Episode 170: The Wildcat Strikes and What Comes Next
We’re back!
On this week’s show, Amira, Brenda, Shireen, and Jessica talk about the recent wildcat strikes in sports, our reactions to it, what’s gone down in Utah with racist owner Dell Loy Hansen, FARE’s new report about women, Black and Latinx individuals in US Soccer, and what we hope and we what we think comes next [3:10]. Then you’ll hear a preview of this week’s interview, which will drop on Thursday [22:52].
And, as always, the Burn Pile [23:32], the Torchbearers segment (formerly BAWOTW) starring the Brazilian and English national women’s soccer teams [33:53], and what is good in our worlds [39:29].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.
Links
More than a game: NBA players in wildcat strike to protest racial injustice: https://mg.co.za/sport/2020-08-27-nba-players-protest-racial-injustice
Dell Loy Hansen has history of racist comments as RSL owner: https://theathletic.com/2027796/2020/08/27/dell-loy-hansen-has-history-of-racist-comments-as-rsl-owner
Royals rookie Tziarra King: DLH comments “completely unacceptable”: https://www.rslsoapbox.com/2020/8/27/21404661/royals-rookie-tziarra-king-dlh-comments/
White NWSL players’ silence is failing their Black teammates: https://www.allforxi.com/2020/9/3/21418412/white-nwsl-players-silence-racism-failed-black-teammates/
Sheriff's deputy accuses Masai Ujiri of falsely alleging 'racial animus' in counterclaim: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/masai-ujiri-sheriff-counterclaim-1.5709414/
World Rugby criticised by dozens of academics for trans women ban: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/sep/01/world-rugby-criticised-by-dozens-of-academics-for-trans-women-ban/
Courtney Vandersloot broke the WNBA assist record on a pass to Allie Quigley ... her wife! https://www.sbnation.com/wnba/2020/9/1/21410201/courtney-vandersloot-wnba-assist-record-pass-wife-allie-quigley/
Transcript
Amira: Hey flamethrowers, welcome back to Burn It All Down. Amira here, and I’m joined today by Jess, Shireen, and Brenda. On the show today we’ll be talking about the week that was in sports…
Jessica: When I first heard that the Bucks didn’t come out of the locker room I was genuinely shocked.
Amira: And later on we’ll introduce a new segment called Torchbearers.
Shireen: And I know y’all are like, “Ireland has a lacrosse team?” They do.
Amira: We’ll have more announcements as we move through the show; some changes, and many things you’ll notice are still the same. One big change is that Burn It All Down is actually coming to you not once but two times a week now. On Tuesday we’ll do our normal segments: we’ll do our burn pile, we’ll tell you what’s good. Our interview will actually be a standalone episode released on Thursdays. Keep an eye out on your podcast feed for that interview dropping later this week.
Welcome back to Burn It All Down, we have missed you so so much. But also it was so good – so good! – to rest for a month. Even though we say we rested, I really hope that you check out all of the content that we had over the past month on the Burn It All Down podcast feed, including crossover guest episodes, and also most recently our hot takes including a hot take on athletes on strike that Jess hosted with myself and Dr. Courtney Cox and Samantha Sheppard, and also Lindsay had a terrific interview with our very own Jessica Luther and Kavitha Davidson on their new book out now: Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back.
But here we are. Shireen, Brenda, Jess…We’re sending a shoutout to Lindsay. But the gang is mostly back together and we are ready to go to work. To start it off, I wanted to ask you: after a month, a change of seasons, organized chaos and complete mayhem – where’s your mood at? How are you feeling? And I’m gonna ask you to tell me this in one word. I’m gonna say it again: one word. Flamethrowers, you can’t see me, but I’m looking at Shireen! One word, tell me please. Where are you at? Brenda.
Brenda: Motivated.
Amira: Jessica.
Jessica: One word…Um, I’ll go with excited. I’ll do a positive. Excited.
Amira: Excited. Shireen?
Shireen: #WETHENORTH.
Amira: One. One word.
Shireen: It’s a hashtag!
Amira: One word!
Shireen: [laughs] Thrilled.
Amira: Motivated, excited, thrilled. Please strike from the record the traitorous Shireen’s Raptors nod. I’m exerting executive privilege in leading this ship and I will take more than one word to say: we are ready to get back into it, so please join us.
George Hill: When we take the court and represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin, we are expected to play at a high level, give maximum effort and hold each other accountable. We hold ourselves to that standard and in this moment, we are demanding the same from lawmakers and law enforcement.
Elizabeth Williams: What we have seen over the last few months and most recently with the brutal police shooting of Jacob Blake, is overwhelming. And while we hurt for Jacob and his community, we also have an opportunity to keep the focus on the issues and demand change.
