Episode 169: New NWSL Team in LA, Ownership Models in Prof. Sports, & an Interview with Tianna Bartoletta
To close out July, the gang's all here! Shireen, Brenda, Amira, Jessica, and Lindsay talk Seattle's new NHL team [1:00]. Then, it's time to discuss the Angel City FC in LA, and ownership models in professional sports [4:39]. After that, Amira interviews Olympian Tianna Bartoletta about track and field, and being a black yogi [18:00].
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [34:38], the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring the NWSL Challenge Cup champions Houston Dash [45:48], and what is good in our worlds [47:54].
Links
The A-list investor group behind the NWSL Los Angeles expansion team is incredible: https://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2020/7/21/21332509/nwsl-los-angeles-expansion-investors-women-uswnt-celebrities-natalie-portman-alexis-ohanian
New Women’s Soccer Team, Founded by Women, Will Press Equal Pay Cause: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/sports/soccer/angel-city-fc-nwsl.html
From 2014: Professional Sports Teams Need A Better Ownership Model https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/professional-sports-teams-need-a-better-ownership-model
From 2017: Could Professional Athletes Own The Teams They Play For? https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrendahl/2017/11/28/could-professional-athletes-own-the-teams-they-play-for/#3345f4a313f9
Fan ownership would give rugby and football clubs stability, says thinktank: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/may/26/fan-ownership-rugby-football-clubs-thinktank-onward
Take Coronavirus More Seriously, Say Olympic Rowers Who Got It: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/sports/olympics/coronavirus-us-rowing-olympics.html
Alyssa Nakken coaches first base for Giants in exhibition game: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29506358/alyssa-nakken-coaches-first-base-giants-exhibition-game?linkId=94576390
Indiana’s Natalie Achonwa Earns Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award: https://www.wnba.com/news/indianas-natalie-achonwa-earns-dawn-staley-community-leadership-award/
NWSL's unlikely Houston Dash give sport its first coronavirus-era champion: https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-nwsl-challenge-cup/story/4145999/nwsls-unlikely-houston-dash-give-sport-its-first-coronavirus-era-champion
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Right now the NWSL Challenge Cup is over; the WNBA, Major League Soccer and MLB are all in play again, and the NBA is coming soon. I’m Jessica Luther, and I’m joined today by Brenda Elsey, Amira Rose Davis, Lindsay Gibbs and Shireen Ahmed, the entire group. In this episode we’re gonna talk about the new NWSL team in Los Angeles and ownership models in professional sport, and Amira talks with US Olympian Tianna Bartoletta about the new Athletics Association, an organization aimed at giving more voice and power to global track and field athletes. Then we’ll burn things that deserve to be burned, do shoutouts to women who deserve shoutouts, and tell you what is good in our worlds. I’ll also be making a big Burn It All Down announcement towards the end of the show, so stay tuned for that.
But first, Seattle’s NHL team announced their new name and mascot: it will be the Kraken, a mythological creature that is often compared to a giant squid – though I always think of the multi-armed lizard merman kraken from the 1981 movie classic Clash of the Titans…Which, fun Jessica fact, I memorized at some point as a child. The entire dialogue. No matter how you imagine it, what are your thoughts about the Seattle Krakens? Shireen, I’m going to you first.
Shireen: I’m very excited. I’m in the process of doing a lot of work around hockey, particularly structures of racism in hockey and adjacent to that obviously are homophobia and misogyny. I’m really excited because the front office of the Seattle Kraken actually hire BIPOC, and that matters. There’s a lot of people of backgrounds that you wouldn’t traditionally think are part of hockey – I’m not just talking analytics, I am talking marketing, I am talking admin. This is important to me. So basically it's the structuring and the building of hockey…I’m very excited because I also feel like there will be purple involved, even though their logo is like a black…It looks a little bit similar to the Seagrams logo, but that’s a different thing. I’m just excited about it because I really also love squid, I like eating it, so I feel like squid could be my new hockey food. I’m very excited about it and I’ve also been feeling this thing that some hockey fans might…I’m parting ways with the Montreal Canadiens, probably, after decades, because I’m really fucking tired of Geoff Molson and his inability to address what's happening in the world. So, for people looking for a hockey team, this could be ours!
Jessica: Shireen, always finding a way to tie stuff to food. It’s such a real skill that you have. Brenda?
Brenda: Being from Detroit I am super pissed about this appropriation. We should have sole ownership of octopi and all related mascotry – but not throw them on the ice anymore. That's bad. But Detroit Red Wings for so many years have been associated with octopi that I’m a little bit…I feel like this is trolling, and I hope Red Wings kick ass next year.
Jessica: Wow. Well I guess the other 31 teams can eat that when they’re playing them.
Amira: They’ll offer calamari specials.
Jessica: Yeah, exactly.
Amira: I’m here for the Bruins calamari special when they’re playing the…Ooh, and good seafood! Yes, I’m totally in on this, we’re totally gonna eat calamari specials in Boston when the Krakens come to play.
Jessica: [laughs] Lindsay, do you have Kraken thoughts?
Lindsay: Uh, not quite as many as everybody else. [laughter] I’d say I’m glad they did not go with ‘Seattle Hockey Team’ as the name…Which of course is a reference to Dan Snyder’s Washington Football Team. For some reason the Kraken kept making me think of the Aggro Crag of the Guts game show on Nickelodeon. I don’t know why but that’s now been in my head for days even though that has nothing to do with the team, but I just wanted to say that. That’s all. That’s the extent of my thoughts.
Jessica: Nice. I do wanna say, I think on behalf of all of us: please, don’t do all the ‘krak-heads’ stuff. None of that shit needs to go along with the Kraken. But I’m here for anyone who wants to make a shirt with the Clash of the Titans kraken on it and I will buy it because I deeply deeply love that movie.
