Episode 143: Tennis !!! Interviews with Gwen Berry, and Melissa Jacobs about Superbowl LIV
At the top of the show Amira, Jessica, Brenda, and Shireen talk about the NHL All-Star game and the WOMEN who played. [2:56] The team talk tennis (yes, even some men's tennis)and get the details of the Australia Open. [9:29] Amira interviews athlete-activist specializing in hammer throw and PanAm Games Gold medalist Gwen Berry, who famously lifted her fist on the podium. [29:27] Lindsay chats with Melissa Jacobs, Founder of The Football Girl, about the upcoming Superbowl LIV and her predictions.
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile, [1:02:17] the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring Maya Moore, [1:15:02] and what is good in our worlds.
Links
Watch in full Canada vs U.S. 3-on-3 game at Skills Competition: https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/elite-womens-3-3-game
Canada beats US, 2-1, in Elite Women’s 3-on-3 Game at NHL All-Star Skills Competition: https://www.theicegarden.com/2020/24/21081135/canada-beats-us-2-1-in-elite-womens-3-on-3-game-at-nhl-all-star-skills-competition
‘I’m Better Than That,’ Serena Said. But Her Competition Is Better, Too: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/sports/tennis/serena-williams-australian-open
Jabeur embraces chance to break new ground: https://ausopen.com/articles/features/jabeur-embraces-chance-break-new-ground
Sharapova Uncertain About Future After Loss at the Australian Open: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/sports/tennis/sharapova-uncertain-about-future-after-loss-at-the-australian-open
The luxury behind Serena's legacy: https://www.powerplays.news/p/the-luxury-behind-serenas-legacy/
Sports grants: rugby club gets funding for female change rooms but has no women's team: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/24/sports-grants-rugby-club-gets-funding-for-female-change-rooms-but-has-no-womens-team/
Women banned from Russian swimming pool: https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idPyan?now=true
NFL’s Saints fight to shield emails in Catholic abuse crisis: https://apnews.com/8a88d4d188c04751d9731a49081d5d3c/
3 Horses Die in 3 Days at Santa Anita, Prompting Fresh Criticism of Racetrack: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/sports/Horse-deaths-euthanized-Santa-Anita
49ers' Katie Sowers First Female, Openly Gay Coach in Super Bowl History: https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/01/22/katie-sowers-first-female-openly-gay-coach-super-bowl/
Aluko appointed Sporting Director for Women’s Football: https://www.avfc.co.uk/News/2020/01/22/aluko-villa-women-sporting-director/
Alysa Liu, 14, wins second consecutive title at U.S. Figure Skating Championships: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2020/01/25/alysa-liu-wins-second-consecutive-title-us-figure-skating-championships/4573854002
Fencer one of six athletes who have turned their backs on Mexico: https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/six-athletes-have-turned-their-backs-on-mexico
W.N.B.A.’s Maya Moore to Skip Another Season to Focus on Prisoner's Case: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/sports/basketball/maya-moore-jonathan-irons
Support Maya Moore’s efforts to free Jonathan Irons here: http://winwithjustice.org/take-action
Transcript
Amira: Just a quick note before we start this show: this show was recorded on Sunday morning, just before we heard the tragic and devastating news about the helicopter crash that claimed nine lives, including Kobe Bryant. On Burn It All Down we will certainly be talking about the complicated legacy of Bryant and holding space for the multitudes of emotions his untimely and tragic death raises. But for now we would just like to recognize all the lives lost far too soon in the crash, including pilot Ara Zobayan, baseball coach John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Sarah Chester, assistant coach Christina Mauser, and the lives of three young athletes that were tragically cut short: Alyssa Altobelli, Payton Chester, and Gigi Bryant. We would also like to dedicate this show to Savitri Deshwal, otherwise known lovingly as Amma to everyone. She passed away in Halifax, Nova Scotia on January 18th. She leaves behind a legacy of love and compassion and devotion. She will be so missed.
Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down. It might 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. I’m joined today by my esteemed co-host Brenda Elsey, associate professor of history at Hofstra University; Jess Luther, freelance writer and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct in Austin, Texas; and Shireen Ahmed, freelance reporter, journalist, all things awesome in Toronto, Canada. This week we have not one but two badass interviews. First, I’ll be talking to Gwen Berry, US hammer thrower, and as you’ll remember she protested at the Pan Am Games this past August. I’m gonna talk to her about the IOC decision about political protest at the upcoming Olympic Games, and what got her motivated to protest in the first place.
Also, Lindsay interviews Melissa Jacobs, the football girl of The Football Girl podcast. Of course, they’re talking about the upcoming Super Bowl. We also are gonna talk a little bit about tennis, and of course we’ll have our burn pile and our badass woman of the week. Before we get into all of that, let’s talk about hockey for a little bit. Shireen?
Shireen: Ahh, love it! NHL All Star weekend was amazing! I didn’t watch it and the only thing I know about it, because I care, is that there were women there. Women, you ask, at the NHL All Star Game? Yes folks, because men are beginning to realize in the upper echelons, I see you Gary Bettman, you know that women’s sports is where it’s at. Enter the three on three tournament. Yes, we’ve had skills competitions before, and the Kap-hating person who shall not be named, but I’m gonna name her just so you know who she is, Kendall Coyne Schofield, she was there last year, impressed everyone with the speed of her skating, but this year they actually had a three on three. They had two 10-minute periods, it was pretty wild. I’m not gonna give it away – I’m gonna give it away. Canada won, okay y’all? Canada won.
Jessica: I was like, yeah you are!
Brenda: No wonder you wanted this at the top of the show!
Shireen: I wanted this at the top of the show, and for those of you that are interested, Sportsnet has the whole game, like the two 10-minute periods online, you can go watch it. It was incredible. Desbiens, who was the goaltender for Canada, was pretty on fire. Hilary Knight who I love and I stan, obviously other than my coach she’s my favorite American. She scored, it was pretty great. I think the women were really hyped up about it, there was this whole red carpet thing, at the NHL they’re always extra. The women really rocked it. So that’s the fun part, I love seeing women in those exclusively men’s spaces. I just enjoy it, it’s very…It’s a nod, and I hate that we need a nod from men, but it was very exciting.
There was a little bit of drama! A little bit. So my American friends, you may or may not get CBC. Cassie Campbell, one of Canada’s former players, double gold medalists, she is now a commentator and she was talking about the PWPHA and the NWHL…Anyway, all I’m gonna wrap this up to say is Dani Rylan, who is the commissioner of the n-dub, must be shitting her pants because what Cassie said was basically why the PWHPA players, the Dream Gap Tour folks, really really need a sustainable league and they can’t do this. She went into some technicalities related to labor law which some people online were questioning, and I thought to myself if Canada and the US go to war it’ll be about women’s hockey. Anyways, this is my take.
Jessica: I mean, I read that the officials were also women, on the ice for the 3 on 3, which was also cool. I don’t know much about hockey in general, but I did think it was interesting that they chose to do US vs Canada, of all the different ways that they could’ve decided who to put on the ice, that they chose that nationalistic…I mean, I get it because it’s a huge rivalry, probably what most people understand, but the fact that it didn’t have anything to do with the NWHL in structure I just found really interesting.
Shireen: They couldn’t even divide up the players by conference because there’s no Canadian league anymore, and so the only thing that makes sense to them was national. You could do it for the n-dub, you could do it for the non-existent league in Canada, so I think that–
Jessica: Just the fact that they didn’t do n-dub, just that they chose…
Shireen: Yup!
Jessica: I know that they’re about to do a big thing in February, the US versus Canada, the rivalry something, right? So I get it, but I just thought that was fascinating.
Shireen: This is a bit of a lead-up to it, the rivalry series. I think this was just to sort of whet everyone’s palate.
Brenda: I thought it was pretty interesting how, if anything, just as much as the nation was represented University of Wisconsin was represented.
Jessica: Oh, really?
Brenda: Both goaltenders were from University of Wisconsin, had been teammates. There were eight players from University of Wisconsin all together out of both teams.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Brenda: It was kind of fascinating, I learned a lot. I thought it was brilliant, really really exciting and fast and cool. I enjoyed it. I don’t watch women’s hockey enough and I have this problem as I’m getting older which is I will never ever ever know when that puck goes in or not! I have to wait for the slow-mo, and there’s this amazing save where the US could’ve tied it in the last minute, and the goaltender who I again struggle not to call a keeper, did this…Because for me it looks like soccer on ice, footy on ice: there’s offsides, keepers, blah blah blah. And so she did this amazing thing but it took me a replay to appreciate it. It’s just so hard to see. Whatever, it was brilliant.