Amira: That was the Milwaukee Bucks’ George Hill and the Atlanta Dream’s Elizabeth Williams reading their respective statements on the night they refused to play basketball. The protests in sports, the wildcat strikes, spread from the WNBA and the NBA on to MLB, MLS, the National Hockey League and even pro tennis when Naomi Osaka said she would not play her scheduled match, saying, “Before I am an athlete I am a Black woman and as a Black woman there is much more important matters at hand right now that need immediate attention rather than watching me play tennis.” For a night, and then the next night, the sports world seemed to stop, the players were on strike, and it seemed a world of possibilities lay at their feet. By Friday however, there were plans in place to resume all games. Now, a week and a half later, play has resumed, initiatives have been announced. But perhaps we’re left with more questions than answers. On this segment we’re gonna take a look at the week that was, but more importantly what it could mean moving forward. So I wanted to start with asking you if the resumption of play – which is a word, Jess looked it up for me – if the resumption of play changed your initial reactions to the day the games stopped. Bren, I’ll throw it to you.
Brenda: Yeah, it has, and I’m sorry to say that, but I think that most of the players went back before their demands were really met. I’m just skeptical about…I’m hopeful, and I admire the athletes for what they did. I think it’s an important precedent in sending the message about the power and the ways in which they can use their labor to effect real change. But I have to say, I think the longer the strike the more effective sometimes it can be.
Amira: And what about you, Shireen?
Shireen: I’ve been focusing mostly on athlete response. I haven’t seen this type of driven action…I mean, a nod to you specifically, Amira, you talked about Black labor solidarity, and I’m seeing that more than ever happen in sports. It just reaffirms how shitty federations and organizations are, meaning, like, NHL, and in some cases…Because I don’t think the powers that be in any boardroom will actually ever give a fuck until it affects them personally. So, I’m not surprised but I just, like Brenda said, stand in solidarity with the athletes, coaches, and those affected.
Amira: Jessica?
Jessica: Yeah, I keep reminding myself how it felt when this was all happening, which was, like, man…It’s wild that that happened at all. I felt hope and inspiration in a moment when I don’t feel that about much of anything. I mean, I’m with Brenda and Shireen – the longer the strike the more that we probably would’ve gotten out of it. At the same time, I think we saw really well how important collective organizing is and how hard it is, and the WNBA has been doing it for a really long time. They’re the best at it, I think we saw that. They had a statement so fast, like, from all of the players at once. If this is gonna work, these other leagues are gonna have to figure out how to do this esteemed collective organizing. But I do keep reminding myself when I first heard that the Bucks didn’t come out of the locker room I was genuinely shocked.
Amira: I would say for me it affirmed my initial feelings, which is optically this is really great, and I also am already cynical about the way that it would be co-opted and declawed, especially as it gained steam and crossed over the sports world into the national conversation where I think that the movement itself got very romanticized, and my initial reaction was very tantamount to, like, they’re calling in Black, they just can’t today. But having a day where you just can’t because of the spectacle of Black death is very different than intentional movement-building, and that was kind of my initial reaction to it. So I’m not necessarily surprised about some of the developments over the week, but I’ve been watching closely to see where that leverage has been able to translate into something that I feel like is new or unprecedented. So, conversations about opening up voting access through arenas is a new wrinkle that I find particularly interesting compelling.
The thing that I’m really watching that is more along the lines of what I was worried about, unfortunately we’re starting to see, is things like what was recently announced that the Miami Heat is honoring their commitment to quote-unquote “not sit on the sidelines” by partnering with none other than…Miami Police Department. Yes, MPD, that has a long history of, I don’t know, beating and shooting Black people and Latino people in Miami-Dade County. Here’s the thing: the Miami Heat’s partnership is basically footing the bill for it. This is the same Miami Police Department that has a long history of police brutality. A 1980 case where they beat Arthur McDuffie, tried to stage it as an accident, covered it up, and he later died from his injuries. This is the same police department that earlier this summer were caught on camera, a police officer repeatedly punching a Black woman in her face. This is the same police department that gets nearly $800 million from Miami-Dade County to do whatever the hell they call policing. Basically just getting a free shielded thing – this is the opposite of defunding the police, actually. It’s, like, actually funding them more. Jess, did you wanna jump on that?
Jessica: I just wanted to mention that yesterday Kirk Herbstreit cried on College GameDay about racial injustice–
Kirk Herbstreit: This is not okay! It’s just not.
Jessica: –and when Rece Davis was trying to get them to commercial afterwards he mentioned,
Rece Davis: And there’s a lot of good going on in college football. I know that even the Navy players have met with police departments. There’s hope.
Jessica: –as, like, “See? Good things are happening!” So, you know, sports media doesn’t know what to do with this in general, and I really felt that yesterday when Rece Davis said that.
Amira: Exactly. It reminds me so much of the Roc Nation-NFL partnership that we saw, just really reinforcing the institution and not dealing with very real issues in it. So, that is…[sighs] I don’t know. I guess it prompts the question of how power’s working and how it’s not working, or if that leverage that we imagine are sometimes I think amplified, really contains as much power in it as we think. On the various media circuits and rounds that we’ve been on this week, I think we’re still talking about what actions are being taken in a romanticized bubble that’s completely a product of capitalism. There’s no reason why there needs to be bubble basketball in the middle of a global pandemic. So even whatever they’re using their platform for from within the bubble or the wubble or whatever, it’s still participating in the system that is rife with these power dynamics that are unchanged even with the actions that they’re doing on the ground.
So, one of the conversations we wanted to highlight that may have flown under your radar this week is some of the things that have been going down with Dell Loy Hansen and the NWSL. I wanna kick it back to Jess.