There was big news out of LA this week: the city is getting a new NWSL team, the 11th in the league. They will start play in 2022 and they’ve adopted the name Angel City FC for now. That is big news all by itself, but the ownership of the team is its own story because it’s a majority women-founded group. It’s led by actress Natalie Portman, technology venture capitalist Kara Nortman, media and gaming entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, and tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Mr. Serena Williams himself, Alexis Ohanian. Other investors include Serena and her two year old daughter Olympia – now the youngest professional sports owner in the world – actors Uzo Aduba, Jessica Chastain, America Ferrera, Jennifer Garner, Eva Longoria, fourteen former US women’s national team players including Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, and former guest of this show Julie Foudy. This is not the make-up of the ownership of a professional sports team that we are used to. Lindsay, thoughts on the news out of LA?
Lindsay: Yeah, I have to say that of course there’s always reservations and I think we’ll get into some of those throughout this segment, but overall if you look around even the ownership of women’s sports it is all white, rich men who really don’t care that much about the women’s team itself, they care more about the properties or the training club they can set up to go with it or just all these other excuses. So the fact that this is a team that is owned by predominantly women – there’s women of color involved, there’s queer women – it makes me really excited, and I think for so long women on a successful level have not been told, like, they haven’t seen that buying into pro sports is something that they can do. It hasn’t really even occurred to them, even just to support women’s sports. I remember talking to a group of lawyers a couple of years ago and telling them that they should start taking their clients and stuff when they're doing meetings to women’s sports events, that they should start attending those as like group events, and none of them had ever even thought about going to a WNBA game together and they all said that that changed their perspective forever. So I’m just hoping that this changes the perspective of others as well and gets more people to literally buy in.
Jessica: Shireen?
Shireen: One of the things that I think is really interesting is actually the idea of what comes after playing, like I’d be interested to see, and we have seen Julie Foudy in this particular mix of people that are involved, because traditionally in men’s football if you have a successful enough career you can move on to managing, you can move on to ownership. I think this is really striking because in this famous interview between Zinedine Zidane and David Beckham is just really the question that Zizou asked Becks, and he said, “Do you envision yourself as an owner or as a manager?” – manager being the terminology they used for ‘coach.’ He said, “I’m an owner.” And ergo, Miami Inter FC. So I think that's really interesting. This is something that a lot of players think about and maybe in women’s football it’ll give an opportunity moving forward for women’s players to think about this in the same way that men get an opportunity to.
Lindsay: Yeah Shireen, that’s so cool because Diana Taurasi, when she was doing the big Instagram Live with Sue–
Amira: Epic.
Lindsay: The epic one. The asked if she would want to be a coach and she said, “It’s funny, everyone’s like, ‘Do you wanna be a coach?’ ‘Do you wanna be a GM?’ No, I wanna own it. I wanna own a team.” That was…Once again, it’s changing that way of thinking.
Jessica: Brenda, thoughts on LA?
Brenda: My thoughts on LA take me back to this moment where it was to be alive when Marta and Sissi actually played on the same team for WPS which was Gold Pride and how that was such a missed opportunity. I mean, Latinos make up the majority of the soccer community in LA and they were not marketed to; the WPS was marketed as a white soccer mom league, there was no attempt to try and include Latino youth or to even jump off of these two probably best women’s player’s ever, perhaps – also, Asian communities: Miyama was on that team! So I hope that the marketing at least to a certain extent tries to recognize it. It’s not going to be as grassroots as if it came up from a regular football club which is what we’re seeing with MLS and NWSL more generally but LAFC has an amazing supporters group, they are largely Black and Latino and have been super supportive of this. So, hopefully there’s some crossover there if we don’t see the same mistakes again.
Jessica: Lindsay.
Lindsay: Yeah, one of the sports ownership stories that’s always most inspired me is the Seattle Storm. So, it is a group of die-hard Seattle Storm fans who are successful women but far from billionaires who in 2007 when the owner Clay Bennett was gonna take the Storm along with the Supersonics along to Oklahoma City, these three women – well, there was four at the time – came togehter to join this partnership called Force 10 Hoops and bought the team. At the time they were the only female ownership group of the team and the Storm had been one of the most successful franchises on and off the court. They hosted the All Star game a few years ago; I was out there, it was absolutely phenomenal. They’ve also when they formed their partnership the Force 10 Hoops they made social justice a primary part of it. It’s been really exciting. They led a Planned Parenthood initiative in 2017, they had a whole game dedicated to raising money for Planned Parenthood which, three years ago, that was the first time we’d seen any professional sports team do that. So you don’t have to be a celebrity, is what I’m saying. You don’t have to be a celebrity and you don’t have to be doing it because it’s a cool thing, we just want more people who care.
Jessica: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, and I think that my larger philosophical question unites the two points that Lindsay and Shireen just made, which is: what is the material reality of representational ownership? I think in a way Lindsay pointed to some of the kind of hope with Planned Parenthood night, right? What is the hope when you see women and people of color moving into ownership positions is that they have more progressive work spaces, and what does that look like? But I guess my larger question is does it inherently change sporting systems? We ask this question a lot when we talk about, you know, is there a difference between women’s football and feminist football, and what are those differences and what does it represent? So, in what way does a more progressive ownership model still reproduce power of the systems it’s in? It’s still within a capitalist system that by nature is an ownership group exploiting on the ground labor of athletes. So what is our general larger hope? Have we seen evidence of this happening, and in what ways are they still constrained by the systems that they’re in?
