Episode 172: Climate Change's Impact on Sports

On this week's episode, Lindsay, Brenda, Shireen, Amira, and Jessica discuss many of the ways in which climate change and its catastrophic effects are affecting how sports are practiced and played throughout the world [4:16].

And, as always, the Burn Pile [19:11], Torchbearers starring Maria Taylor [30:52], and what is good in our worlds [33:38].

This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.

Links

Soccer Can’t Avoid Climate Change Forever: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/sports/soccer-climate-change.html/

Air quality issues expected to increasingly impact sports: https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/29870359/air-quality-issues-expected-increasingly-impact-sports/

California Wildfires Add to Safety Worries for MLB, NFL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-wildfires-add-to-safety-worries-for-mlb-nfl-11599833655/

2020 Olympic Marathon Relocation Demonstrates How Climate Change Is Affecting Sports: https://www.newsweek.com/2020-olympic-marathon-relocation-demonstrates-how-climate-change-affecting-sports-1465778/

What Will Climate Change Mean for Your Favorite Marathon? https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a22833708/how-climate-change-will-affect-races

Why Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes are going through a crisis: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/30/why-kenyas-rift-valley-lakes-are-going-through-a-crisis

Climate change poses threat to future Super Bowls in Miami: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2020/01/31/climate-change-poses-threat-to-future-super-bowls-in-miami/41119337

Climate change: Sport heading for a fall as temperatures rise: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53111881/

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello flamethrowers, Lindsay Gibbs here. This week we wanna dedicate our show in honor of two very special people. One, in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who died of pancreatic cancer this past week, and also friend of the show, Darlene Elizabeth Wright, a fierce advocate against gun violence, who passed away in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on September 7th. May they both rest in power.

Welcome to Burn It All Down, Lindsay here. I am joined today by the whole crew – Brenda, Amira, Shireen, and Jessica. On this week’s show we’re going to be talking about the impact of climate change on sports.

Shireen: So, we’ve got NFL, MLB, MLS and NWSL spending a huge amount of time monitoring air quality…

Lindsay: And then of course we’re gonna burn what’s been terrible this week in sports, highlight some of the torchbearers who are giving us hope during this dark time, and talk about what’s good in our lives.

Jessica: My good thing this week is a show on Apple TV+, which is not actually a sentence I thought I would ever say!

Lindsay: A reminder – we are now coming to you twice a week: Tuesday with our news-based episode, like this one, and then Thursdays will be standalone interviews. This week’s interview will be Alison Désir and Lauren Fleshman chatting with Amira about organizing the Womxn Run the Vote relay amid, well, all of this…COVID, and the protests, and climate change. To get us started, the WNBA playoffs are underway, and I don’t know who saw – hopefully everyone – in the first round the Phoenix Mercury defeated the Washington Mystics with a Shey Peddy game-winning three pointer.

Announcer: Shey Peddy buries a three against the team that cut her!

Lindsay: And it got me wondering…For my co-hosts, you have one sentence, no context, but what is your favorite equivalent walkoff shot, walkoff homer, walkoff whatever it may be moment of a playoff victory in sports? Shireen.

Shireen: Canadian hockey legend Marie-Phillip Poulin scores in OT after coming back from a 2-0 deficit against the United States at the 2014 Sochi Olympics to cinch the gold medal. 

Lindsay: Whew, I remember that one. [laughs] Jess?

Jessica: Yeah, I went obvious: Arike Ogunbowale when she was with Notre Dame back in 2018, she hit back to back buzzer-beaters. The first one was against UConn in the semifinals and then that amazing fallaway three in the corner against Mississippi State to clinch it for the Irish. 

Lindsay: Beautiful!

Jessica: I love it still. Chills.

Lindsay: For me it is a throwback. Back in 2004 in the NFL playoffs, Jake Delhomme to Steve Smith, double overtime for the Carolina Panthers to send the Panthers to the conference finals. It was the first play in second overtime and it took down the greatest show on turf at the time, the St Louis Rams. Amira?