Jessica: Yeah, so, Dell Loy Hansen, he’s this super rich dude, lives in Utah. He owns MLS’s Real Salt Lake, NWSL’s Utah Royals FC and the USL team Real Monarchs. The day after the wildcat strike he went on a radio station that he owns – which I just think says so much right there – and he said the strike made him feel, “like somebody stabbed you, and you’re trying to figure out a way to pull the knife out and move forward. The disrespect is profound to me personally.” It only took The Athletic like 0.6 seconds to report that this guy has a long history of racism and saying racist things. I do wanna highlight that Tziarra King, who is a Black rookie for the Utah Royals, immediately she took to Twitter after his comments and she wrote in part, “I’m disappointed but I’m not surprised by the lack of understanding in this situation. One thing I’m absolutely not going to do is use his privilege as an excuse for his comments. I hope that people in this club and beyond will choose accountability and empathy moving forward.”
From there we got a statement from the Black players of the NWSL. They called his comments disgraceful and they said they stand with Utah Royals, Real Salt Lake and Real Monarchs players, and then they specifically mentioned Tziarra King and backing her up. I will say, Hansen has agreed to sell the team, which apparently he decided on his own. One thing I wanna hear from you guys is: what does this matter, then? It’s so weird to me. It kind of feels like Sterling, this rich dude, gets to sell off his teams. What comes from this? Is this affecting at all soccer/football culture in America? It doesn’t feel like it. One thing I do wanna say: quick shoutout to André Carlisle who wrote a great piece at SB Nation’s All For IX about the overall silence of white NWSL players during this time, which I think speaks a lot to how much this is not changing the culture in this moment in soccer.
Amira: I like that point. Does he just get paid to go home and be racist on his couch with millions of dollars?
Jessica: Yeah! And he got to decide that!
Amira: Right!
Jessica: He was the one who was like, I’m just gonna get out of here.
Amira: I’m gonna toss it to Shireen here, but I did wanna remind everybody that Tziarra was on our podcast in the special we did about Black women athletes speaking out in the beginning of June, and she talks about finding her voice, entering the league and moving to Utah before the pandemic. So, it does not come as a surprise to us on Burn It All Down that she’s at the forefront of speaking out on this. Shireen?
Shireen: One of the things I think I wanna highlight is cross-sports solidarity. I will always believe the WNBA provided the blueprint for how to do things, and we see the Black players coalition from the WNBA influencing other women in sport and, as we know, Black women are at the forefront of all this mobilization. I also wanna take this moment to remind everybody that youth doesn’t necessarily mean you’re unqualified to lead. As much as I hate the burden on shoulders of anybody that have to carry this kind of load, it’s okay for us to look up and learn from them too, the youth. And Black youth are formidable, particularly Black women. When I said I was thrilled at the beginning of the show it was because I was excited to see all of this, and I’m so grateful that we get to witness it.
Amira: I wanna go deeper on that NWSL Black players association, and to do that I wanna highlight the fact that our very own Brenda Elsey and our good friend Jermaine Scott authored a piece with Fare that just came out this week about the conditions of Black players in the NWSL as well as other things. I wanted to toss it to you, Bren, to give us a little more information on their pre-existing players association, and also if you can move us into a conversation about some of the asks and tactics that you see coming from players in this moment?
Brenda: So, essentially what the report tried to do was understand the representation of Black, Latinx and women in NWSL, MLS and US Soccer Federation, and it speaks to Jess’s point about Utah, which is…In normal soccer governance, those three entities are not connected, but in the United States it’s an aberration. So, why can Hansen just leave? Because the MLS is essentially fiscally a Ponzi scheme in which you pay in and you pay out – there’s no relegation essentially, which is totally abnormal. Part of the reason that is like that is that the US Soccer Federation, which should be the overall governing body, right, over leagues – they should be doing the investigation. The issue is that they hire MLS to run many of their events and to act as their marketing firm. They also pay NWSL for national team players, so they pay into their salaries. So these three organizations are financially tied in a way that makes it incredibly difficult to sanction. How would they sanction an owner who has simply paid in? What do you do? That owner just takes his money out, okay. And it makes it all the more scary for these Black players speaking out, for Latinos speaking out, to try to have some protection.
So, going forward, what do we do? I mean, first and foremost it is urgent that there is some kind of independent body that is set up in order to protect the players speaking out from repercussions. They can easily be cut for imaginary reasons that are really based upon these kinds of organizing factors. There are zero Black or Latinx coaches in NWSL. There’s only one woman coach in the women’s league. In terms of MLS, it’s really not a whole lot better, and two days after the report New York Red Bulls fired Chris Armas, who’s Puerto Rican. The Latinx representation went from 15% to about 9%. [pained laugh] So, I don’t wanna go on and on; we’ll put a link to the report in the show. But those are some of the issues and I think the challenges and also the asks being made.
Amira: Shireen?
Shireen: I just wanna say that Dr. Brenda Elsey’s saying that the MLS is like a Ponzi scheme is my favorite quote of 2020, possibly. [laughter]
Amira: Bren, I wanted to ask you: looking at some of the specific solutions proposed by the players, is there anything that jumps out about some of those asks?