Jessica: One thing that this had me thinking about is that this is different and it is very exciting what’s happening in LA, I agree with all of that. At the same time, it is the same sort of owner model that we see all the time in sports – in this case it’s a bunch of rich people, but rich people owning a team. It made me want to talk about other ways that we can think about team ownership; we talked about this a little bit in the past on the show. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah. There’s a new league starting up for women’s pro sports called Athletes Unlimited and it’s starting with softball really in a month or so, I think at the end of August, and I’m very curious to see how it works. The owners of the league are the typical rich white men, Jonathan Soros and Jon Patricof, but the league itself, the teams are gonna be primarily owned by the players, like, the players are gonna have actual stock in the team itself. The entire thing is really interesting, it’s based off…They’re kind of trying to replicate a fantasy sports model but for real sports. I’m very curious to see what this ends up being and if having female athletes literally buying in and being part of kind of the ownership of the team is gonna change things. They seem to think it will; I have a lot of questions, but I also know that there are a lot of great athletes who are excited about this, so we’re gonna keep an eye on it.
Jessica: Last week I did an interview for Burn It All Down with Erica Vanstone, she is the executive director of the women’s flat track derby association. The point is, the WFTDA, they’re amateur, but it’s a non-profit. So one of the things I talked about with Vanstone are the financial impact of COVID, and she kept bringing up…They have this remarkable plan to bring back the sport after COVID and it’s value-based that they’re able to put forward as the number one issue, player safety. She kept bringing up that because they’re non-profit unlike a lot of professional sports leagues, they can put their values first. They don’t have to worry about corporate sponsorship and making profit in the end, and so they’re able to make different moral choices and I just found that deeply appealing this week. It did make me think about the Green Bay Packers – the NFL actually has a non-profit team that’s owned by something like 300,000 people who have bought stock in it. They elect a board of directors, they have a seven member executive committee that stands in at NFL owners meetings. Football decisions made by the GM…Like, it exists, right? It’s not clear whether or not that’s possible to re-create again but it still does exist within major professional sports. Shireen?
Shireen: Another example of a very cool model of football – I mean soccer very specifically – is actually Lewes FC, who we’ve had Maggie Murphy on this podcast, and I believe it was episode 135. Basically, Lewes FC two years ago committed themselves to becoming the first professional or semi-professional football club that paid their players, men and women, equally. This is also part of the vision that the club had which I think is very important for us to look at how new models of ownership can actually help with visions and principles like this. Basically what it is is you have shareholders, very much like that model you were just speaking of, Jess, and it's a really good thing because what it does is it does this transition between accountability and involvement, so there are things out there. And no, we’re not being paid by Maggie or Lewes to do marketing for Lewes, I’m just saying! There’s different models out there for people to invest in. Although if they wanna send me a scarf I’m down.
Jessica: Shireen is very good at tying things to food and to clothes. So we got both skills this week. Brenda?
Brenda: Yeah, coming from global football I guess what a lot of people don't understand is South American football is actually…That is dominant, as a model.
Jessica: The non profit?
Brenda: Yeah, they are non profit civic associations. There are no shareholders. Everyone who wants to become a socio becomes a member, you’re a voting member. You pay your dues, there's general assemblies, you elect a board of directors, that board of directors elects the coach, the GM, all of those things. That is so different in terms of the public good. Bundesliga also has some clubs on this model, in fact the league requires that he majority of the clubs in Bundesliga operate on that not for profit basis. So this is very very common outside of the United States, in fact the Premier League was a usurpation of that model as well. There’s a very political and politicized fight and a way in which to try to get them into debt by taking advantage of civilians like you and me that come and do those jobs as president of [x] club.
Amira: In addition to all her Olympic medals she’s been a world champion thrice over
Tianna: And I've got a bunch of other medals, too.
Amira: I’m joined with Tianna today to talk about the newly announced Athletics Association, an organization by global track and field athletes seeking to have more power in the governance of their sport. Plus we chat about what Tianna terms her “radical resilience.” But let’s start with Athletics Association. Last week, global track and field athletes declared “We are the sport” and formally announced the launch of the Athletics Association. Tianna, what’s going on? What is this?
Tianna: So, what’s happening. What’s happening is finally track and field athletes, who are very much individuals because it’s not exactly a team sport, are coming together in order to collectively advocate for our own interests when it comes to World Athletics, which is our governing body on the international level.
Amira: World Athletics. You might recognize it more by its previous name, the IAAF, which stood for the International Association of Athletics Federation. It once was the International Amateur Athletic Federation but they dropped ‘amateur’ 19 years ago or so. World Athletics is headed by a president and also has a council of about 26 members, 2 of which represent the Athletics Commission, and together this federation of World Athletics makes almost every decision related to global track and field.
Tianna: Because over the past, I’d venture to say 4 years, that federation has made unilateral decisions that really affected us as athletes – our ability to earn a living doing this, and all sorts of other baffling things without consulting the athletes. So the final straw was when they actually removed events from the Diamond League.
Amira: The Diamond League is one of World Athletics’ signature top tier events. It’s a collection of 15 meets grouped together to form the Diamond League. Now, last fall they announced that they were gonna be removing certain events from the Diamond League finals including steeplechase, 5000m, 200m, discus, and triple jump. World Athletics alleged they removed these events because they were “least popular, or featured least popular athletes,” that they were boring or that they would crowd the other competitions out. Of course this decision, made without input from most of the track and field community, the athletes, ruffled a lot of feathers.
Tianna: Completely. As if they no longer had value, as if the athletes there no longer needed those opportunities to compete or those chances to make money. One of those events was the triple jump, whose biggest star is Christian Taylor.
Amira: Formal launch just announced, I asked Tianna what the Association has been up to.
Tianna: Now we’re pretty much tapping quite a big list of things. On that list are events; we need more competitive opportunities. We are tackling rule 50 with the IOC, lobbying for that change. There’s so much. Like you said, there’s a lot going on in the world right now and if it’s related to track and field it’s on our plate.
Amira: And has there been pushback so far? What are you up against here?