Amira: Shireen, you have something on Wisconsin?
Shireen: Wisconsin’s repetitive NCAA div-1 champs, arguably one of the best. Boston people don’t get upset with me, Boston College don’t get mad that I’m saying this, but there are the best women’s program in the United States. It makes sense that a lot of the hockey talent from here goes to Wisconsin, and some of our national players play there. So I’m happy because I know Wisconsin not only because of the cheese but because of women’s hockey, so that’s just wonderful.
Brenda: It’s basically Canada. Cheese, hockey…
Shireen: Yeah, pretty much in some parts I guess you could say that. The other thing is, quickly, on the back of the net there’s a little light post, so if the puck goes in you can see that. Just promise me you’ll never watch it with a little star around the puck that Americans tried to do about ten years ago, that was embarrassing.
Brenda: I remember that! With the halo, like a halo around it.
Shireen: I was embarrassed for y’all. So bad. It was embarrassing, all of it.
Amira: So I just wanted to shout out Renee Hess and Black Girl Hockey Club gearing up for a bunch of events for Black History Month. The first one is this Friday, so if you’re in the Pittsburgh area there’s a Black Girl Hockey Club meetup celebrating Black Hockey History Day, and it’s the first of four events they’re having in the Hockey for Everyone series, so if you’re in the Pittsburgh area, Friday January 31st they’re having a meetup and celebrating Black Hockey History Night, so be on the lookout for that if we have flamethrowers in that area.
Alright, now off of the ice and onto the courts. Jess, can you talk to us about tennis?
Jessica: Yeah, you know I can! So we should say right up top, we’re recording on Sunday morning and it is already very early Monday morning in Melbourne, where the Australian Open is in the middle of its tournament, so we’ll be discussing the tournament up through the Sunday matches, before any of the Monday ones start. We’re mainly gonna talk about the women, because I just find the men’s side to be pretty boring with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic; there’ll be a good match tonight that’ll be over the by the time everyone hears this, Nadal’s going up against Kyrgios. You kind of have the guys that maybe will break through this year – Zverev, Medvedev, who’s the other guy? Hold on, I have a note about him, I can’t even remember the guys anymore. Thiem.
Amira: This is already more than I ever thought you’d say about men’s tennis.
Jessica: Yeah. So that’s happening. But the other side is so much more interesting, which is the women. So I’ll just say, six of the top 10 women went out in the first week, which is a hell of a thing to happen. The people who are still in that I am paying attention to are Ash Barty, she’s #1 seeded, Australian, we love her, she won the French Open last year, she just beat Alison Riske to move to the quarter finals. Today’s Australia Day, Monday in Australia. Of course, the country is still reeling from all of the fires, they’ve had over 30 people killed there, so much land and animals have been damaged. It’s such a big deal and there’s a big part of me that wants Ash to do this thing and win this in Australia. But Halep is still in it, everyone probably remembers her from Wimbledon last year when she beat Serena in that amazing match.
Kiki Bertens, who is so fascinating, she was injured last year and she’s still in it. Muguruza who won Wimbledon a few years back and then kind of fell away, Garbiñe’s playing great tennis at this point, beat Svitolina #5, she’s not even seeded at this point. Angie Kerber is back! She’s seeded, I think, 17th. She won in 2016, she’s won a bunch of grand slams, and then she just kind of disappeared, and I like her a lot. My heart always goes out to Petra Kvitova, she’s the one that had that break in where that guy slashed her hand and she had to have emergency surgery. She’s still out there battling, but let’s get to the upsets. Karolina Plišková went out, she was 2nd seed. Belinda Bencic went out, she was destroyed in the third round 6-0 6-1, shocking. And then there was of course Naomi Osaka the defending champion, she went down to everyone’s favorite Coco Gauff. The fifteen year old is in her Australian Open debut, she faced Venus in the first round, she had a great three-setter against Cîrstea in the second round, she did lose last night, Sunday night in Australia, she lost to Sofia Kenin who’s an up and coming American, she’s ranked – or she’s seeded, at least – #14.
Then we had Serena lose. She was seeded eighth in this tournament, she went up against Wang Qiang and Qiang just played amazing tennis. I have thoughts about Serena and what’s gonna happen in the future and we can get to that. Then we have to mention that Caroline Wozniacki has retired, the Australian Open was the end of her career, she got married, she wants to now start a family, she has rheumatoid arthritis. But she went down to Ons Jabeur who is a Tunisian player. She’s the first Arab woman and first African player to make the round of 16. She beat Wang last night, Sunday, so she has now moved on to the quarter finals. Thrilling stuff.
The final thing that I’ll say is that until the New York Times wrote about it I didn’t even remember that Maria Sharapova was still playing tennis. Apparently she went out at the first round of the Australian Open. You guys know I have championed Sharapova in the past but I think probably it’s time, she might want to hang up the racquet. But there’s interesting talk around her, like the doping scandal around her. It’s possibly pushed her to continue to play, so that that’s not the thing that ended her career, that it has some upward trajectory but that’s just not happening. Anyway, she played too, lost in the first round. So those are all the things–
Amira: That logic is actually backfiring tremendously because A) like you said, people don’t remember she’s playing, but B) when she has these really early outs and early showing, even if it’s because of age and not the lack of doping, okay, not only have you not won since then but you’re going out super early. It’s terrible all around.
Jessica: It’s not good. It’s not good, yeah. So those are all my quick thoughts with these women, I don’t know where we all want to go from there.
Amira: Shireen, do you want to..?
Shireen: Well, there’s just a couple of things. I don’t watch tennis the way you both do, I didn’t know about the men’s tennis until Jess was talking about it…
Jessica: You don’t need to know about it.
Shireen: I don’t…Yeah. I just follow your tweets sometimes, and Lindsay’s, but Ons Jabeur is someone I’ve had my eye on. I found out about Ons Jabeur from Lindsay, because her role in representing the Middle East and Arab women, she’s a Tunisian tennis player. She’s literally the only African player in tennis history to go forward at this level and it’s a really big deal because representation obviously matters all the time but when you see people…It’s not as if tennis hasn’t existed in those places, they just haven’t had the opportunity to go forward in that way. So I am really excited about that. Jess, did you wanna add something too?
Jessica: I just wanted to say when I was prepping for this I went back to listen to Lindsay’s interview with Reem Abulleil who is a tennis writer back on episode 5 of this podcast, and the entire interview about the French Open in 2017 was about Jabeur. Reem, who cares about that part of the world and paying attention and forcing other tennis writers to pay attention, has been on this for years and said Ons is gonna show up. She actually had a big run in the 2017 French Open that was kind of like her introduction to larger tennis fans, but if you want to you can go listen to Reem talk about Ons in episode 5 of this podcast. So we were on it because Lindsay knew Reem! Just very exciting.
Amira: I love that, and I also love how much Jabeur is advocating and really understands the importance of her visibility. After she advanced to the quarterfinals last night she said, “Quarterfinals for the first time, I’m trying to inspire many of the young generation back home in Tunisia or the Arabic world, especially in Africa. It’s not impossible, I made it, I’ve been practicing in Tunisia from 3 through 17. I’m 100% a Tunisian product.”
Shireen: That’s huge.
Jessica: I love that. And it really matters, because if you go to the draw for the Australian Open one of the things they do at the top of the draw is show you how much money the losing player gets in each round and so Coco went out in the round of 16 and she got a paycheck for $300,000. Jabeur has moved on, right, so if she goes out in the quarterfinals she will get a check for $525,000. That kind of money is the thing that sets these players up so the next year they can pay for the physios, they can pay for people to travel with them, they can afford all the things that…Breaking through and getting up in these tournaments is so important financially in order to sustain your career on that level.
Brenda: Can I just ask something technical? Because I don’t know shit, basically. But I’m totally fascinated by this and the behind the scenes things, about their salaries, because ultimately it rests on one individual, like such pressure. I mostly spend my time on a sport where you can blame it on the other ten people. I know tennis is in essence a team sport because they’re not doing it all alone, but they’re really doing it as an individual. So here’s my question: you’ve got this…It looked like the favorites going forward into the early rounds of this, right? Like everybody passed through that you expected and then boom, wow. But what’s going on with the game? How does the game look to you with some of these veterans and some of these new people, how does the women’s game look to you people who watch this more often versus like ten years ago?
Jessica: Oh, it’s big!