Amira: Yeah – Saltalamacchia’s walkoff single, Game 2 of the ALCS, October 13th, 2013, en route to the Red Sox championship that year, but it really was about context – don’t hate me, I’m a historian, this is still one sentence, lots of commas though – it was Papi’s grand slam to tie it in the 8th inning after being down 5-1, on the heels of the Patriots coming from behind to score a touchdown with four seconds remaining to beat the Saints that same day; it was the night of comeback, it was the good old days, I get hype just thinking about it, punto.

Lindsay: Um, in case you were wondering, listeners, you did not just have your podcast on double speed! [laughter] That was all Amira. Your podcast settings did not change. Bren?

Brenda: Watch an historian do this in one sentence; beautiful and superhuman chase down block by LeBron in 2016 finals when he was still a Cav.

Lindsay: I love it. Alright, right now fires are raging on the west coast of the United States this past week. We’ve seen these fires really alter the sports world through cancellations and postponements; this is nothing new. Climate change’s impact on the sports world is everywhere. Today we’re gonna take some time to talk about that impact on a global scale and a local scale, and look at what the future might bring. Shireen, can you take us through what's been happening this week in particular? 

Shireen: Yes, thanks. We know that the wildfires are raging through California, Oregon and Washington state, and one of the things that we know is that this particular catastrophe environmentally will affect major league sports and pro sports. For example, a lot of the leagues have what could be considered an AQI policy, which is an air quality index policy, but they’re still pretty behind. For example, some have postponed their training, some have postponed their practices, but 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said it was like an “apocalyptic state,” but the air quality doesn’t seem as bad as it looks. The thing is, we have to look at this and how it'll affect the athletes and the teams and the trainers. So, we’ve got NFL, MLB, MLS and NWSL spending a huge amount of time monitoring air quality.

The Portland Thorns season opener was postponed against OL Reign, and that’s been rescheduled to September 30th. But according to Professor Maddy Orr, who’s a professor at SUNY Cortland and coordinator of The Sport Ecology Group – and I’m quoting from an ESPN article, she says, “I can unequivocally say that there will be more fires moving forward. All the evidence suggests that it's only going to get worse because things are getting dryer, it's getting hotter, and  when you put those factors together you get fire. American pro sports leagues are really far behind, frankly, when it comes to policy change on these issues.” So while there may be some movement, there is still much more to do. For example, Katelyn Best, a sportswriter, women’s soccer, got some info from a league spokesperson and an AQI of 200 is an automatic cancellation for the NWSL. Just for those that don't understand – zero to 500 is how they measure air quality. Mostly it’s been under the 200s, but 150-200 is unhealthy and above 300 is hazardous. So these are some serious numbers we’re dealing with.

Lindsay: Jess, I know this has also impacted a sport that is very close to your family’s heart.

Jessica: Yeah. So, a lot of my friends on the west coast…One thing that I saw when they were posting, alongside their pictures of the orange and grey skies that they were experiencing, was how they were noting that they couldn’t go outside and so they couldn’t exercise at all, and I was thinking about the ways in which climate change is affecting one of the most basic sports, which is running, right? You put on your shoes, you go outside and you run. That world in particular has been dealing with ever-increasing issues around climate change. I’ve talked about this before…I think the most obvious example is marathon running because it has such a formal structure to it and of course I keep up with it, because I live with a marathon runner who tells me all the time about the weather when I don’t care about it.

But I’ve talked about this on here before, so, the marathon for Tokyo 2020 which maybe will happen next summer, but in the prep for this summer they moved it to the north of the country and they were gonna start it potentially in the middle of the night to avoid athletes having heat stroke because the temperatures are so high now, as so many actually did when they did the IAAF/World Athletics championship in Doha last year. Maybe you’ll remember all the pictures of the women marathon just all over…Something like 40% of them didn’t finish the race. So I kept thinking about that this week because I heard from more and more friends that couldn’t even go for walks – forget trying to run. 

Lindsay: Of course there’s one country that’s specifically known for its distance runners that has been incredibly, incredibly impacted by all this. Amira, do you wanna talk about Kenya?