Tianna: We’re up against people who have been in those positions for a long time and aren’t particularly interested in giving up or sharing their power. Yeah, I think that’s what it is. So it’s going to be difficult, and that’s why it’s important to really have a basis in fact and with data and to not just complain on social media about how horrible they are [laughs] or how bad these decisions are, but to really almost become politicians and lobbyists about this. We need to find a way in, we can’t just knock on the door and demand a seat at the table, they don’t have to give us that. And so we need to find out how do we get elected to these positions that will guarantee us a seat at the table, all these sorts of things. That’s what we’re up against. I imagine that they’re looking down at us from on high, like, all the kids are upset. Until we take action in a way that allows us to have a seat at the table and change rules rather than shout about it, I think that’s where we’re gonna remain. But that’s what we’re working on. We’re very aware of that uphill battle.
Amira: In your opinion, why is having athlete representation on the board of governance so important?
Tianna: Well here we are, the talent, basically, the product that they’re trying to wrap and sell, and they’re trying to do it at the lowest rate possible, as if we aren’t human beings with lives and expenses to support, you know? So it's important to have somebody who is currently and will be affected by all the legislation, all the rule changes that are taking place, because as it stands a lot of people on these boards perhaps were coaches or athletes decades and decades ago when the landscape fo the sport was entirely different. It allows for them to be completely out of touch, and so having current athletes represented by current athletes in the governance will ensure that they get the perspective that they need. They have what’s called an athlete’s commission that works within World Athletics but they are also handcuffed to really do anything against World Athletics positions. So they're allowed to kick up and make noise and make suggestions but if World Athletics doesn’t wanna do it they’re not gonna do it, which is why it’s important that we’re completely independent of World Athletics.
Amira: One of the statements that Athletics Association has put out has been regarding rule 50: that’s the rule that prohibits political protest at the Olympic Games. Athletics Association has joined with others urging the IOC to abandon this rule. How are those decisions going? How did that come about?
Tianna: So, I wanna be completely honest about this, this only just came up within the Athletics Association. I raised it at the last board meeting so we had to talk about this and we had to publicize our position. Before that I have already been and am in working groups with the USOC and the IOC about rule 50, so this is something that I have already been working on for a long time. The board itself…I realize that we were going into a launch and hadn’t said anything about it, so it’s very much a new discussion that’s being had, so there’s not a lot that I can tell you about all the different options and stances that are going on within the board. We just support the rule change. Because as I’ve said to the USOC and to the IOC directly, it is actually quite a hypocritical stance to take based on the Olympic Charter, based on the ideals of Olympism. In saying that an athlete cannot peacefully protest or bring awareness to injustices in the world in their moment which they earn is hypocritical, especially when the IOC claims that the goal of sport and the goal of the Olympic Games is to unify and promote world peace and human rights. It doesn’t make sense to then say you can’t do and represent any of those things at our games.
Amira: And how has COVID affected your ability to organize? Has it helped, because you have time? Has it changed how you have to interact with each other?
Tianna: It honestly hasn’t affected how we organize because it’s an international association, so it was all going to be done via technology anyway. So all of that capability already existed. We use Slack, all of us around the world within the Slack app, and COVID or not the board of directors meets via Zoom, and because we’re all representing different countries that would’ve always been the case. In terms of the agenda, I think it just determined the priority of things. For example, a survey that went out about postponing the Olympics was a direct response to things that were happening in that moment and the inception of the association was not something that we were even thinking about, but it happened and we responded, right? So a lot of that will continue to go on. We can’t say, “Nope, can’t handle that because it’s not on our pre-approved agenda.”
We are very much reacting to real life real time things, and so COVID’s gonna be one of those things that’s going to be fluid. In terms of how we approach and deal with World Athletics we have more time to articulate our thoughts, to drum up support, to do things that we…It’s still important but way less urgent, which means we have more time to prepare and make a plan, a strategic plan of action moving forward. So in that way it’s actually benefitted us because otherwise it would’ve been rushed, and when you’re rushed it’s not always thorough or presented in the most effective way, and we need to be both of those things when dealing with World Athletics because they have very different priorities from us.
Amira: You mentioned the international nature of this association. Does including voices from track and field athletes globally present some challenges?
Tianna: I think of course, because again the nature of the sport is that we’re all individual athletes. Then we all have national federations that have different rules and priorities, then we have different coaches, different contracts, different sponsors. So I do believe that will come up, but as of right now because the objectives are so large it’s really easy for all of us to be on the same page about these things when we get down to it. For example, the southern hemisphere, they’re in a different season than we are now, right? So their meet schedule is totally flipped, their opportunities to train and qualify for things and make teams is very different, and so we have a qualifying window for the Olympics that makes sense for us because it’s happening during our track season, but it’s the middle of their winter. So there’s a lot of things that we have to, you know, consider. There’s a lot of differences and a lot of variables. We’re not at the point where we’re so far into the details that those things are coming up right now.
Amira: In addition to training for the Olympics and her work on the Athletics Association, Tianna is also a practicing yogi.
Tianna: Yoga and one of its main goals is to help generate the connection between your mind and body, and the side effect of that is increased and heightened body awareness. What athlete would not benefit from an increased level of body awareness?
Amira: That’s Tianna talking about yoga on her YouTube channel – check it out. I wanted to ask her what it was like moving from a sport where Black women have been historically overrepresented – that’s track and field – to a space like yoga where Black women are very underrepresented.
Tianna: Yeah, like I talked about earlier in this podcast, representation matters, right? So for me I get out there and I say, you know what? I belong here. I’m welcome here. I’m making space for myself here. And because I did that, even though I still go into the studio and count the Black people and I’m like, aw, man, just two of us today, you know? Even though I do that, I’m still there. The tendency for us to shrink ourselves and only go to spaces where we feel welcome is actually an impediment to encouraging other people to come out, to come through, to pull up. So it’s really important to just take that on and kind of get okay with being uncomfortable, with being the only one, because you being there is a declaration that “I am here, and others can follow.”