Amira: Yeah, I think we’ve talked about this too, we’ve covered it I think when Ash won last year, but like Jess said it’s huge, it’s fast, the parity is there, the actual game on the court there’s a lot more power – it used to be that you had a few people who had the power to really in it on their serve alone. You have all these different styles of the game being played but it just feels like the level is so high that it’s still shocking when there’s upsets but this is not the first grand slam that we’ve seen such…I feel like the last one it was the same thing, we were talking about…I can’t even remember, was it Wimbledon, Jess? French Open?
Jessica: Maybe. I mean, it’s ever year now.
Amira: Ever year we see massive upsets, we see that people can win it on their first serve, people can win it because they’re making people run and they have the agility, the power game, it’s a fascinating watch. When Jess was saying about it being a more interesting product than the men’s game, she’s not just being like boo boo men, it’s literally a more compelling, more entertaining tournament.
Jessica: I honestly think that one of the things that benefits the women’s game is that they play three sets, because when you play five sets like the men do you can fuck around for a set, set and a half, and still win the thing, and it’s long and you’re in it forever. That’s fine when it’s like Nadal vs Federer at Wimbledon ten years ago and it’s the most amazing tennis that you’ve ever seen for five and half hours or whatever, but a lot of the time it’s just boring. It’s just okay tennis forever. Whereas the women, the second you step on that court you have to be ready. You only get three sets. You go down a set and you are in trouble. I just think the stakes are so much higher in a way that I enjoy, and the fact that there are more upsets or, it feels like more upsets – the men are the same men at the top – I believe is because they play less sets. Once you’re down it’s hard to get out of that.
Amira: I love that point Jess, we can even transition to talk about Coco in that vein. Coco is 15, she’s phenomenal…
Jessica: She’s amazing.
Amira: The future is so bright, can I just say. 15 and serving 119 on some serves. And she’s still growing! She’s just a phenomenal player to watch but her match with Kenin last night – and we have to say, the Australian Open is, I find, one of the hardest ones to watch because ‘early’ games are at like 11pm!
Jessica: Yeah.
Amira: But the thing with Coco, that first set was so competitive. She got down early but you could see even within the set fought back, and when it looked like she was gonna go win the set Kenin broke her and it went to a tiebreak. You have all the adrenaline and momentum that Coco had following the first set get into the second set, and her forehand just kind of abandoned her and the problem with that is that as it went on and as it was clear that we’re gonna push this to a third set, you can see her struggle in real time to try to get back in rhythm, to get back on her game. Kenin was responding to that by remaining agressive, and like Jess said there’s not the space where you can back off. You have to remain at this really agressive style of play because at that point Kenin is playing for her life. If Kenin loses, that’s done. You get into the third set and it’s a completely different game and Coco just couldn’t get back into it. But I think that’s such an insightful point, Jess, because the stakes become so high starting in the second set it’s winner go home.
Jessica: Yeah. I mean, you hear it all the time with the men where they will literally just…You hear the announcers say “I think they’re just losing this set to get to the next one.” And you’re like, there’s not room in the women’s game to just lose a set to get to the next one, and I think that makes it more compelling and better.
Amira: Yeah. So Coco beat Naomi, Naomi largely looked in that second set like…It was not great tennis. Her consistency is a thing we’ve talked about so I look forward to watching her going forward. But I guess it’s time to talk about Serena. Jess, you can talk first!
Jessica: Okay, I’m gonna say it: I don’t think she’s gonna make 24. I think that’s probably what’s happening here. You know I love her, and I was saying to Aaron as we were watching her play that I was sad. I felt like she was gonna lose much earlier, the fact that it went to three sets was unbelievable to me. She wasn’t playing well in the ways that she doesn’t play well: she wasn’t moving her feet, she wasn’t getting around the ball, she wasn’t the better player on the court. In case anyone doesn’t know this, in the US Open she beat Wang in 44 minutes. It was the shortest match of the 2019 US Open, Serena vs Wang.
Shireen: I have a question. I’m just listening because I love when you talk about tennis, but that she beat Wang in 44, is it the environment? Is there help? Because how can it be so different? Is it an environmental factor? What’s happening? I don’t get it.
Jessica: I think it’s credit to Wang.
Shireen: Okay, okay.
Jessica: I think she did a bunch of training in the months in between in order to meet this. And yeah I’m sure it’s the day that they play, Serena looked really good in New York, she did not look good in Melbourne, which is a bummer because she won Auckland, and yeah, there’s so many things. As Brenda was saying, it’s one on one, and some days people just don’t show up. I think Serena, for so many decades, which is a crazy thing to say out loud, for so many decades she showed up at a level that is unreal. But she has said it so many times right, that when she’s on the court the person across form her is going to play the best tennis of their life in order to stay with her, right? She’s always up against someone’s very best tennis every time she plays. Now that she’s older and she has a family and all these other things I think maybe we’re just going to see more and more of this, where the other person’s best tennis is better than hers and I don’t think it matters.
She is the best tennis player of all time, one of the best athletes of all time whether or not she hits 24. Lindsay had a good Power Plays about how Margaret Court is the one she’s chasing and back when Margaret Court was winning grand slams no one was going to Australia. Only Australians showed up for the Australian Open, like it wasn’t the competitive international field that Serena played in for decades. She is by far the best player that has ever played the sport, so she doesn’t need the 24. I agree again with Lindsay that we are all lucky that we get to watch Serena go for 24, but I’m kind of…If she wins 24 I’ll be as happy as everyone else but actually at this point be surprised.
Amira: Yeah. See I have a little bit of hope left for 24, but I think it’s because of this weird thing she’s doing now. She’s not playing a lot of tennis, she’s just not competing in a lot of the smaller tournaments and what it does is it means when we see her she’s either going to be playing how we’re accustomed to her playing, moving her feet in rhythm, she’s warmed up–
Jessica: Her serve wasn’t there. She didn’t even have her serve the other day, ugh.
Amira: And if she doesn’t have it, if she’s not moving her feet and she doesn’t have her serve and she does that thing where she gets frustrated and then I get frustrated to watch, that whole tournament is not gonna happen. But winning Auckland was something that gives me that glimmer of hope, the fact that I still believe there’s a chance that she gets into a grand slam and just gets hot, and I say that because in the last year we’ve seen her be in the…It feels fleeting because it’s like, this is how I’ll say it: there was a moment last night in Coco’s game where she had four set points, and she had four set points. When you have four set points you have four chances to win, it feels like oh, this is inevitable, because you have so many opportunities. Then the first two set points go by and she didn’t get those. So then she starts feeling the pressure a little bit more. Then it’s like, maybe this isn’t inevitable, it’s a lot closer now. Breathing room is a lot tighter. Then she was down to her last set point and the pressure was turned up and it felt like you’ve lost all these set points and from feeling inevitable to feeling almost impossible.
But she ended up winning that last set point and getting that set, and how I think about that is how I think about 24. Serena has been in a position to get 24 multiple times, and it went from feeling inevitable like oh, she’s gonna get it. Each loss turned the pressure up and now I feel like we’re in the end game where we’re on that last set point, so to speak. I still think that there’s a chance that that happens, but definitely I feel back against the wall, I feel the pressure turned up and that the loss of all those previous opportunities is definitely a weight. I’m hoping that…I would love to see her get it and ride off into the sunset and have another baby if she wants and live her best life. And do more dance routines with Coco, which is the best! But yeah. Jess, do you wanna close us out?
Jessica: Yeah, I just wanted to end this, Lindsay’s not here obviously and she loves tennis like we do. In her newsletter on Friday for Power Plays she wrote about Serena and her legacy, and I just wanted to read that because I thought it was perfect. She wrote, quote, “But Serena’s legacy isn’t 23 or 24 or 25. Her legacy is her longevity and her fight. Her legacy is how women’s tennis today is deeper than it’s ever been. Her legacy is in powerful serves and laser-like forehands you see across the tour, and in the ways players have developed their defense and returns and variety to counter them. Her legacy is her advocacy and her celebrity and the many young black women who are major contenders these days, from Osaka to Sloane Stephens, Madison Keys to Coco Gauff.”
Amira: Next up, I chat with Gwen Berry about the IOC’s cowardice and looking forward to Tokyo 200.
It is now my pleasure to chat with Gwen Berry, US hammer thrower and Pan American gold medalist. She made headlines last year when she raised her fist on the medal stand of that same competition, and I wanted to catch up with her as she’s preparing for Tokyo 2020 to talk about the new IOC ruling. So Gwen, welcome to Burn It All Down.
Gwen: Thank you for having me.