Amira: Yeah, I do. Climate change is impacting the region there in many ways, but one to keep an eye on is the Great Rift Valley in Kenya which has been experiencing intense flooding. It has already caused evacuations and displacements, and one of the continuing concerns there is the water level in two of their main lakes – Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria – are rising, and they could merge. Just to give you context, the lakes used to be 12 miles apart. Now they’re just 8 miles apart. One is an alkaline lake and one is freshwater, so the cross-contamination could be disastrous for wildlife. To learn more about this I reached out to my colleague, Dr. Michelle Sikes, who studies distance running in Kenya, and here’s part of what she had to say.

Michelle: Right now, Kenya is experiencing a number of environmental challenges, from flooding to the worst invasion of locusts that the country has seen in a generation. These crises are worrying and may affect the sports world because people and communities in Kenya’s Rift Valley, where almost all of the nation’s distance runners live and train, heavily rely on farming and natural resources-based livelihoods, generally. Increasing severity of climate change has obvious negative effects on farming which mean that people will not be able to focus as much on sport when food supply and alternative livelihood prospects are under threat. Since most runners in the region are aspiring athletes whose pursuit of success on the track and the roads depend directly or indirectly on farming and they cannot solely rely on running to make ends meet, the destabilizing effect of climate change and its accompanying impact on the sport of distance running itself may be great.

Lindsay: Bren?

Brenda: Yes, staying on Kenya for a minute, I mean, one of the things that has also caused more pressure in Kenya is the number of refugees that have come from Sudan in particular, but other places. It’s pretty troubling how the environmental crises are contributing to an increased refugee population. So, we know that refugees are at an all-time high, about 80 million people – that’s double since 1990. Probably half of which or more are children.

Lindsay: That’s such a good point. I’m always amazed when I really start to think about it, about just how many different types of impacts climate change is having. Of course you have the rising sea levels where here in the United States there’s a lot of talk about how this is impacting the stadiums in Miami, in New York, in Jacksonville, in Oakland – these mega million dollar stadiums are being built knowing that these sea levels, if climate change continues they’re gonna be wiped out. You’ve also of course got snow sports, winter sports industries that are obviously incredibly impacted. We have droughts that are making it very expensive to maintain the grass fields that are needed, and of course I always just think about Jordan McNair dying of heat stroke, the Maryland football player, last May, and how we’re just gonna keep seeing more of that if policies don’t start to change to really impact climate change. Of course this is all just in the United States. Brenda, the disruption is worldwide.

Brenda: Yeah. Actually the United Nations has called on sports bodies to sign different types of accords that they will try to be carbon-free by 2050. I think it’s basically a joke to most of them. But it’s pretty scary. BBC came out with a report recently on the impact of flooding on English football where they expected about a quarter of the fields to experience flooding this season and ongoing. Then there’s weather disasters like the typhoon in Japan which we remember impacted Rugby Union worlds last year, and then Indian cricket officials who have long given up on air quality are now saying the problem is the temperatures and most of the venues can hit 104. [40 Celsius] So, it’s pretty frightening. The United Nations is targeting sports as one of the areas that could contribute to forming some policies that others could model.

Lindsay: Yeah, unfortunately it seems that these organizations are all more interested in offsetting their own carbon footprint than in really making changes that will help the world. It’s infuriating when you read about how much more money and resources that are put in just to justify spending and building these ridiculous stadiums which, getting into the economics of the stadium-building and displacement and gentrification, that’s a whole other topic. But let’s just look at this Vikings stadium, the Minnesota Vikings stadium. The stadium offsets all its energy with renewable energy credits, and it has committed to being a zero waste facility – which is all great stuff. Similarly, UEFA was trying to, when we were supposed to have the European championships this summer, were trying to offset their carbon footprint. But once again they were doing all this while holding an event that would’ve added extensive air travel to the world. So we’re not going backwards any, we’re just trying to make these mega million dollar events have less of an impact.