Amira: Yoga, track, Athletics Association, beyond – you have a lot on your plate in the middle of the mayhem that is the year 2020. I just wanna ask you, how are you doing?
Tianna: Yeah…2020 has not been fun for a lot of us. I actually though do really well because I’m radically resilient; that’s probably gonna be on my tombstone when something eventually kills me. [laughs] But just dealing with hard stuff is the brand over here, right? So I am doing as well as I can under the circumstances. It is very difficult but it has also awakened a different level of focus and intensity towards creating, building the life and the world that I wanna be in, and for that I’m actually really grateful because it has really awakened Advocate Tianna, it has awakened Track Tianna to really buckle down and figure out how to get the work done without the home track, without being able to go to the gym at Cal.
It has really allowed me to focus on the things that I really want and to pull the things that I love really dear and fight for them in all the ways, including this country and the racial climate and the political climate that we're in, all of that. I’m doing all the things, and sometimes I get overwhelmed and have to focus on myself and do digital detox and unplug, but for the most part I’m alive and I’m happy to do the work.
Amira: Well, we thank you for doing the tremendous work you’re doing. If everybody wants to get more information about the Athletics Association, to follow it, to support it, where can they go to stay up to date?
Tianna: AthleticsAssociation.org, and on the main page if you haven’t already there is a call to action to subscribe to the mailing list to get updates to stay informed. From that mailing list you’ll be able to break down into groups so, for example, if you’re media you will get updated in a different way; if you’re an athlete you’ll be told this rule is coming down, what do you think about this? So everybody can join that mailing list right now. We need those numbers and we need that kind of support. Then in January a membership program will be rolled out. We’re still finalizing a lot of details on that. So sign up for the mailing list now, come back in January and check out the membership program, and we’ll just keep charging ahead from there.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment, the burn pile, where we pile up everything we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. I’m up first this week. The University of Texas – which you might know is the school I’m currently attending and therefore paying tuition to as a graduate student – announced this week that they are planning to allow 50% capacity at their giant football stadium when the football stadium resumes in September. To be clear, 50% of the stadium capacity is upwards of 50,000 people. 50,000! It’s one thing to imagine all those people masked and sitting every other seat in an open air bowl, but it’s another to imagine those 50,000 people walking in groups to and from the stadium, waiting in lines to get in, and crowded into concrete bathrooms.
The school announced last month that it will reopen and have in-person instruction starting in August. There are lots of rules around this, but with the announcement this week of them having 50,000 people at every football game it’s hard not to read this all cynically – a move to get students on campus so that they can then justify having football players on campus so that they can then justify having 50,000 people pay money to get in every time there’s a home game. The entire state of Texas is in crisis right now when it comes to COVID-19. At the university specifically since March 1st, according to the university’s own dashboard, 284 students and 168 faculty and staff have contracted the virus – that’s over 450 people. Here in Travis County where the University of Texas is located, we’ve had over 19,000 cases and nearly 250 people have died. And here, like everywhere else, the impact is disproportionate with Latinx people accounting for just over 50% of all cases in Austin.
To put in bluntly, it’s unlikely the people making the decisions around this are from the community mostly harmed by the pandemic. The University of Texas stadium is smack dab in the middle of the city. It’s one thing for fans to take that risk, but that risk will leave the stadium with them and spread out. On top of that, what about the service staff who will be subjected to this? Earlier this month the university announced its first COVID-related death and it was of course a custodial services employee. This all just sounds like a purposeful incubator for COVID in the name of making money, so, burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Amira, what are you burning?
Shireen: Yeah, first and foremost, don’t waste your energy or time or matches on burning Brett Favre and his stupid picture with…You know, 45. Instead, revisit my burn in episode 158 where I talk about how he collected over a million dollars for speaking engagements he never did as part of a massive wealth embezzlement fraud in Mississippi. That is really why you should get your matches ready for that man. Speaking of the NFL though, my burn this week is about Woody Johnson, of course. This week there was not one but two troubling reports about the former…He is the Jets owner still, but he gave over day to day operations to his brother. The first is that him – remember, he is our UK ambassador because of how much money he gave Trump in the lead-up to that election, he was appointed to that position – and one of the reports alleged that he tried to hand the British Open to directing it to Trump’s golf course in Scotland, which is, you know illegal, but that doesn’t matter in this country anymore apparently.
The other report is very troubling and completely believable, which is about his racist and sexist comments that he made repeatedly to staff, including saying, “Why does Black History Month exist? Black fathers don’t take care of their kids,” by holding events at venues that women were not allowed, talking about women’s appearances, refusing or not wanting to do any kind of gender based violence support because he “didn’t care, because [he] wasn’t a woman.” All of this is believable if you know anything about Woody Johnson. So I would just like to burn it all because he shouldn’t be in this position and he definitely shouldn’t be racist and sexist in this position, but because he’s racist and sexist in whatever position he’s in he’ll be acting that way, and it’s trash, so burn it down.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Alright Lindsay, what are you burning?
Lindsay: I’m burning Ted Cruz. [laughs]
Jessica: Go ahead.
Lindsay: Just…Always. Why not. This in particular, it’s more of a double burn. So, first of all the WNBA launched on Saturday, the WNBA season, and ESPN sent out a tweet during the Liberty vs Storm game and it said, “As the national anthem was played, the Liberty and Storm walked off the court as part of a social justice initiative.” And the video included the players walking off the court. Now, they did leave the court before the national anthem so that they would be in the locker room during the national anthem, but it is important to note that it wasn’t like the anthem was playing and then they just all casually walked off, ESPN was framing this that way. But Ted Cruz quote-tweeted this and said, “Stunts like this could provoke the fans to walk out. Oh, wait…”
Here you have a US senator mocking women’s sports, mocking female athletes, mocking Black female athletes. Doing the troll thing of “who watches women's sports?” is the man who has in his bio that he is a “husband and a father.” [laughs] He is a man who is from Houston, which…The Houston Dash are playing on Sunday, today, in the NWSL Championship, the final. And the Houston Comets are the best thing that’s literally ever happened to Houston. So I wanna burn Ted Cruz, I wanna burn using female athletes as political ploys as we continue to see politicians do, and the fact that he’s like a reply guy! These are they reply guys that are in my mentions, the ones who live in the basement who are like, “who watches women’s sports?” This is a senator! It is just infuriating. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Before moving on to our final two burns I wanna give a heads up that they are about sexual harassment and sexual violence – if you wanna skip ahead we have time stamps in our show notes. Brenda, what is on your burn pile?