Amira: You know I had to hit you up and get your take on the IOC’s quote unquote “clarifying” that there can be no protest at the games and having the vague brush that they’re painting political action with. I wanted to know what were your initial actions when you saw this news?
Gwen: My immediate reaction was that I had to laugh, because I feel like in certain ways me and Race were targeted because some of the things that they described were things that we did at Pan American Games. So it was pretty funny that they said those things. Those things are historical for protest in past Olympic Games. Today athletes who did those types of protest are being praised, so it’s ironic and it’s kind of hypocritical that they would put those guidelines down and praise them at the same time.
Amira: And part of this too of course is how they’re defining ‘political,’ they’re being very vague. It’s interesting, you say you felt targeted and I was wondering what you make of how they’re understanding political actions, what they’re trying to call political. I think the vagueness is another form of control. Do you see it in a similar way?
Gwen: Yes, absolutely. Before the rules were extremely vague, they said no protesting, no race, religion, and politics. Now they’re saying none of that, and you can’t do these actions as well. It gives them a wide variety to be able to punish anything that they really don’t like or anything that messes up their sponsorship or the event itself, they can punish.
Amira: Certainly, and even the punishments are vague, which I think also serves to keep athletes in check because you don’t know are they taking medals, are they kicking people out of the village, you don’t know what they’re doing. It’s intentionally concealed.
Gwen: Right. In the past they’ve taken medals, they’ve kicked athletes out the village, they’ve kicked athletes out of the sport. You just never know, and that’s their form of control.
Amira: Now since a lot of this is intimidation, obviously a lot of people will ask how does this affect what you’re going to do in Tokyo but I think something that gets overlooked is that the rosters for the Olympics are not set yet. I was wondering if you could speak to where you are in that process and kind of the precarity of being asked these questions when you’re not even secured on the Olympic roster.
Gwen: Well the first thing I say to people who ask me is that I’m really not focused on it because I’m focused on making the team. What making the team includes for track and field athletes is the last week of June, I think it’s around June 24th-28th, I think it’s the last week, I’m sure it is, we have what’s called Olympic trials. So to truly avoid politics in track and field the top three people go to the Olympic Games. You have to be top three in each event, top three finishers, and that’s your ticket to the Olympic Games. It’s a really hard process, it’s really stressful, but usually the best go, the best make the team.
Amira: So this is really ongoing, it puts you guys in a tough position in terms of athletic protest. One thing I think is really powerful in terms of your protest that you did before and the actions of those that have come before you is when athletes kind of seize this platform to say, I have this platform and I will not remain silent in the wake of these issues I’m seeing, and I will raise my voice to that. So I was wondering if you could take a minute to revisit your protest at Pan Am in August and talk to us a little bit about what led you to raise your fist when you got on that gold medal stand?
Gwen: Definitely. What made me throw up my fist at Pan Am, it was 50/50. It was 50 my personal experience and my personal life, things that I’ve been through, things that I’ve overcome, and the track meet reminded me of that, because it was a really, really hard track meet. It was after a very stressful selection to make the World Championship team. That meet was stressful and then I had to fly right to Peru, so the weather and the conditions, my body took a hit. So I feel like I rose from that, I grew from that, and then I overcame a hard situation with the whole year I had been dealing with, that was one. The other reason why I raised my fist was to definitely bring awareness about the things that are not being talked about and the things that are being pushed under the rug in America. That’s racial discrimination. Unarmed Black men are being killed by the police, unarmed Black women are being killed by the police. People are dying in prison, children don’t have opportunity that they would have if they had wealth, the racial wealth gap, all these things that I see literally every day. I drive to university every day, and I live in the suburbs and it’s a good area, it’s really nice, and then you drive 35 minutes down the road and people live in shacks. It’s ridiculous. It breaks my heart every day, I see it every day, it’s the same thing.
Amira: So we talked about how the last few years of athletic activism has really been influenced by Trayvon Martin’s death and other deaths of unarmed Black men and women and victims of police brutality. Now you’re from St. Louis – you’re actually from Ferguson, you’ve been impacted directly by the death of Mike Brown in particular.
Gwen: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in the same street as Mike Brown did, we went to the same school, the same parties, the same basketball games. That literally hit home for me, where the week of his murder I flew home to walk the streets and talk to the kids that go to the school where the murder took place, basically, right around the block.
Amira: Wow. I mean, that’s a great illustration of one way where there’s a lot of voices that were raised in the wake of these killings in Ferguson, but you have to have a particular platform in order to be able to give a particular visibility and echo, bullhorn to some of these issues and so, to revisit the IOC’s ruling, understanding their motivations, you can see the cost of it and the weight of silencing.
Gwen: Exactly, I agree. Like I said on MSNBC, they’re trying to protect their investment. The IOC, because they don’t pay any of the athletes to perform at the Olympic Games, it’s basically like we’re actors, right? They get paid all the big bucks, all the sponsors come to them, they want to throw money into the Olympic event, so in order for them to protect their business they have to say “Alright guys, this is the script, stick to the script and then go home to your regular lives, go home to all the drama and all the horrible things you’ve experienced on the way here.” It’s almost like they want you to forget where you came from or the things you hold with you while competing. It’s crazy.
Amira: Yeah, and I think you’re striking the nail on the head talking about sponsorship. We’ve talked a lot on the show about Olympics being big mega-events, we’ve had interviews with NOlympics LA and protestors on the ground, we’ve talked about the destruction left in places like Rio and PyeongChang, when the mega sporting event rolls into town with all its bells and whistles and the destruction it leaves, especially as it’s all about this bottom dollar.
Gwen: Right.
Amira: So the sponsorship and revenue conversation is so important, I mean they’re having record numbers of sponsorship dollars already coming in, they already have sponsorships topping $3 billion, we’re talking big money. It certainly seems easier to sell a depoliticized, neutral kind of palatable Olympic Games to your sponsors.
Gwen: Exactly.
Amira: Alright, so what should we be on the lookout for in US track and field trials, we’re looking at like March, April?
Gwen: For most events it’ll be around March/April. Some have probably already selected theirs, but for track and field probably look out for TF, track and field, Olympic trials to be held in Eugene, Oregon in June 24th-28th.
Amira: Alright, well we’ll be watching of course and cheering you on here at Burn It All Down. Last question: what can laypeople do? For our flamethrowers, our listeners or anybody else who sees what the IOC is doing and isn’t happy about it, who wants to support athletes? They can raise their individual voices, but what are some actions that make you feel supported as an athlete? What would you say to someone who says, I want to support you, I see you raising your voice, what can I do to support that?
Gwen: I feel like just keep letting athletes know that they are not alone, that they are being heard and are being appreciated. Just giving them time, even if they write a great post on Instagram and Twitter, just two seconds out of your day to say I agree, I stand with you. Small things like that go a long way.
Amira: Yeah, well we will do that. We see you, we commend you, we stand with you. Thank you for coming on Burn It All Down.
Gwen: Thanks for having me.
Amira: Next, Lindsay chats with Melissa Jacobs about the Super Bowl.
Lindsay: Hello flamethrowers, Lindsay here, and joining me is Melissa Jacobs. She is the founder and managing editor of The Football Girl, she also contributes to The Guardian, she’s on the BBC all the time, and is just generally a genius when it comes to everything football. Melissa, welcome to Burn It All Down.
Melissa: Wow, thank you Lindsay! That was quite the intro. I don’t know if I can live up to the ‘genius’ billing but I appreciate it nonetheless.
Lindsay: No pressure, no pressure. So it’s Super Bowl time! When this episode comes out it will be this upcoming Sunday, obviously everyone’s talking about it. We’ve got the San Francisco 49ers vs the Kansas City Chiefs. It feels like there are so many new storylines and faces, especially if you’re someone who’s a more casual observer of the NFL, so let’s get everybody ready for it. Let’s start with he 49ers: they got here by a really good regular season, NFC Championship game, they were up 27-0 at halftime over the Green Bay Packers, ran for 285 yards, just ridiculous. The thing about this quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, tell us about him.
Melissa: Yeah, well a lot of people don’t know about him because he didn’t really do anything in the last game because he didn’t have to. He threw for 77 yards, I believe, and was completely fine with it. That’s the thing about Garoppolo and this team is he’s not looking to pad stats. I mean, they were running the football that game and if you’re getting six yards a carry on every down then there’s no need to throw it. So in a lot of ways Garoppolo is a bit of a mystery. He hasn’t really started that many games because he got hurt last year, he was Tom Brady’s backup for a few years in New England before San Francisco traded him for a 2nd round pick which still seems crazy that the Patriots did that, especially now that their kicker is not exactly solidified at the quarterback position. He’ll probably hold onto the ball a little bit too long if there’s any criticisms, but he’s come up in some big games this year. There’s still questions around it but he just doesn’t really have the track record of a Russell Wilson for example where he’s just rabbits out of his hat and he doesn’t have the sheer mind-boggling tools that Patrick Mahomes has but he’s smart, he’s very cool, there’s a lot of mental aspects similar to how Joe Montana was back in the day. The teammates love him and have all the faith in the world in him.