I was noting that Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins owner, has talked a lot about their stadium and building this Dolphins stadium so that it can withstand any of the sea changes and hurricanes and all of this stuff. He’s talked about how crucial it is for sports to get involved in stopping climate change, and yet he has hosted a fundraiser for Trump and donated to Trump’s inauguration, and you just can’t have both. It just really makes me wonder…We’ve been having all these protests, trying to get these owners to really buy into ending systemic racism using the power that they have, and it’s like, what if they also used this power to really focus on changing the environment? On voting in politicians, on supporting politicians who believe in climate change, on holding their fellow billionaires accountable for the policies of their organizations. You can see by all do for their one stadium to make it more eco-friendly, that they do have the resources when they care about it, but when it’s not about their bottom line they suddenly vote for their tax break. Bren?

Brenda: I just want to…And I know this is an obvious point, but I think it should be in here somewhere. Historically we know that this problem has been caused by the global north and it goes back to industrialization. Still, even the largest carbon emissions are coming from China, the United States, India and Russia, with Russia only being about half of the United States as a sort of distant fourth. Then to have them not take as much responsibility as the place has impacted, much less the amount of responsibility they actually have…Its just so frustrating. Chile has had a hole in the ozone layer since like 1970, and in certain parts you’ve had to wear this extreme sunblock. It just feels like the places that are emitting, at least in the United States and the northeast, are the places that haven’t been as impacted. To continue to see the global north do this kind of shit just feels so unfair.

Lindsay: Amira?

Amira: Yeah. I think it’s important to talk about how these “natural” disasters and climate change are compounded, exacerbated by environmental racism. Too often the lack of protection, infrastructure or relief exacerbates the harm, it disproportionately affects under-resourced minority populations, from Katrina to Flint to Maria. Just a few weeks ago when Laura blew through Lake Charles in the Gulf Coast…If you’re not familiar with it, I was born in Beaumont, Texas, about an hour west of Lake Charles. The Gulf Coast stretches Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. It’s not only weathered many storms; they’re the site of many harmful oil refineries, often jokingly called the “Cancer Coast” because of the high number of cancers, asthma, and other medical cases due to toxins in the air. In Texas they have six of the most toxic oil refineries that emit benzene, which is a component of crude oil, gasoline, cigarette smoke. It’s invisible, it’s deadly. It elevates cancer rates, respiratory disease and developmental delays in infants.

When Hurricane Harvey hit two years ago those refineries leaked around 28,000 pounds of benzene gas into the air, and that’s probably a low estimate because, guess what? The oil industry gets to self-report on these things. Yet these same spaces, these Gulf Coast communities, have vibrant youth sports cultures, particularly football. At least Texas, and Mississippi. This is the backdrop that they play against. Even now in Lake Charles with the pandemic on the rise schools are literally missing roofs and bleachers, gyms have been blown apart because of the storm, and yet at least one school official this past week said, “If anything, the storm and the pandemic means we should fight harder to play this fall because it is hopeful.” It’s reminiscent of that Olympic official who was like, “The flames of the Olympic torch is gonna starve out the virus.” Hope is not actually a balm for these toxins. It doesn’t work like that.

Here’s the thing – the kids who do have talent, who do make it out, sports is too often seen as the only way out of a lot of these neighborhoods and areas, so families do send their kids into the fray with that hope. They also hope, like, just hold your breath a little bit more. You know that this is the environment we’re playing on, but this is the way out. Here’s the thing: for those kids who do make it out, who have that talent, who make it, we see that they become some of the biggest donators back into the area, from Claressa Shields passing out water in Flint to Puerto Rican athletes who raised enormous funds in the wake of Maria. They end up doing the work of the failed state. So when we’re talking about climate change and we’re talking about a pandemic that is a respiratory illness and we know it’s a global problem, and Brenda just so eloquently implicated, rightfully, the global north within this problem, but right here in our backyards we are having longstanding effects of the damage already being done. Kids are playing games amongst this backdrop, and it’s heartbreaking.

Lindsay: Alright, before we get to the burn pile I wanna give a quick preview of this Thursday’s interview with Allison Désir and Lauren Fleshman. Amira, what can listeners look forward to?