Brenda: On my burn pile this week is the alleged – hate that word, it’s very “let’s see what happens” – sexual harassment of an intern at NYCFC, particularly noting David Villa who has an academy in Queens and is a very prominent and well known Spanish footballer. I’m just gonna burn two aspects of this right now because this is just really…They’re investigating, it’s not even really formal, so I don't even wanna name the person or shed light on anyone who needs to go and bother her right now. But two things: interns are predominantly women working for free and are incredibly vulnerable, and we’ve seen this in sports organizations again and again. We’ve seen it in the Oval Office, we’ve seen it with Monica Lewinsky. This is not okay to give free labor. You need to pay everyone. Internships are bullshit. They need to be regulated, they take advantage of people of color, this woman is also Puerto Rican – I don’t think that’s surprising.
And secondly, this is a perfect encapsulation of the way in which sports organizations respond to vulnerable people like this with “I didn’t even know her name.” So I just wanna say that the response of some of the people, this is not David Villa but some of the people, were “I don’t know what this even is, I don’t know who this even is.” And it’s like, of course you don’t. Of course you don’t even remember their name because they’re so insignificant to you. The entire structure of internships, especially sports organization internships, need to go. It just needs to go. We need to burn it down. And of course sexual harassment; we’ll keep an eye on this continuing story and hopefully NYCFC does better than most, but I’m not holding my breath. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Shireen, what are you burning?
Shireen: I just wanted to first of all say that at Burn It All Down we stand in solidarity with survivors of violence, and this is a particularly enraging one…Well, they’re all enraging. I was very mad after seeing this, and hat tip to Hillary Haldane who gave me this hijab tip of here, this is what’s happening. Fiji. Rugby. There is a former player who was convicted of rape in 2019 of a 24 year old; his name is Amenoni Nasilasila. While being imprisoned there was photographs and reports of him actually playing on what’s called a prison warden’s team. So it was actually a team of incarcerated people who are permitted to go and compete around, so they have many of the privileges that they would’ve had before of competing within sport. Now, this affected a lot of people, particularly women, and in Fiji there’s quite a strong history of rugby. The thing is, this made a lot of people very very uncomfortable because what it was is this very clear lack of acknowledging this as problematic is hugely problematic in itself.
To make things really far more bizarre, the prison warden’s team in this particular area falls under the jurisdiction of Francis Kean, who himself was convicted of manslaughter and had to be taken out of the World Rugby league. So this whole situation is a little bit of a mess. He refuses to acknowledge that there's anything problematic with this, and even corrections services director rehabilitation senior superintendent – that’s a big, big sentence – Salote Panapasa, has defended Nasilasila’s completely. He said, “We do note condone the actions of Nasilasila, however it is our duty to positively address his offending behavior” Positively address his offending behavior. “Nasilasila has displayed the necessary progress expected of him since his incarceration.” This is less than two years out of a conviction. I think that to be able to applaud someone and give them these privileges is hugely problematic, and the way that the rehabilitation arc of professional athletes is so widely, freely given is very problematic. I want to burn all of this. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: After all that burning it’s time to celebrate some remarkable women in sports this week with our badass woman of the week segment. First up, our honorable mentions. San Francisco Giant's Alyssa Nakken becomes the first woman to coach in an on-field capacity during a MLB game. She coached first base.
Seniesa Estrada scores one of the fastest knockouts – seven-seconds! – in women’s boxing history. Estrada has now won 19 straight matches and has a perfect undefeated record.
Congrats to Canada Women’s National Team star Jessie Fleming who has signed with Chelsea Football Club. We look forward to Jessie ripping it up on the pitch.
Respect to the women of the USA Rowing Team, 12 of whom had been infected with COVID-19 at the training facility in Princeton NJ. They recovered and are taking gold medallist Emily Regan lead and loudly advocating for America to take this disease seriously.
The WNBA announced this week that Indiana Fever center Natalie Achonwa earned the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award for outstanding leadership and commitment to the community.
At the NWSL Challenge Cup, Canadian goalkeeper of Sky Blue FC won the Golden Glove award and Washington Spirit forward Ashley Sanchez picked up the Future Legend award.
Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Our badass women of the week are the NWSL Challenge Cup champions, the Houston Dash! They defeated the Chicago Red Stars 2-0 in the final. I think it’s safe to say the Houston Dash were underdogs going in. Sophie Schmidt scored a penalty kick in the 5th minute and Shea Groom, assisted by Rachael Daly, added a stoppage time goal in the game. Daly was the tournament’s MVP and the Golden Boot award winner. The NWSL was the first professional team sport to return to play in the United States and their bubble worked the way it was supposed to. Over four weeks they played 23 games and did more than 2000 COVID tests and none of them were positive. That is quite the feat in this moment, and we want to recognize that too. Congratulations all around.
Before we do our what's good, I have an announcement to make on behalf of the entire Burn It All Down team. We started this weekly podcast over three years ago and to date we have never taken a week off. We are proud of this, but we are also tired. To say this particular year has been challenging is an understatement that I’m sure everyone listening understands. To give us all a chance to recharge personally and to retool the podcast, we will be taking the month of August off from our regular weekly Tuesday episodes. We’ll still be working; we still will have content arriving onto your podcast app throughout August. If this last week was any indication, our hot take game is very strong right now, so stay tuned. And now, on to our what’s good.