Lindsay: And it’s very important that I mention, he just looks like out of a movie!
Melissa: I was like, are we gonna discuss his looks!? I didn’t know–
Lindsay: I have to bring it up! Because it’s so ridiculous.
Melissa: It is, it is.
Lindsay: His looks are absolutely ridiculous. He has this smile that you’re like, oh, you’re from a catalogue! You’re not real!
Melissa: Right!
Lindsay: It does add to the whole persona, you can’t ignore it. He’s that good-looking, it can’t be ignored.
Melissa: Yeah, it’s ridiculous and I covered the NFC championship and I’m at his locker and he’s holding the Halas trophy that goes to the NFC champion and has all of his family members around and they’re like the most perfect-looking humans, the entire family has the most perfectly crafted jawlines. Like, who are you people! What planet are you from? But in Garoppolo’s case, it feels like heading into the Super Bowl if San Francisco wins it as they’ve won many games this year, it probably will be based on a pass rush or a very strong layered confusing running game. But if Garoppolo is the star, is the MVP, the marketing opportunities for that guy are through the roof.
Lindsay: He’s one of those people like when he smiles you can see the gleam, do you know what I mean, of the teeth?
Melissa: Yeah!
Lindsay: I just, I hear the ding, anyways, we’re gonna move on. I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, that Raheem Mostert is one of best stories not only in the 49ers but in football itself. He is one of these running backs that just gashes through the defense. And he has, talk about not a straightforward journey, talk about a story of perseverance. Tell us a little bit about Raheem.
Melissa: Well first of all he’s a surfer, which is the most interesting aspect of him.
Lindsay: Oh my gosh.
Melissa: Yeah. The way he scores a touchdown – if he scores a touchdown at the Super Bowl you’ll see him surfing as the celebration. He’s an avid surfer, but he’s just one of these guys, undrafted, cut by six teams…This happens a lot, particularly I would say in running back positions, but it’s really rare that a running back emerges to this degree, you know? Sometimes you’ll see a guy like that and he’ll be filling in for an injured player, but Raheem Mostert has just fit in really perfectly into Kyle Shanahan’s running game. Even though he’s been there as kind of an injury replacement – by the way, he’s the best special teams guy the 49ers have, so he’s still performing there, yeah. He’s gashing, he’s a good blocker, and Richard Sherman actually said after the game that he’s just so perfect for the system. They run a lot of misdirections and he’s like, if he’s on another team maybe he is just an average Joe type, but because of his body type and his skill set and how it meshes with Kyle Shanahan, he’s the best running back in football at the moment. That was Richard Sherman’s words, not mine.
Lindsay: I mean, it’s hard to disagree and I love…Doesn’t he have the names of every single team that cut him and the date he was cut, was it in his locker he has that?
Melissa: In his locker, yeah. Goes over it before and after every game.
Lindsay: I love that.
Melissa: But not in a, you know, he’s not a chippy guy, again he’s a surfer and has a lot of that mentality, very chill. I think he does yoga also. It’s just one of those ‘let me appreciate where I’m at, know where I came from, I want to prove a lot of people wrong.’ Like, I’m enjoying the journey of proving people wrong.
Lindsay: Yeah, just in a personal motivational way. I really appreciate that, because look, it’s a message to all of us. Keep going, you never know when you’re gonna find your perfect fit, the system that fits you perfectly in whatever you’re doing.
Melissa: Exactly.
Lindsay: So you’ve got those two key figures on offense, we know they’re gonna try and run it a lot. On defense they have some big stars as well: Nick Bosa, Richard Sherman you just mentioned. They’re gonna need all the defense they can get because on the other side at Kansas City…I don’t know where else to lead the conversation other than Patrick Mahomes, Patrick Mahomes, Patrick Mahomes. If people are not familiar with Patrick Mahomes’s story what do they need to know about this 24 year old?
Melissa: He’s just ridiculously talent, was a multi-sport athlete, and is just…One thing I think is really cool and I don’t know how much this will come up in the Super Bowl broadcast, is he sat behind Alex Smith. Again this is a situational thing like we have mentioned about Raheem Mostert, it wound up working for Jimmy Garoppolo but he didn’t have that kind of mentorship from Tom Brady. Patrick Mahomes had that in the first year from Alex Smith who’s fine, kind of like an average quarterback. But because he got that tutelage and was in the right situation with Andy Reid who catered his offense to Patrick Mahomes’s very unique set of gifts, it’s allowed him to thrive, it’s allowed him to just create plays out of nothing, no-look passes, he’s basically a human highlight show, and to have him in the Super Bowl of the four teams remaining heading in to the championship week, that was the one that objectively was the best for the NFL, both from a ratings standpoint and a bringing in the casual fan, because he’s just so thrilling to watch.
Lindsay: He’s so thrilling, and Kansas City isn’t always a team that gets the biggest spotlight, but he is. Everything I’ve read from these usually fairly measured football writers who are like, this guy could be the best quarterback ever! That’s what people are saying, kind of reinventing the quarterback position and just like we haven’t had a talent to this level. Of course there was a lot of talk about it with Lamar Jackson’s regular season, but Patrick Mahomes has been doing this for a few years now.
Melissa: Right, and last year he had the 50 touchdown passes and it was the most ridiculous, you know, let’s put the guy in the hall of fame right now. I’ll say it to you Lindsay, I’d be stunned if he wasn’t a hall of famer but we don’t often say that after one year. And then the regular season this year he had a kneecap issue, his numbers were down a little, he still did remarkable things through the season but there was actually talk from some people that he was regressing, because they played two playoff games now and he’s looked kind of otherworldly again, so it’s gonna be really great for football that he’s on that stage. But not great for the 49ers!
Lindsay: No, and what he gives you is you’re never out of the game with him. The Chiefs can score points so quickly. They were down – what was the score they were down by?
Melissa: Down 24-0 to the Texans?
Lindsay: 24-0 to the Texans in the first half of that playoff game and came back. I mean, came back like it was nothing! Came back and ended up rolling over them because he doesn’t panic, he knows how quickly they can get it done. I’m really excited, I think that matchup between the Chiefs’ offense and the 49ers defense is just gonna be the key to the game. Before I get your overall pick though, tell us a little bit about these two coaches. They’re very different! You’ve got Kyle Shanahan for the 49ers and then you’ve got Andy Reid on the Chiefs. Andy Reid who, of course, we have all made fun of at times for his coaching decisions in big moments, for his time management skills, for his great regular seasons and horrible decisions often in the postseason. How has Andy Reid gotten back to the stage and is this gonna be the Andy Reid hero story that we all kind of would like to see at this point?
Melissa: It’s definitely setting up for that. Andy Reid last went to the Super Bowl fifteen years ago, he lost that game.
Lindsay: That’s the Donovan McNabb years with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Melissa: Yeah. In the meantime he lost big playoffs, been blown out, lost at the last second, lost on bad decisions, a lot of very disappointing losses. Yet throughout the one thing he has in common with Kyle Shanahan is he’s been a very smart offensive mind, he’s the one calling the plays and obviously having a guy like Patrick Mahomes and with the weaponry that Mahomes has makes things simpler, but he’s one of the most beloved coaches of all time. I would say he’s a little less mistake-prone in the last couple of years, coincidentally that’s when Patrick Mahomes has been the starter. But one thing that Jenny Vrentras at SI wrote a great profile last year. You get so many coaches in the NFL who are like ‘you fit my system’ and I know I just said that about Shanahan but that’s kind of a different situation because he also is altering, but with Andy Reid it’s like I have this guy Patrick Mahomes, let’s just see…Patrick Mahomes doesn’t call his own plays, but he completely was flexible. It wasn’t based on “this is how my system’s been for 20 years and I just gotta plug in guys and I’ll get the best guy available for that,” his malleability has gotten a lot of credit around the league and more teams are trying to emulate that because it’s worked so well in Kansas City. If he said I have to fit someone in my system then Patrick Mahomes wouldn’t be his guy, Alex Smith would.