Brenda: The Rooney Rule, or adopting something like the Rooney Rule. You need programs in there for mentorship, for coaching licenses; you need to start interviewing and making some kinds of targets, as difficult as it is. If you don’t sort of attack that as a structural level it’s never gonna happen, and that change requires conflict, and that’s really difficult because they’re not gonna do that on their own. So one of the reasons we put stories in the report…And just to go back to Tziarra King and how wonderful it is to have a young leader like that, we asked her what would it mean to you to have a Black woman coach, which she’d never had. She was tearing up. You know, it actually makes for better coaching and better playing.
Amira: To broaden it, I would say it’s very interesting to see what is coming out of the brief moment with the NBA for instance. The one thing that surprised me was the kind of push, the initiative, to use arenas and make them into voting spaces. One of the underreported things about 2016, it was the first year after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which has huge and profound consequences, and really the name of the game for us today is voter suppression. That is the thing. All hands on deck on this point is essential. Bren?
Brenda: Yeah, you can’t see me but my head is nodding so hard it’s about to fall off. As an historian this is really an unprecedented moment in terms of attacks on the democratic process itself, you know? Athletes out there creating platforms and using platforms that are about citizenship and civic engagement, it is for me the #1 most hopeful thing as well as an historian, because we are on the brink of actual fascism.
Amira: Actual, literal fascism.
Brenda: Actual, literal fascism. So, can we say THANK YOU to the most vulnerable people in this country for trying to stop this from happening.
Amira: So, while we’re on that conversation about tactics and solutions that players are offering and we’re seeing, I wanted to toss it to you, Shireen, to talk about the NHL. The NHL was a surprise contributor to the night without sports. Howard Bryant made this great point when we were talking on WBUR’s On Point that, unlike the NBA and the WNBA where it very much felt player-led, in the NHL it felt like there was other factors pushing the NHL to this. I think one of those, Shireen, is the Hockey Diversity Alliance.
Shireen: The asks of the HDA, the Hockey Diversity Alliance, were very different than what the NHL came up with. The players can demand and they can ask, but at the end of the day the NHL hasn’t stepped up in the way it needs to. Stuff like the blue line…They’re proposing the blue line be changed to the black line. Like…What is that!? We get into this stuff that’s performative vs effective and sustainable. Looking at the names on the owners coalition, they’re all obviously white men. Then when you look at the fan coalition of inclusion, Ron MacLean’s on there! Why would Ron MacLean be on the supporters coalition? I actually went through the list, this doesn’t make any sense to me because the NHL is trying to draw from what it currently has, and what is has is not enough BIPOC. What is has is not enough women. What is has is people that are trying to lead on something when they haven’t fucking unlearned anything and relearned.
Amira: So, obviously there’s a lot going on. It should come as a surprise to no one that we have a lot of thoughts. But I think to wrap up this segment, what we are kind of leaving with is that we’re in the middle of something and we haven’t reached the end of it. We’re still going to watch these actions, we’re going to watch these kind of follow-ups to these moments. We’re gonna see if leverage comes back. I think we also should keep an eye on the global impact, because what athletes are starting to articulate is what activists on the ground have long said, which is tapping into not a local – even if it’s motivated by local actions – but a global fight, to see how these systems of oppression are interlocking and interlacing. Because I love you so much, Shireen, I’m gonna throw it to you to take us out and introduce the quote that we’re gonna end on, because I know that you wanna fawn a little bit over the Raptors.
Shireen: Thank you, Amira. I love you very much even though you’re from the Boston area. White supremacy is the root of many evils, and we know that different levels of oppression, be it homophobia, be it misogyny, antisemitism, xenophobia…They’re all very well rooted in white supremacy. One thing that really affected me was in a post-game presser, Serge Ibaka – otherwise known as my husband, I like to refer to him as that – he has said,
Serge Ibaka: The change which we try to make here is not only for America, it’s for all the rest of the world. Where I come from, there’s a lot of people dying and a lot of women being raped. All those systems come from the same people. It’s the same people.
Shireen: For me, to hear that, coming originally, historically from a place where colonization brutalized my country, tore it apart – this is a movement globally, and this movement is inspiring youth all over the world, and I don’t think we can minimize that.
Amira: Alright y’all, we’re gonna get to the burn pile in just a second, but first I wanted to give you a quick preview of the interview that we have coming out this Thursday. Jess, can you tell us what you’re talking about?
Jessica: Yeah. I spoke to former Team USA swimmer and disability advocate Kristin Duquette and current Paralympian Lacey Henderson about disability and COVID in this time.
Kristin Duquette: For disabled athletes, one thing that we do have going for ourselves is the ability to adapt.
Lacey Henderson: Hopefully after this too we find better ways to serve the disabled community because even before COVID we were the largest minority in the world.
Amira: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment: the burn pile. Shireen, I’m gonna toss it to you. We’ll keep with the Raptors, and on this point I stand firmly in solidarity with you. Please bring the heat. What are you burning today?