My what’s good…I know there’s all these conflicted feelings, but it was very exciting to see the WNBA back. I really enjoyed watching these women play basketball. I gotta give a shoutout to The Chicks’ latest album, Gaslighter, especially the song Julianna Calm Down which I have been scream-singing in my kitchen all week long. I just love that song. Aaron and I have finally started watching Fargo, it’s on Hulu, the TV show, and Allison Tolman in the first season…I have not looked, but in my head I’m imagining that she won all of the awards while that season was airing. Then the final thing I wanna mention: Aaron and I just had our anniversary, 17 year wedding anniversary. Apparently Aaron told me that furniture is the gift that you give in your 17th year and so he got me…How do you explain it? It’s not a massage chair, but it’s like a back…?
Amira: You put it on the chair.
Jessica: Yeah, you put it on the chair and it’s got the rollers on the back and then on your neck, and it does the shiatsu and it vibrates your butt if you want it to. The whole thing is just lovely and he is such an amazing gift-giver. What’s good is really seriously this little massage chair thing that I have been using repeatedly this week. Amira, what’s good with you?
Amira: [laughs] Really proud of Samari who has been social distancing performing in these shows weekly, singing through masks, and she has been dancing again and she just got invited up to the upper level contemporary dance intensive, which is the level just older and just a little harder than her, and they invited her for a week. So from 3-8pm she’ll be doing an hour and a half of ballet followed by an hour and a half of jazz/modern, a half an hour to eat and then an hour and a half of contemporary for the entire week. So I’m really happy to see her motivated and on it.
I’m also really excited, you know, we went to Texas to see my biological family, but my adoptive moms are a little bit older and so the logistics around seeing them has been really difficult; we both live in college towns. We’ve decided what we’re going to do this weekend is we’re both meeting in Scranton – all the world’s favorite destination – and we both have our own separate hotel spaces and we will meet outside for socially distant picnics and then go away and meet again so they can see the kids. So that’s what I’m looking forward to. I was not excited about Scranton and I was trying to get the kids hyped and I thought I would have to do work to do that, so I said, “Mari, we’re going to go to Scranton…” and she said, “SCRANTON!? THE ELECTRIC CITY!” I was like, oh my god, of course she’s binged The Office and is very excited about this. So that is my main what’s good.
Of course I have to give a shoutout to Dr. Chelsea on Peloton yoga, because her restorative yoga this week was literally the most soul-affirming thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. You know my Sweet Honey In The Rock song, Ella’s Song, that I’ve played on this podcast, like, that’s on the playlist. If you have Sweet Honey In The Rock on the playlist and Nina Simone, how can you not like that? So that’s my what's good.
Jessica: I did a Peloton yoga class with Chelsea this week and Aaron was just listening to it and he was so charmed by her.
Amira: She’s charming!
Jessica: And all of the music was boy bands. [laughs]
Amira: Oh yes, yes, that one.
Jessica: It was great.
Amira: She did Black idols the other day and then she did a funk one…Whew, it’s fun.
Jessica: I gotta do the funk one. Lindsay, what’s good with you?
Lindsay: Can we get a Peloton sponsorship for this show…? [laughter]
Amira: I even tried this week. Did you see in the notes how I said my what’s good aspirationally was not Peloton-related? I failed at that. I know, I know.
Lindsay: Yeah, you didn’t do that!
Jessica: Didn’t make it.
Lindsay: You almost made it, and then you didn’t. Yes, the WNBA being back, the NWSL, but I feel like that’s my what’s good every week. I was really struggling to come up with anything because I gotta admit it’s been a bad week for me. I am grateful for Lou Williams. [laughter] So, Lou Williams, an LA Clipper, left the NBA bubble to go to a funeral for a family friend. He was being tested every day, but during this one of his friends Snapchatted a photo of him at a strip club in Atlanta. First of all, the cover-up was just great because the friend immediately deleted the Snapchat or Instagram story, whatever it is, and said, “That was an old pic of me and Lou, I was just reminiscing because I miss him.” [laughter] In the picture he was wearing an NBA mask that they give out in quarantine! [laughter] It was just definitely not that. Then Lou Williams is just going on and on about how he was definitely there just for dinner, like, he tweeted, “Ask all my teammates what’s my favorite restaurant in Atlanta, nobody’s partying, chill out.” Then he hashtagged #maskon and #inandout – which are just great strip club hashtags.
Then on top of all of this the coach, Doc Rivers – this is my favorite part, I feel like this is a really underrated part of this story. The head coach of the Clippers, Doc Rivers, was asked about this. His quote was, “I can’t share much with his journey because I wasn't on that journey with him.” [laughter] This story has just been giving me life. He will be quarantined for ten days now, which is extra longer, he’s been punished with an extra long quarantine now that he’s back in the bubble. But I think it was worth it for this joy that this story brought. I just love every single bit of it because it’s just…It’s just naughty enough, do you know what I mean? But also Atlanta though, like, maybe don’t keep all of the clubs open, do you know what I mean? If we’re in a pandemic let’s close some of the clubs.
Amira: Exactly. Or do that drive-by strip club that they had at that one place
Jessica: I thought that was Houston.
Amira: Yeah, that was in Houston, because that’s a very Houston thing! [laughs]
Jessica: It is very Houston, that’s lovely.
Amira: You drive in and it’s a drive-thru strip club.
Jessica: You gotta do what you gotta do.
Shireen: I’m very intrigued by this, I’m not gonna lie. I’m intrigued by this.
Jessica: Road trip.
Amira: Yay!
Jessica: Okay, Brenda, what’s good with you?
Brenda: Okay, this break, I’m really excited. I’m really excited to get to be in touch with all of my co-hosts and retool and rethink and regenerate, I’m very excited. I’ve gotten permission to teach exclusively online in the fall, finally.