Lindsay: Yeah, I love that. And he’s got this great offensive coordinator who I know you’ve written and talked about on your podcast…I never say it right, can you say it for me? Eric…
Melissa: Eric Bieniemy.
Lindsay: Bieniemy, who has been overlooked for head coaching position after head coaching position, he’s one of the few Black offensive coordinators in the league, and it’s just mind-boggling because he’s the coordinator of this fantastic offense, one of the best offenses ever.
Melissa: Yeah, it was pretty stunning that Kevin Stefanski of the Vikings, who had a pretty horrible performance against San Francisco, gets hired by Cleveland hours after they lose and meanwhile Robert Saleh, the defensive coordinator, who’s of Lebanese descent, who just railroaded him, and then you have Eric Bieniemy on the other side helping to craft an offense that scores 51 points, and they’re not getting anything. It is very mind-boggling and obviously a very disturbing situation what has happened with the Rooney Rule that I think started in 2003 and we still have the 3 Black head coaches…We’re back to square one, basically. You get people, not anyone credible, but when you try to come up with a rationale – does he not interview well? It’s hard to come up with any viable…
Lindsay: There is no viable reason, it’s systemic racism, it is.
Melissa: Yeah, this implicit bias. The hiring process is so quick with these teams, right, they’re all on this quest, like “let’s get our coach in so we can get all the position coaches in.” They’re not spending time to really know the coaches, really vetting them, really understanding that maybe if someone doesn’t look like me or sound like me or have the same background, let me know him and get to understand him and his philosophy and think about how that meshes with my players. We don’t get to that point. Eric Bieniemy’s team is doing well, so that’s not the implicit bias part, but that’s another disadvantage that people want to fill their staff so quickly.
Lindsay: Yeah. So on the other side we have Kyle Shanahan, son of former NFL coach Mike Shanahan, 40 years old so really young, I know that the thought process on who is young anymore has been a little bit skewed lately, but 40 is really young for a NFL head coach. He hasn’t been with the 49ers for that long, hired in 2017, very quickly what’s been the key to his success?
Melissa: He’s a football genius. I’m not a football genius, he’s literally a football genius. Very quickly I’ll tell you, I interview…I did a thing for my podcast with Joe Staley, the offensive tackle who played in the last Super Bowl, and he told me before Shanahan started that he was going to retire. They were losing, he was miserable, and he was a part of a committee that went to Jed York the owner and said “You gotta get this guy.” Whatever it takes, you gotta get him here. Even in those first two years of losing with Shanahan, Joe Staley was just rejuvenated. He was saying to me, “You don’t understand how detailed this guy is, how intricate his game plan is, what a football nerd he is.” And then the other thing about Shanahan is because he’s only 40, if you wanna say ‘only’ or whatever your perspective is, he relates to the players. Jim Harbaugh is an amazing coach but he was a rah-rah guy and I think players were a little scared of him. Kyle dresses like them, he listens to the same music as them. He’s still the boss and he comes in there with inherent credibility because he’s such a smart football mind and now we’re seeing the fruit of his mind on the football field, but the players just really really really like him as a person as well.
Lindsay: And that really matters. That’s a big part of it, right? At the end of the day, it’s a relationship these teams. Of course all this talk about systems and stuff it makes me wish that the last guy to lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl, Colin Kaepernick, had been able to find that guy for him, you know? How much talent is wasted for so many reasons because people aren’t in the right systems and people don’t find the right people that believe in them.
Melissa: Colin Kaepernick would be playing in the NFL if the NFL had a different overall makeup right now.
Lindsay: Yes, Colin Kaepernick should be in the NFL anyways. But let’s finish with one of my favorite stories going into the Super Bowl: Katie Sowers, the offensive coach for the 49ers. I actually interviewed her for episode 98, I think we’re going to re-release that episode this week, so hopefully people can listen to that because it was one of my favorite interviews I’ve done. She is one of the offensive assistants for the 49ers. Obviously she will be the first female coaching in the Super Bowl and the first out coach. She’s openly a lesbian and is very public about her personal life and very proud of her personal life as well. You just did a piece on her for the Guardian, what did you learn about Katie?
Melissa: Funny thing is I didn’t learn that much because I’ve been reporting on her for like three years now, I used a lot of that for the piece. More of it was kind of the reaction to the piece and just how widespread the support is for her and just how empowering her authenticity is to people. That’s sort of what the key is here. It’s great she’s breaking glass in coaching but it’s just modeling for people, giving a voice to people who don’t feel like they can be authentic in their own lives, or there’s no pipeline for them to this kind of job, that’s what she represents. But you know, I would say that I think her story – you’ve interviewed her before, you know this – I think the happenstance part of her story, again it’s kind of being in the right place at the right time.
One detail in the story was she was supposed to coach sixth grade basketball in Kansas City, and there was an administrative error so she wound up coaching the fifth grade instead. She agreed to do it and one of the girls, this was girls’ basketball, on her roster was the daughter of Scott Pioli who had been the Chief’s GM and went on to be the assistant GM with the Falcons because he was a parent of a kid she was coaching. He got to know her and learned that she played professional football, of course her paying to play that, and got to know her football mind, and gave her a shot. I think that is so cool and so…Not relatable to people, but that transcends football, that transcends everything. You never know when the right opportunity is going to happen. If you’re smart, you just meet the right person.
Lindsay: Yeah. I understand everyone gets mad that everyone time anyone makes a big deal out of firsts, wishing it wasn’t a big deal. I do get that, but I also can’t…When I see her on the sidelines on these big games I’m visibly moved. I get chills up and down my spine. It is powerful, what she’s doing, it just is, and I hope that does become commonplace very very soon, and we’re getting there, but we have to celebrate the steps along the way. Alright Melissa, who’s your pick?
Melissa: I’m gonna go San Francisco, they’re a slight underdog.
Lindsay: Ooh, yes.
Melissa: I think the layers of the defense, because the defense is finally healthy in the last couple weeks, and they’ve been such a dominating factor. I think they’ll be able to sort of mitigate what Patrick Mahomes can do enough, but it’s gonna be a really close, exciting game.
Lindsay: Alright. I know you’re in the Bay Area, right? Are you San Francisco–
Melissa: Yeah, and I know that might sound homer-ish, maybe it is a little bit but…
Lindsay: Calling you out! No no, I like the pick. How can people follow you, what’s the best way to follow you and all of your work?
Melissa: Yeah, @thefootballgirl on Twitter I’m active there, probably a little too active sometimes, for my own sanity. And then TFG on Instagram; we have a pretty robust female audience on Facebook.
Lindsay: Oh, that’s awesome. And you have a podcast, correct?
Melissa: I do have a podcast, thank you for reminding me. It is called The Football Girl podcast and we talk to figures like Katie Sowers, you had her as well, women that are doing fascinating things and just smart women having smart conversations all the kind of typically fall under the NFL umbrella.
Lindsay: Yeah, I guarantee if you like Burn It All Down and you like football you will like The Football Girl podcast, I feel very confident with that recommendation. Melissa, thank you so much for being here with me today.
Melissa: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Amira: Alright folks, it’s everyone’s favorite time of the show, are you ready? Matches ready, it’s time to burn some things. Shireen, what you got?
Shireen: I am so mad about this. There’s lots of things for us to get angry about, but this really upset me. Basically we’re gonna talk about Russia. I’m not gonna talk about doping, I’m gonna talk about the North Caucasus, which is a Muslim majority in Russia, in the Republic of Dagestan, Makhachkala is the capital. They have a swimming pool and they have a certain time that they allot specifically to go swim, because women want that space and that privacy and that’s fine, they may not have access to expensive modest swimwear suits and may just want to swim on their own, whatever. Women should have that right and that space. So this is the biggest swimming pool, and one of the only ones that provide this time for women. They have posted a sign and changed the policy through Instagram, they said that from January 20th onwards, attendance of the pool is open only to men. This has made people mad because to deny women that space…And they were only allowed on Friday anyway. The establishment is saying that it’s only financially motivated, but the problem is that when you take that opportunity away from them A) it can’t increase attendance of women, and secondly you can easily shave off the rest of the, I don’t know, seven days a week that you have men’s programs there.
There’s not enough data to necessarily support, in that region, but the reality is having men and women on separate days of the week is fine, giving women their own space is fine, but completely banning them is just unhelpful. And technically in this Al Jazeera article I read, it goes against the Russian constitution. There was a woman named Fatima Abdulkhalimova and she’s a former swimmer, and she used to voluntarily teach women how to swim and she can’t do that now. She said, “I think it's to do with religion, I believe it is because a lot of religious guys come here.” That’s what she said, and that triggered me being angry because when you're in a space where you have a Muslim majority of men taking away activities from women that makes me mad. This isn’t a mixed gender, this is women on their own. To take that away from them makes me really really angry, there’s no purpose to it, there’s not merit to it, logically speaking it makes me really mad. I wanna burn that down.
