at that weight. Incredible. And side note: she knows what she’s doing, her doctors know what she’s doing, get out of her mentions with the foolishness!
Also, Canadian speed skater Kim Boutin won her fourth career gold medal on the World Cup circuit in the 500 meters last weekend.
US Open winner Bianca Andreescu won the 2019 Lou Marsh Trophy, which is awarded to Canada’s athlete of the year. She’s the first ever tennis player to get this honor.
I want to shout out two teams. The first, The Jeddah Eagles won the Jeddah Women’s Football League, beating their rival, Miraas, in the final. Shireen interviewed one of the founders of the Jeddah Eagles in Episode 127 if you wanna learn more about the league.
And I also wanted to send a special shoutout to Stanford, for winning the women’s college cup. Lindsay talked to Lori Lindsey about it in last week’s show, episode 136, check it out if you wanna do a look back. They beat UNC in penalty kicks, 5-4, it was a thrilling match. It was the third soccer championship for the team. They started the tournament by scoring more goals in a game than anyone had in the history of the event! They had a tremendous run to the title, beating Penn State along the way, which made me sad, but…And a lot of those women are phenomenal and have bright futures, it’s not the last you’ll hear of them. So congrats on your championships, Stanford.
And now, a drumroll please.
Okay, our badass women of the week have been here before: it is of course Megan Rapinoe, who was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year. And this award is not simply for Rapinoe being the badass that she is on the pitch, but also her actions off of it, in particular her badassery when she accepted this award where she noted that the fact that she was only the fourth woman ever to get this award, and she got up there to get the award and she called out basically everybody in the room. She said, “Is it true that I’m the fourth woman deserving of this award? No, I don’t think so.” Then she said, “Is it true that so few writers of color deserve to be featured in this publication? No. Is it true that so few women’s voices deserve to be heard and deserve to be read in this publication? I don’t think so.” And you could hear the applause in the room get thinner and thinner as they realized that she was calling out everybody there!
Jessica: Yes!
Amira: And that just is an example of the badass that she is, to end with a quote from that speech where she says, “My success bears witness to only the necessity of speaking truth to power, but also the power of truth. I invite, I encourage, I urge, I demand, I hold your ass to this.” And I believe, Megan Rapinoe, that those words, your badassery, your ballsiness and your general all-around dopeness on and off the pitch has made you our badass woman of the week.
Okay, what’s good? What’s good in your worlds? Jessica.
Jessica: I am in the middle of one of my favorite things during this season which is making and decorating sugar cookies. I just find it fun, it’s like…I was thinking yesterday, I was very meticulously decorating these cookies and it’s like when people buy coloring books, it’s that same creative energy and I find it so much fun. I did a double batch, I have a lot of cookies. So I’ve been into that, I am going to Minnesota, which…I’m not a cold weather person, so that part of it is not great for me, but I’m going at the end of the week because two of my friends got married over the summer in Scotland and they’re doing their stateside celebration in Minneapolis later this week and I get to go. One of my best friends lives in the city and she’s gonna be my date so I’m really looking forward to that.
Amira: Oh, that’s awesome. I wish I lived closer so I could eat all the wonderful food you’re baking.
Jessica: Oh I know, I wish it was easy to ship it. It’s not, you have to like, bubble-wrap it.
Amira: Alright Bren, what’s good with you? Are you surviving the semester?
Brenda: Kind of not, almost. I do peek out from the mountains of papers, which is of course proverbial because they’re online, but I can peek out and see that it’s almost over. I do see it. So about 70 more papers to go? And that many grades to compute. So It’s gonna be a busy week, it’s time to boss up. But I am looking forward to the AHA, the American Historical Association, which sounds so stuffy but Amira and I will make it super fun.
Amira: Woo!!
Brenda: And I’m gonna get to see her and do a panel with her about…A couple!
Amira: Two panels!