Amira: Yay.
Jessica: Oh, good.
Brenda: Took a very very long time, was very anxiety-provoking; thank you, Hofstra University for helping me out with that. Let’s see…Nature, hikes, and also I have to plug one more time: Olga Tokarczuk, who is a Polish author, who wrote Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, she’s won the Nobel prize. But I’m now on Flights, which is one of the most experimental and interesting novels. And then I have a snarky one which, I’m not gonna lie, David Silva is playing his last regular game for Man City in the Premier League; he will appear in the Champions League. I can’t. Fucking. Stand him. There’s no good reason. I don’t like the way that he plays.
Shireen: How can you not like Silva! He’s like a kitten.
Brenda: Because he’s lame! No, right, exactly. “How do you feel about your football career?” “I hope people enjoyed my football.” I’m asleep. I hate the Spanish national team from that era – they’re good and they beat the South Americans and eff you to them all, so I’m glad to see him retire.
Shireen: They won the World Cup. They won the World Cup!
Brenda: Thank you for informing me of something that I know and pains me frequently. [Shireen laughing] I am aware that they won the World Cup, I’m happy to see them retire one by one. Buh bye tiki-taka! It’s only done right by South Americans. So yeah. It’s mean but it’s what’s good for me this week if I’m being honest.
Amira: This is what’s good for me.
Jessica: A classic, this is a classic. Brenda what’s good/burn. That was a classic.
Lindsay: She was having fun – what’s good was getting to burn it.
Jessica: Yes, yes. [Brenda laughing]
Lindsay: Joy emanating from her, yeah.
Jessica: Just classic burn from Brenda.
Brenda: Thank you.
Jessica: Shireen, what’s good with you?
Shireen: Thank you, you know I have a lengthy list. First of all, David Silva is so non-offensive in a world…I know, we could talk about this in Slack.
Brenda: Hot take!
Shireen: Hot take, we’ll do a hot take on David Silva. [Brenda laughs] I did just want to say thank you to this team, I love you, and I’m looking forward to also recharging. My family have rented a place, we couldn’t get to our cottage on Prince Edward Island for the first time which is very very sad because the provincial borders are very strict in Canada, like, super strict. So we’ve rented a place in the Kawarthas which is about three hours from where I am, looking forward to that. It’ll be with my parents, so by Wednesday someone should be fighting about…I think by Tuesday night there will be a huge fight, this is my prediction, and then by Wednesday we’ll be fine, the rest of the week will be good. Speaking of that, I just spent a couple of days with my family, my parents. My bubble has extended to them and I’m always happy to see them, I really enjoy my parents. Like everybody in this time of COVID the pandemic worries us all for a variety of reasons, so just shoutout to everybody handling that.
I do also…I would be remiss if I didn’t say Eid Mubarak to everybody. It’s the month of Dhul-Hijjah which is the month in which Muslim pilgrims are performing the pilgrimage, although this year there is literally a fraction, I think they allowed 1000 or 2000 to go to Mecca and Medina to do that. I was actually there three years ago at this time and it brings back a lot of memories, it was an incredibly important spiritual journey for me and I think of it very very fondly. It prepared me spiritually and emotionally for resilience, for things that would come next in my life, so I just am very grateful for that. I wanna say happy birthday to my friend Sabrina Razack, I love you, and her twin, Yasmin, it’s her birthday this week so we’re gonna do a social distancing thing.
I got professional photos done with my kids, that’s been a really heartening experience. I bought my boys clothes – just shirts, because their idea of dressing up is ironing their track pants. So I was like, no. And they came out really beautifully. The two young women who were doing this are part of this organization called Photoshoots For Change and they donate all the proceeds, including their time and stuff, to the Black Legal Action Center in Toronto, which also warms my heart, because the youth out there are doing big things. When I feel frustrated with the state of the world sometimes and see how my generation has contributed – you always like to blame people, “the boomers did this,” whatever – I look at the youth and they’re forever struggling and forever hopeful, and they’re mobilized, so respect to all those young people that just bring joy in so many different ways. The pictures are gorgeous. I did get one with the light because golden hour was hitting my face and I’m feeling myself.
Amira: Yes!
Shireen: Feeling myself! Big time. And probably going overboard with that, but it was actually–
Jessica: [sarcastically] Noooo…
Shireen: [laughs] It’s the first professional photo I’ve had with just me and my children who are my family and the cat was not in it, but that’s okay. She probably would’ve wanted to opt out anyways. It made me really happy because while we were taking photos I kept saying, “Guys, come on! I’m gonna tell mom if you don’t hurry up.” Because I try to pretend like I’m their sister because it irritates the shit out of my children. [laughter] So that was also really fun and the compliments are always lovely.
Lindsay: Wait, I have one more what’s good I wanted to add. So, we are recording this on Zoom now – [laughter] – and for the past five minutes my co-host Dr. Amira Rose Davis has just been…She’s got a window next to her, really digging the light, and she has just been striking a pose after pose after pose.
Shireen: Gorgeous, gorgeous.
Amira: It's very cute.
Lindsay: It has been killing me. Oh my god.
Shireen: Yeah, I love seeing your faces, so this has been wonderful.
Jessica: That’s it for this week’s episode, thank you all for joining us. This episode was produced by Kinsey Clarke; this is our last show with Kinsey and we want to thank her for all of her hard work over the last few months. Shelby Weldon does our social media, episode transcripts and website. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website: burnitalldownpod.com. You can also email us from the site to give us feedback. We love hearing from you all. If you enjoyed this week’s show, do me a favor: share it with two people in your life whom you think would be interested in Burn It All Down. Also, please rate the show at whichever place you listen to it – the ratings really do help us reach new listeners who need this feminist sports podcast but don’t yet know it exists.
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