Group: Burn.
Amira: I’ll go next. We touched upon this a little, or you guys did, in the last episode. I want to talk about another transphobic bill that is coming out, this time in Arizona. It’s titled the ‘Save Women’s Sports Act’ introduced by Republican Nancy Barto from Phoenix. Part of the bill says, “Female student athletes should not be forced to compete in their sport against biological males, who possess inherent biological advantages. When this is allowed it discourages female participation in athletics, and worse, it can result in women and girls being denied crucial education and financial opportunity.” I won’t read you the rest because it’s all bullshit. 22 republicans in the house of representatives in Arizona have already signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. This is disgusting and it’s much like the ‘bathroom bills’ that we’ve seen. First of all, we all know that it’s transphobic bullshit, but a lot of times these bills are introduced not because – I think Arizona has had a handful of trans athletes use the current system to be able to compete, but it is something that riles up people, it uses these athletes as fodder for a machine of hate, and riles up people in a way that is so disingenuous, it’s based on falsehoods, and it’s just harmful, so harmful and disgusting to see.
What really annoyed me about this bill on top of all of the usual disgustingness of these bills is that they had the audacity to call it ‘Save Women’s Sports Act.’ You wanna save women’s sports, you should stop policing their fucking bodies. You wanna save women sports, I don’t know, pass a bill about equitable resource allocation to women’s sports, about media for women’s sports, about sponsorship for women’s sports, about women in coaching positions in women’s sports, in umpire and referee positions! You want to save women’s sports, there’s so many steps to actually do that. Spare me your false indignation about the purported states of women’s sports based on a transphobic falsehood where you use women as shields to trumpet your own hateful agenda. It’s dumb, and the audacity to say that you’re doing it for the future of women’s sports is not only completely false, it’s just downright fucking offensive and I want to burn it down.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Okay, whew. Brenda, what you got?
Brenda: Today I have a double burn because Linds can’t be with us. But my burns and linked and quick, and they’re about the fact that unequal treatment of women’s sports is intimately and always tied to corruption. The more corrupt the federation, the worse it is for women. That means not just global football but every sport. That graft, that treating women like crap, treating women athletes like that is absolutely tied to the way corruption and graft work through sport. So first one, real quick: fancy rugby union club called The Old Collegians, as if they were hiding it, exists in a suburb of Adelaide in Australia. They won a $500,000 government grant to build women’s locker rooms. Yay, right? Except actually they don’t have a women’s team because their entire women’s team, all 20 athletes, quit two years ago in protest of sexual harassment. It could be soccer. Like, it could be football. It’s rugby. It’s like, amazing. Of course they couldn’t be reached for comment by any of the major outlets, but look for this story to continue to develop, it is, for me, just shocking. It just shows how they’re just like “Fuck you, women’s sports!” Not only are we gonna ruin you and drive you into the ground and sexually harass you, but then we’re gonna try to make money off of you, still, somehow.
Okay, first burn. Second one, really quick, has to do with the fact that we’re a couple of days away, we’re recording on Sunday. On January 28th is the first Olympic qualifying in soccer, it is USA vs Haiti, and CONCACAF doesn’t know how it’s gonna be broadcast! Yeah.
Jessica: The US women’s team? Okay…
Brenda: The returning World Cup championship team! No broadcast rights, according to Grant Wahl and Meg Linehan and others inside the scoop. Fox owns the rights but it’s not clear, and just today, again, just two days before, CONCACAF put out a tweet saying, “USA 📺 details coming soon!”
Jessica: Oh my gosh.
Amira: So ludicrous.
Brenda: And of course people are like, well, that goes for the men too. Okay, but the men’s tournament starts in March! So basically–
Jessica: And no one cares.
Brenda: Okay. Well even if you do, because I actually have a soft spot for the US men’s national team, a secret one, the idea is you’re gonna work this shit out so it will be fine in March. For a much less interesting team. That are men. And so one last thing, there’s a great soccer comedy show called The Cooligans and they have a phrase called “you’ve been CONCACAF’d,” and so this is perfect for me. I’m going around saying it all the time but no one knows what the hell it means. I’m like “you’ve been CONCACAF’d” and people are looking at me like…It’s an inside joke with me and myself…Why I don’t get invited to parties. But I would like to burn the fact that there is just massive corruption from TV rights to government grants that just underdeveloped women’s sports so burn, burn, burn.
Group: Burn.
Amira: Alright Jess, bring us home.
Jessica: Alright. So I have a mini burn pile right off the bat today. In episodes 110 and 116 I burned the deaths of horses in racetracks across the US and specifically at Santa Anita. All of my feelings about horse racing are the same today, so I’m not going to repeat it, but the New York Times has yet another report about horse deaths at Santa Anita in 2020 already, five horses have died there and it’s only January 26th, so I’m burning that again.
But my big burn is the New Orleans Saints NFL team. Not the people on the field but rather those who run the business side of things. I’m still in shock at this report by the Associated Press that ran on Friday of last week. I think the easiest thing here is I’m just gonna read the first two paragraphs of the AP piece, because I think it’ll be immediately obvious what I’m upset about, so quote, “The New Orleans Saints are going to court to keep the public from seeing hundreds of emails–” HUNDREDS OF EMAILS! “–that allegedly show team executives doing public relations damage control for the area’s Roman Catholic archdiocese to help it contain the fallout from a burgeoning sexual abuse crisis. Attorneys for about two dozen men suing the church say in court filings that the 276 documents they obtained through discovery show that the NFL team, whose owner is devoutly Catholic, aided the Archdiocese of New Orleans in its “pattern and practice of concealing its crimes.”
Okay, so the men who’re suing the church say that the team including a senior vice president of communications, Greg Bensel, let’s name these people, used their team emails…So these are like, I don’t know, @saints.com? I don’t know what the Saints’ thing is but used their team emails to advise the church to help lessen the blow for the church releasing their 2018 list of more than 50 clergy members credibly accused of sexual abuse. The Saints have responded, saying that the archdiocese came to them for help, we gave it to them, they were just releasing a list and wanted to be more transparent, this was all very transparent, helping an act of disclosure, and that the team had, quote, “merely requested the court to apply the normal rules of civil discovery.” So they’re saying this is normal, to keep everything hidden. The AP points out though that in the court filing the team argued that the emails were supposed to be private and shouldn’t be “fodder for the public.”
It turns out the owner of the team, Gayle Benson, she’s very good friends with the New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond. Benson gives millions to Catholic institutions in the area and the archbishop is often her guest at NFL games. Credit to the AP, they’re supporting the men and the release of the documents. The news organization filed a motion with the court in which it argued, quote, “This case does not involve intensely private individuals who are dragged into the spotlight, but well-known mega-institutions that collect millions of dollars from local residents to support their activities.” It’s all very curious, isn’t it? If indeed the Saints were on the right side here, just helping out, it’s a wonder why they’re fighting so hard to keep everything so private. It’s not as if anyone is claiming the organization did a crime, but the Saints are on the defensive, willing to fight sexual abuse survivors rather than simply hand over the documents. In choosing between the two PR options, 1) the fallout from fighting the release, which is what they’ve done, and 2) the actual release, they chose the former. Truly what the fuck are in those emails? What are in those emails? So I guess today what I want to burn are institutions with too much money and too much cultural capital that use both to escape accountability. Burn.
Group: Burn.
Amira: After all that burning it’s time to honor some badass women of the week. We have a lot of podcast alums on this week’s honorable mentions. So first, cheers to former Burn It All Down guest, Katie Sowers. The offensive assistant coach for the 49ers, who will make history as the first woman and first openly gay person to coach in the Super Bowl. If you want to revisit that conversation check out episode 98.
Also shoutout to another former guest of the show, soccer superstar and retiree Eni Aluko. She was appointed the first-ever Sporting Director for Women’s Football at Aston Villa Football Club.
Congrats to the University of Central Florida’s cheerleading team, the 2020 UCA National Champions, and this is not the last you’ll hear about cheerleading in the future at Burn It All Down!
Also shoutout to Sabrina Ionescu, the Oregon basketball whiz kid, who is always breaking records these days. Here’s another one: she surpassed Gary Payton and now has the most assists in Pac-12 history, men’s or women’s.