Brenda: One on radicalism in sport, sponsored by the Radical History Review, and then another one on athletes and labor. So I’m pretty psyched about that, I’m really excited to see you, Amira. Hoping we get matching tattoos.
Amira: I know.
Brenda: And all that other fun stuff.
Amira: I’m very excited. I’ll go next. That’s basically my what’s good. For real, let me tell you what’s really good– I feel like a terrible person admitting this: I’m on leave this semester. And so I’m not grading, and what’s really good is I’m seeing everyone do the end of semester freak out with their grading, and do the grading procrastination where they’re like oh, that shed I never built, now’s a great time to do it!
Brenda: Ha! Yes.
Amira: Their house is the cleanest it’s ever been, like all of the things that happen at the end of the semester. And I’m just not part of it. So I’m sorry I’m saying it in front of you Bren, but lowkey that’s really good right now.
Brenda: What’s good for you is my bad! My pain!
Amira: Well because you know, I still worked a lot during this leave and I have a lot of students I’m supervising. There’s many parts of the semester where I was feeling like not super leave-y. But now when I’m not grading, let me tell you I am thankful! So yeah, that and what I am surviving, barely, is the deluge of children-related activities that this time of year brings. I have in just the past few days survived – and Michael’s been working, so I am solo-parenting through a lot of this – I’ve survived Samari’s gala performance, choir concert, Jackson’s belt test and then belt ceremony, which were not on the same day because that would be too convenient. And then Samari’s first dance, the winter jam that was…Let me just tell you, you know those middle school principles that say “we don’t encourage coupling” do absolutely nothing to discourage coupling! So we survived that on Friday. Then we had approximately six holiday parties and even more next week, and then another show, and Jackson’s birthday party.
So it’s just been a lot of running around, but I’m very excited to finally go get our tree today. It’s been raining around here so we haven’t been able to go cut it down, because we live that central PA life now, we cut down our own tree.
Jessica: Like, with an axe?!
Amira: Yeah, a saw. A saw.
Jessica: Okay.
Amira: With a saw. A handsaw. And I should say-
Jessica: Alright! You chop down a tree…
Brenda: Yes! Well, no…
Amira: I don’t chop down the tree. I supervise and delegate, let’s be clear.
Jessica: I obviously have never participated.
Amira: I’ll take a video of it today for you.
Jessica: Thank you Amira!
Amira: So that will be happening. It’s still a little wet, but it’s not pouring rain, so we’re gonna do that today, we’re gonna decorate, settle in. And then I’m also very excited for AHA which will be here before we know it! I’m excited to see everybody, I’m excited to see Bren and do these kickass panels and just celebrate New Years and new beginnings and same old, same old history in New York.
That’s it for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down. Thanks for joining us. You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts. Certainly rate it, share it from whatever platform you listen to it as well, we love using those ratings to help us reach new listeners and let people who don’t know about the show know about the podcast! We’re also on Facebook and Instagram at @burnitalldownpod, on Twitter at @burnitdownpod.
If you want more information about the show, for links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. There you can email us directly from the site to send feedback or listener mail, we love listener mail. If you’re a Patreon subscriber please send in listener mail, questions we can answer in our behind the burn video segments. We’d love to hear from you. Also, you have a link to our Patreon, should you not be one and want to sign up. For extra content, longer interviews, giveaways, and our monthly behind the burn vlog that gives you a little peek behind the curtains of what we do here.
Of course, from our website you can go grab some merchandise from our Teespring shop. Just a reminder from now until the end of the year, if you use the code HOLIDAYS you get 10% off your order, so there’s still time to make it for some of the holidays for gifting, or if you just want a blanket or a hoodie to warm up with as it gets colder. Check out our Teespring shop. This is our last “live” episode, we have a few best of Burn It All Down episodes coming to you soon to close out the year. Until then, I’m Amira Rose Davis. On behalf of my co-hosts Jessica Luther, Brenda Elsey, and all of us here at Burn It All Down, burn on, not out, and we’ll see you soon flamethrowers.