Shireen: What started off as cinder in the beginning of August grew and grew and exploded into my rage, and it’s rooted in a profound love and affection for the only president I recognize: Masai Ujiri of the Toronto Raptors. After the championship win of 2019 the Toronto Raptors, NBA world champions – thank you, I’m just gonna repeat that again. When he tried to get onto the court in celebration he was assaulted by an Alameda County sheriff. There was back and forth countersuits; that particular person alleged that he was injured and this and that, and what ended up happening was very recently in the last two weeks Masai Ujiri’s legal team came out with the body cam footage, and it was exactly what we thought it was: it was him being assaulted. Masai Ujiri was pushed first and he was pushed twice as he was trying to take out his badge. There’s no doubt about this.
But what I’m specifically burning is the response from said asshole. This security guard’s legal teams come out and they have insisted that Masai Ujiri is trying to benefit by using an atmosphere of race and bias against law enforcement. So basically they’re alleging that Masai Ujiri, a Black man, who we can see being assaulted, is using the current state of the world to benefit…That is actually how fucked up it is, this counter-claim. I’m furious. I’m not painting Golden State Warriors fans as anything racist, but your sheriff’s office is! I wanna burn that shit down. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright, Jess, what are you burning this week?
Jessica: I wanna thank multiple flamethrowers who reached out to us about this in July. World Rugby proposed a ban on transgender women participating in union competition. The Guardian reported that World Rugby’s transgender working group created a 30-page document in which they claimed – and here is how The Guardian’s Sean Ingle wrote about it – quote, “There is likely to be ‘at least a 20-30% greater risk’ of injury when a female player is tackled by someone who has gone through male puberty.” World Rugby claims that science is on their side. The organization decided based on this so-called science that even if a trans woman lowers her testosterone levels for 12 months to the level stipulated by the International Olympic Committee’s guidelines she still wouldn’t be able to play. World Rugby was like, “We see your transphobia, IOC, and we’re gonna raise you one!” Of course there’s no prohibition on trans men playing.
Sean Ingle had a follow up piece earlier this week at The Guardian; turns out 84 academics from a range of fields including sport, public health and sociology, signed a letter saying there’s no actual evidence that trans women pose a safety risk to cis women. The letter reads in part, “We are opposed to World Rugby’s proposed ban of an entire population group from playing women’s rugby: non-binary people assumed male at birth and transgender women. There is no peer-reviewed, scientific evidence to justify a ban which would only be harmful to trans and gender diverse people.” World Rugby responded to the letter with “Uh-uh!” and stood by their claims.
Joanna Harper, a PhD student and medical physicist at Loughborough University told Sky Sports News, “One of the most fundamental problems is that they used studies on non-athletic transgender women to form a large part of their thesis.” A worldwide online petition against the ban started by Grace McKenzie, a trans woman rugby player in San Francisco, has over 17,000 signatures. McKenzie told Sky Sports that rugby has “been one of the most inclusive environments I've found since my transition a few years ago. The thought of losing rugby makes me feel awful. It makes me feel like a second-class citizen. Trans folks face a lot of adversity all over the world. This is just another attack on our opportunities to be included.”
So, same transphobia, different sport. I fear there’s nothing new to say here, so I will say what we’ve already said before: the science that these bans are based on is often flawed and incomplete, and that going after a venerable population of people is deeply disappointing and it’s discriminatory. World Rugby has said it is willing to change its position in the future if the science allows for it, but if you’re looking for evidence that allows your transphobia to shine through I worry that in a transphobic world you’re gonna find it. So I want to burn this proposed transphobic ban and World Rugby. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Bren, what are you burning?
Brenda: I’m burning the media’s depoliticization of athletes in particular during this moment of athlete activism, and I wanna talk particularly about the case of Tom Terrific Seaver, the most beloved Met perhaps in history. He is a pitcher that played from 1967-1986, and he died on August 31st of complications due to dementia and COVID. Tom Seaver was an advocate for labor rights in MLB. He also was an anti-Vietnam protestor, and one of the reasons this was particularly important is before he took the mound in 1969 he said that if the Mets can win the World Series then the US can get out of Vietnam. Protestors talked about how important that was that summer of 1969, and actually because of the lack of coverage of that movement that he participated in, and people have been writing in to the Boston Globe, to other places, to try to reassert that they were marching, and those marches, how important it was.
One of the other reasons for that is that Seaver was actually a Marine who served 8 years in the Marine corps, and I would just like to say I don’t often read Marine Corps Times but I did this week and there was absolutely no mention that Tom Seaver again and again expressed that the Vietnam War was unjust. I think it’s a disservice to his memory, I think it’s shocking in this moment of athlete activism to pretend that this is new and to ignore the struggles that have been ongoing. So I wanna burn the fact that we have not honored Tom Seaver’s own struggles and stands against the Vietnam War. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: What I’m burning this week is the continued bullshit in college sports around COVID-19, because somehow [pained laugh] it’s still happening. First and foremost, I wanna burn the fact that we are still seeing large numbers of COVID cases on campus. For instance, Tennessee didn’t have enough players to practice with the other day. They have 44 people out because of positive tests or contact tracing! They only have 30 people available in football practices, so they couldn’t have a scrimmage! If you have half your team out because of COVID, maybe you shouldn’t be playing! Ay. [sighs]
Not only that, you had the TCU-SMU game postponed because of COVID outbreak; we haven’t even gotten to the season, and the season alone does not inspire confidence. Almost half of the 65 schools in the Power Five conferences are refusing to share data about positive tests in their program. About a third of those schools have declined to continue to provide data about protocols that they are doing after people are testing positive, and a bulk of those schools – almost a third of them – are of course in the conferences that are continuing with fall sports this fall, which are the ACC, the Big 12, and the SEC.