As Shireen already told you, I guess shoutout for Team Canada who won the Elite Women's 3-on-3 at NHL All-Star. Woo hoo, mate…Or whatever you say up there.
Shireen: I see you, Amira Rose Davis!
Amira: 14-year-old Alysa Liu won her second consecutive U.S. women’s figure skating championship, making her the youngest two-time U.S. women’s skating champion. Impressive, congrats Alyssa.
Mexican archer Paola Pliego, who was dropped from Rio 2016 Mexican Olympic team when National Sports Commission mistakenly accused her of doping, her name has been cleared officially in the court system, but she will continue competing for Uzbekistan because of what she says is rampant corruption and neglect. Yeah.
Congrats to Pakistan's National Football team Captain Hajra Khan for winning Hum TV's Most Stylish Sports Personality in 2018 and 2019 at the recent awards on Saturday night.
Congrats to another former agues of the pod, Shakyla Hill, who is a Grambling Alum who you might remember recording not 1, but 2 quadruple doubles. Well, she just recorded her first professional one with her Serbian team. If you remember, she was not drafted by the WNBA, the WNBA currently has no players from HBCUs on their rosters. She plays in Serbia but she’s killing it there. She just recorded a game of 15 points, 11 steals, 11 assists and 10 rebounds, giving her her first professional quadruple double, her third overall, and what is this even? It’s amazing. Shoutout to you.
And now, a drumroll please…
All of us here at Burn It All Down are in awe of and inspired by Maya Moore. The WNBA champion is sitting out another year from the sport, including Team USA’s Olympic run, in order to focus again on criminal justice reform and, in particular, helping to free a man named Jonathan Irons, whom she believes is wrongly convicted and incarcerated. Maya, you’re using your platform, you’re living out your ideals and you’re on a very important mission to bring awareness to the criminal justice system and to reform it. You are working diligently on the Irons case and while we will certainly miss you on the court, to do this at the height of your career, at your prime, is nothing short of magnificent and you are our badass woman of the week.
Alright y’all, what’s good in your worlds. Jessica?
Jessica: Well, tennis. Obviously, as you all heard. Love the grand slams. I have read two great romance novels recently, and shout them out every once in a while, so if you love them like I do I highly recommend Talia Hibbert’s Get a Life, Chloe Brown and Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering. I can’t tell you which I love more, they’re different but they’re both beautiful and so well done. And then I’m gonna take this ball and throw it over the net, or hit it over the net to Amira – I have been watching Cheer on Netflix, in part because Amira told me to. I finished it last night, it’s amazing, go watch it. We will be talking about this at some point soon because there are a million things to say about this remarkable show.
Amira: I’ll go next, because Cheer is also my what’s good. Oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts. I need the rest of you to finish it, please, so we can chat. But it has brought such joy because of all the thoughts. The conversations aren’t necessarily always joyful to watch, but it’s something that I am so ready to talk about. Me and Michael watched it together when I was sick and it was just…We did it in a day, we were captivated by these young people. So that’s largely my what’s good. Also, it’s our favorite week of the year, we have two BIAD babies coming up. So Samari will be 12 this week. I’ve been parenting for 12 years, it literally just hit me in my chest just now when I said that. Wild. Wild facts right there. We’re going to Broadway of course to see Dear Evan Hansen with Jordan Fisher, it’s his first weekend playing the first Black Evan, so we will be there because we stan him so much. Even though that show is really depressing and I’m not super excited about that. I like happy shows like Mean Girls: The Musical but we’ll go to see this. But I do love my trips to New York with Bug, we do an escape room, like last time we did a virtual reality Jumanji thing which was terrifying, but those are the moments when we really…That’s how we remain connected in this hormonal teenager phase of her life. Michael’s version is doing TikToks with her, they are so embarrassing.
Shireen: Oh good, I love that.
Amira: They’re so embarrassing, but I think when you’re parenting teens and tweens you find the moments that make them not hate you and you hold onto those for dear life. So I’m looking forward to a really good weekend with my almost-teenager. Shireen?
Shireen: Just to bounce off that, I haven’t watched Cheer because I’m still getting the prescription to watch Sex Education from Dr. Davis, which I’m doing now, so this is not a show I can watch with my kids so I watch it secretly. It’s really fascinating and hilarious, I’m really enjoying it. I have been doing a lot of volleyball mom-ing for my 15 year old Sallahuddin, he just came back from Kingston, Ontario. My birthday was last weekend, I loved it, I had a really great time, my kids were wonderful with me, and now this week as Amira said there are two BIAD baby birthdays, so Samari and Jihad, my daughter, both were born on the same day, so Amira and I share a birthing day. Jihad will be a teen and I can’t even talk about it because I’m going to start to cry. She’s leaving for university in September and I can’t talk about it!
So there’s all this wonderful stuff. When I was in Kingston for a volleyball tournament for my son at Queen’s University, literally next door Dr. Courtney Szto and the kin department was having a conference in sports sociology, and Dr. KY Kim who does environmental sustainability in mega-events, namely the Olympics, was presenting as they keynote. I had never met her before, so it was absolutely amazing, and Dr. Eun-Young Lee gave me a shirt that said, “It’s an honor just to be Asian,” which is what I wear. So I hung out with them and it was literally so awesome to be able to do the volleyball mom thing and then jump over. There was a moment that was kind of cathartic to say I can do this, there’s places in the universe where we can balance jobs and our families and everything else we wanna do. That group of women, even though I’m not an academic, including also Dr. Shobhana Xavier, they’re like my family and they’re like a sisterhood of BIPOC women who support each other and are chosen family and community. And to have that, I have family in various places, it was just so powerful. So I just want to wish everybody, whether you’re celebrating joy or struggling with something, there’s pockets of community and chosen family for you, so hold that tight. I’m just sending everybody lots of love.
Brenda: Well, end of January I’m always scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of what’s good, because it’s the end of my break, which was super productive. I’m really grateful for the time, but it’s also the moment where I’m like, alright, whatever I didn’t get done is now not getting done til June! So there’s that, but that kind of third grade feeling like the first day back to school, it ends up being exciting. But one pretty cool thing is that–
Amira: Wait, I’m sorry, are you just starting your semester?
Brenda: Yeah, we always do.
Amira: Oh my god, I’m so indignant about this.
Brenda: Why? I go into the middle of May!
Amira: So does ours! No…
Brenda: No!
Amira: No, that’s not true. But anyways, it’s our third week here. I’m not even teaching, this is just…I’m indignant on behalf of behalf of my colleagues because they’ve been teaching for weeks.
Brenda: You shouldn’t be, because in mid-May you’ve been done for three weeks, so it’s exactly the same number of weeks in the semester. But we’re back because we always do MLK Jr. Day, and we don’t go in til after that.
Jessica: That’s how UT is too.
Brenda: So anyway, notwithstanding Amira’s resentment, when she’s not even teaching, and I’m teaching four, by the way!
Shireen: Oh my god.
Brenda: Yeah. But one of the reasons I’m teaching an extra class is that at Hofstra Latin American and Caribbean Studies we are taking a group to Cuba, and it’s just been solidified that we have the right number of students to I am going to Havana with 13 students in March now, and that is for sure, and I have never been to Cuba, and for a Latin Americanist of any ilk it’s so exciting. So even though it’s January, I’m looking out my window and there’s still five inches of snow that have been there for like, ever, I’m thinking and dreaming Cuban. So that’s good.
Amira: That’s it for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down, thanks for listening. You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts – rate, subscribe, share, the ratings help us reach new listeners and also we just love to hear your feedback. You can also connect with us on Facebook and Instagram, @BurnItAllDownPod, or at Twitter @burnitdownpod. Of course check out our website; there you’ll get information about our show, show links, transcripts for each episode. You can email us directly from the site. We love listener mail, especially if you’re a Patreon supporter, super shoutout to y’all. Reminder that you can submit listener mail that we answer in our monthly vlogs. We love, love, love to hear from new flamethrowers. Use the website also to connect to our Patreon. Sign up if you’re not already a patron, you can start at as low as $2/month for extra content, longer interviews, behind the scenes vlogs, a whole gamut of things. Also, there’s a link right there to our Teespring merchandise shop. As the weather’s changing if you want a long sleeve shirt or a button or decal for your laptop we have all our merch needs over there. Again from me, Amira Rose Davis, Brenda Elsey, Jessica Luther, Shireen Ahmed, as Brenda says, burn on, not out. And we’ll see you next week, flamethrowers! …That was really agressive. We’ll see you next week, flamethrowers!! 😊