Speaking of the ACC, they’ve moved all fall sports except football to the spring, which really belies a lot of this bullshit. I mean, look, we’ve said it’s just laying it bare to see. I would also like to remind people that football is not the only fall sport. All of these people like the people in Nebraska suing the Big Ten so they can play football and using this empathy about how it’s their future and their seasons…I have talked to numerous athletes, particularly women’s soccer players and volleyball players, who have also had their seasons disrupted and don’t know what their futures look like. And let’s not forget spring sport athletes who’ve had their seasons cancelled altogether!
So please spare me a particular “woe is me” for football players. It’s sad for sure, but it’s existing within a larger landscape and they’re the only one you give a damn about. You really undercut that point when you’re insisting they return to the field under these circumstances of unpaid labor. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen because we’ve all just decided that COVID’s over because we want it to be. Ay, ay, ay! The other thing that I have to tell you about this is in schools like UNC that after a week had a massive outbreak and so sent all their students home, but decided, “Oh, now that we’ve sent them home we can recreate a bubble here.” They kept fall sport athletes on campus to continue their season. It’s asinine! It’s asinine. Then on top of that you have the stupid stupid stupid occupant of the White House getting on the phone with the Big Ten saying, “We’re convincing them to get back to football very very soon,” and then the Big Ten is like, “Um, nothing has changed.”
Speaking of the Big Ten, speaking of Penn State – earlier this week at a meeting the Penn State doctor revealed that a staggering number of cases…He first said 35% and then there was a lot of statement correcting that, take that what you will. But 30-35% of Big Ten athletes that they saw test positive for COVID-19 are now showing signs of myocarditis, the dangerous heart disease causing inflammation, all sorts of ill effects. It’s one of the lasting effects of COVID-19 that we don’t know nearly enough about and that should frighten everybody. It should be a pause on what we’re going forward with, which is this asinine season. I can’t believe we’re still having this conversation. I can’t believe this is where we’re at. Like Jess said, I think we’re running out of ways to call it for what it is, and so in the absence of words – because I’m out of them – we just have matches. Let’s burn it down.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright, so now we’re on to the segment formerly known as badass women of the week. We want to introduce you to a new segment called Torchbearers. Shoutout to Lindsay for the on-brand naming. This segment will highlight those people who are holding that flame, whether they’re breaking barriers or they’re modeling new paths forward for sport. You can think of it as a relay – they’re passing the torch to each other, leading up to who’s lighting the flame that week as our torchbearer of the week. This is also a segment that we really strive to be more gender inclusive of, and so we’ve always shouted out women and non-binary people but you’ll notice our torchbearers are now gonna be a little bit more expansive. I just want everybody to note that this is what we mean when we think about taking sports forward, this kind of collectivity.
I actually wanted to kick it off with a remembrance, longtime torchbearer who unfortunately passed away on August 30th: coach John Thompson. He was an American basketball coach at Georgetown. He was the first Black head coach to win a major championship in basketball in 1984. I really recommend that you check out our friends Derrick and Lou’s The Black Athlete podcast where Frank Guridy, a close friend of the show, appears to talk about the importance of coach Thompson and the legacy that he has. We lift you up in memory today.
Let’s continue this torch relay. Brenda, who do you have as our champions of the week?
Brenda: UEFA’s Champions League women’s champions, again: Olympique Lyonnais, who defeated Wolfsburg 3-1 in the finals.
Amira: Shireen, who do you have as our ally of the week?
Shireen: For those that don’t know the International World Games are due to take place in Alabama in 2022, and Ireland’s lacrosse team…I know y’all are like, “Ireland has a lacrosse team?” They do. They have a men’s lacrosse team and they qualified for said games, but what they did was they have handed over their place to the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team. The Iroquois Nationals couldn’t qualify because they’re not particularly from one “sovereign” – and we all know borders are man-made – nation. What this is is they’re trying to say this is part of our history and this is actually the history of this game. These days it’s nice to see this kind of solidarity, so hijab-tip to Ireland. I’m so happy that Iroquois Nationals will be competing.
Amira: Jess, I wanna toss it to you. Who do you have as our record-setter of the week?
Jessica: Chicago Sky point guard Courtney Vandersloot set the WNBA single game assist record this week with 18 – EIGHTEEN! – assists in their game against the Indiana Fever. That 18th assist went to none other than her wife, Allie Quigley, who hit a three. It’s so beautiful.
Amira: Literally couple goals. I love it so much. I’m gonna take this one; I want to shout out our innovators of the week, and that is Athletes Unlimited. It’s a fantasy-like league, it just premiered with pro softball. Next spring it will premiere with pro women’s volleyball. It’s a fantasy-like league that essentially every week re-drafts and sorts players onto new teams. Players earn points individually for achievements in the game like home runs, runs scored, all of these things, and then every week you’re getting new compositions of teams. It’s completely player-run and they have a broadcasting deal so a lot of these pro softball games are now available on ESPN across its platforms.
Our great friend of the show AJ Andrews is not only starring in this league but made SportsCenter’s top 10 in the premiere game for a beautiful diving catch, which is so typical of AJ’s style. It’s really interesting to think what’s possible through this model and to watch pro softball on TV. So they are innovators of the week. Alright Shireen, we’re on the last leg of this torch relay at this point. Who is our barrier-breaker of the week?
Shireen: It’s going to go to Motaira Al-Shammari of Saudi Arabia, and this is a really cool story. Saudi Arabia has launched a female archery championship which will be comprised of 27 different athletes and four women judges. It’s just really great because it’s unprecedented in that region and Al-Shammari stands out as the first female archer to participate in compound bow. It’s just really wonderful and I want to see this type of Legolas behavior all through there.
Amira: And now we have reached that moment, that torch is coming down the stretch. Can I get a slow clap leading up to the lighting of the torch this week?
[slow, disjointed clapping]
Shireen: We can’t even get this.
Jess: But– [laughs]
Amira: We’re so uncoordinated. Some things remain the same.
Jessica: We’re on Zoom!
Amira: I’m gonna throw it to you Bren to announce who our torchbearer is.
Brenda: The Brazilian and English women’s national team players! Their daily rate when they are convoked to play for the teams will be equal to that of the men’s national team. Just one more sentence: both of those teams had bans on women's football during the 20th century, so it was beautiful to see it one day after another.
Amira: There you have it folks, they are our torchbearers of the week. Alright y’all, what is good good good in your worlds? I have to start off with Shireen, because she’s been waiting a month to get back to this segment. She may or may not have recorded on WhatsApp a what’s good while we were offline. So Shireen, what is good?
Shireen: I can actually record a whole hot take on what’s good and what happened in August. It was restful, it was wonderful. We’ve already talked about this in the show but I will wanna highlight Brenda slaying with Dr. Jermaine Scott. Disruptors FC, whaaaaaaat! Also, Jessica, I love your book. I have that I haven’t received it yet because I live in Canada and it hasn’t shipped to me and I’m very annoyed about it. I resisted the urge to text you and whine, but I’m whining now publicly. I also wanted to say happy birthday to friend of the show Dr. Courtney Szto – we spent a day on Friday literally driving around Toronto eating. Any one of our flamethrowers, if you’re up here I would be happy to do this again, it was wonderful. I do have a really fun announcement, and I wanted to thank Burn It All Down family for being so great about this. Your girl is now officially matriculated, and I’m a graduate student.
Brenda: Yay.
Jessica: Woo!
Shireen: I start my master’s in media production at Ryerson University. I’m just very, very excited about this. It’s a long time coming. I’m gonna cry about it because it was a thing for me to apply my hands needed to be held, I needed to be dragged across the process of even applying. I will just add that they basically needed a paleontologist to find my transcripts because I’m that old. That’s what’s good!
Amira: And we are all so so so so proud of you. Bren, what’s good?
Brenda: Um. [laughs] The hardest segment for me, always.
Amira: Always.
Brenda: One of my sort of specialisms in life of what I dedicate a ton of time to is governance and the history of sport governance and the history of the transfer market, and it turns out that Messi’s transfer has given me a whole community with which I can share arcane and usually useless knowledge. So I feel good and useful over the past few weeks because people have been messaging, like, “Why couldn’t this transfer work?” And I get to say, [gasps] “I can tell you!” It’s also been nice…BIAD in reset mode was also really exciting. So I’m thrilled to be back but I’m also thrilled about the work that we did behind the scenes over the last month.
Amira: Absolutely. I’ll go next. I’m really excited for various opportunities that have come down the wire, that are on the horizon. I wanna shoutout one of my many mom’s birthday is later this week, September 11th, is Nancy’s birthday. I’m really excited because Michael has a photoshoot; Massachusetts has lifted the ban on Pennsylvania, so we actually are going to be able to drive to Manchester by the Sea and the Cape Ann area where we will be not near people but at least Scooby can run on a beach and we’ll be able to socially distance see my mom for her birthday. Which leads me to my other what’s good, which also means that tomorrow I get to see Brenda!
Brenda: Woo!
Amira: On my way to Mass, which is just the best treat.
Brenda: That would’ve been my what’s good if I knew it was confirmed.
Amira: That’s why I didn’t confirm it, so I could have it as my what’s good. [Jessica laughs]
Brenda: Yay!
Amira: Muahahaha. I also wanted…This happened while we were on break, but I did wanna give a huge shoutout to my little cousin, Alexis Morris, who is playing and conditioning at Texas A&M. Her team put out a tremendous statement about racial justice and this has been probably the thing that makes me want COVID to go away most, because it’s been a journey. I want her to have a season and I want her to have a comeback and I want to be in the arena on the day of her first games. So, Jessica, take us home.
Jessica: Yeah, well, I think the most obvious thing is that earlier this week my book that I’ve been working on for years, Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan, with Kavitha – it finally hit shelves, and that’s just super exciting. On Wednesday night we’re doing an event with Hanif Abdurraqib, and then on Thursday we’re doing an event with Joel Anderson. I’m huge fans of both of them, I’m super excited about this, so go find information if you wanna watch those. It’s on my social. One of the things that’s been great for me in August is my co-hosts. I mean, first, Loving Sports wouldn’t exist without my co-hosts, I can’t say enough times. That book is like Burn It All Down in a book. But Shireen has been amazing on television, TSN. She has just been out there in her hijab repping…Amira is everywhere, I can’t even list it all, and all of it is brilliant…Brenda with her Fare report, just incredibly important work, and Lindsay with Power Plays just continuing to kill it over and over again. That has been thrilling.
Tennis is back; I feel conflicted, I love it though. I just wanna give a huge shoutout to New York Times’ spoon cake – I’m obsessed with this thing, I’ve made it five times in like eight days. It’s so good. I just can’t say enough about the New York Times’ spoon cake.
Shireen: Okay Jess, what is spoon cake? I saw your Insta and I was like, is this…What is this?
Jessica: It’s like a cake that you spoon out. But it’s mainly butter. It’s butter and milk [Amira laughing] and then you put fruit with sugar on top of it, and it’s just this soft buttery fruity amazing thing, and it’s so easy. The problem with it is that it’s so easy, so if you get a craving while you’re making dinner you can just make a spoon cake.
Amira: It’s so funny because I saw that on Jess’s Instagram and I was like, I want this! Jess sent me the recipe and I was like, I should’ve been more clear – I want you to make that for me. [laughter] Like, I don’t care how easy it is. I don’t wanna do anything! Alrighty–
Jessica: No wait, I have one more! Wait wait wait!
Amira: Go!
Jessica: I wanna tell everyone, if you have HBO you should be watching Lovecraft Country–
Amira: Oh, dammit! That was my other one!
Jessica: HA! Well I got it! I don’t even like horror, I’m a huge coward, massive anxiety on my own, but I gotta say we have watched the first three episodes…There’s now four by the time you hear this, and they are all spectacular. I cannot recommend that show enough.
Amira: Jurnee Smollett.
Jessica: Ooh! Episode three! Oh my god.
Amira: Fucking phenomenal. Just amazing. I was so concentrated on keeping Brenda away from my what’s good I left my baseline open and Jess just swooped in and took my Lovecraft Country, I’m so upset! Alrighty, it’s so good to be back with y’all. That is also the general what’s good – and to be back with you all, flamethrowers. And fin.
Shireen: Fin?
Amira: Fin, like, it’s done.
Shireen: Oh, [very proper French accent] fin. Okay. Sorry. What’s fin?
Amira: That’s it for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down. Again, our interview episode will be dropping on Thursday so keep an eye on your podcast feeds and check out Jessica in conversation with Kristin Duquette and Lacey Henderson on COVID, disability and sport. One of the things that y’all requested in our flamethrower surveys was to know what we’re watching, so we’re introducing a new end of show segment which will be super brief but it’s just a rundown of what to watch for this week in sports.
So, the semi-finals and finals of the US Open will be taking place at the back half of this week into the weekend; US Open’s women’s singles final will be Saturday at 4pm. The WNBA season is still in full force; we wanna really draw your attention to the Seattle Storm vs the Phoenix Mercury, 10pm on Friday night eastern on the CBS sports network. I mean, who does not want to get to see Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird head to head? Sticking with basketball the NBA continues into the second round of their playoffs including a pivotal game 6 on Wednesday night: Celtics vs Raptors, this game otherwise known as the Shireen vs Amira Bowl, or We The North vs Try As I Might I Can’t Shake My Love For Boston Sports Teams So Go Cs Go I Guess! Also, NWSL games on the horizon: Saturday the 12th at 3:30pm the Portland Thorns are taking on the Reign, and that is on CBS.
You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher – wherever you get your podcasts from. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod, we’re on Twitter @burnitdownpod. If you’re wearing our merch, if you’re shouting us out, tag us in it! We love to see flamethrowers out there enjoying the show. Check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. From there you can also email us directly; there’s also a link there to our Teespring shop and our Patreon. Speaking of Patreon, a special limited time offer from now until the end of the month: if you join as a new patron or upgrade your Patreon membership you will automatically be sent an exclusive Burn It All Down flamethrower sticker which is a new flamethrower logo created just to acknowledge how much we love you all so much. Those automatically ship out to new patrons and patrons who choose to upgrade their Patreon contribution.
We also have a new exciting benefit for our top Patreon tiers which are fireside chats with the co-hosts – that’s exclusive access to chill with us and chop it up, whether it’s watching a game or talking about something that you wanna burn, those fireside chats now available to our top-tier patrons. I mentioned that flamethrower logo, you know we had to make merch with it. Our flamethrower fall merch drop, head over to our Teespring shop! That’s it for me, Amira Rose Davis, Brenda, Shireen, Jess; shoutout to Shelby Weldon who handles all of our social media stuff. This episode stuff was produced by Martin Kessler. We’ll see you next week, flamethrowers.