Amira: Check out this interview for a really interesting conversation about how this relay idea evolved over the last four years, including last minute changes because of COVID, and now the wildfires on the west coast. 

Allison: This is 2020, and there’s no time when we all are gonna feel great, have no issues related to social justice or weather, so we decided to proceed.

Lauren: The spirit of it has been to make our movement count for something important.

Lindsay: Well, now I am good and burn pile ready. I hope you all are too. It’s everyone’s favorite segment – we’re gonna take the garbage and we're gonna put it on a metaphorical burn pile. Shireen, can you get us started?

Shireen: So, I’m never at a loss with how this continues to happen, and what I’m gonna do is just quickly tell you about the discrimination that was really really thrown at Najah Aqeel, a young 14 year old Black Muslim volleyball player. She was disqualified during an away game in Nashville, Tennessee. She plays for Valor Academies, and basically the referee decided that her hijab – although it wasn’t covering her neck, it was just turban-style low in the back – was against the rules of the TSSAA, which adheres to the National Federation of State High School Associations rules. So, she cried, she was humiliated, she was taken off the court, and what ended up happening was it grew really quickly, I mean, the story was written really quickly by Rowaida Abdelaziz of Huffington Post. I’m quoted in the article, but just spoke about how much this affected Najah.

The bottom line here is this continues, this discriminatory policy, when we know for a fact that there’s no proof that a hijab actually impacts dangerously a player, an athlete or opponents. There’s no reason to have this rule here. I understand safety-wise jewelry and whatnot you can get injured, but in this case there’s not. The school came out to her defense, but the national association has not said anything. The TSSAA, the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, is not making any comment. They’re saying, well, we defer to the higher-ups. Basically, people who don’t know anything about this are making the decisions for it. These rules are archaic, they’re unnecessary, and they prevent young Muslim women from engaging in sport. I want to burn this kind of policy and discrimination and racism down. Burn.

Lindsay: Bren?

Brenda: On Sunday, September 12th, Brazilian football player Neymar was given a red card during a PSG-Marseilles match because of a scuffle with player Álvaro González. At one point Neymar heard González call him a racial slur. He reported this to the official, but was ejected anyhow – without a VAR or match stoppage, against the rules, so…Number one, fuck that. Then in reaction to that the president of the French Football Federation, Noël Le Graët – he’s been on this pile before – responded by claiming that there really isn’t any racism in France or football, basically the most untrue statement this geezer could come up with. This isn’t the first situation like this this season even, and he had been the person last summer that said there were too many stoppages because of racism, so fuck that too. Also, they remain the only federation, the French one, to ban the hijab for playing, coaching or officiating. So, fuck that too.

Then the media gets in there and writes about it in the most frustrating way, pointing out that Neymar is an expensive player, he’s overrated, he dives, just to diminish this entire thing. On top of it the announces talk over Neymar explaining the racial abuse on the pitch, claiming Neymar called González a homophobic slur. I’m not saying that’s not possible, but González evidently didn’t hear that and neither did I. If they’d shut up and take this seriously we might have heard. So I wanna burn all of this as just garbage, yeah. I just wanna burn the racism in French football, how this president gets away with it without being sanctioned. I think in French it’s “incendiez.” Burn.

All: Burn.

Shireen: Brûle!

Brenda: Merci.

Lindsay: So, this week the Matildas unveiled their new national team away kit for the women's soccer team in Australia, of course where they’re holding the Women’s World Cup. People on Twitter loved it and said, “Wait, where can I buy this in women’s sizes? Can I buy this in women’s sizes…This women’s team kit, in women's sizes?” [Jessica laughs] They said on Twitter, “Unfortunately, the new national team’s away kit will not be available in women’s sizes. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and can assure supporters that this will be rectified for the next kit release, due in…2022.” [laughter] How does this keep happening!? How do people in charge keep forgetting that women buy merchandise? Women buy merchandise for men’s sports, and especially for women’s sports. And also, why in the world do we have to wait until 2022 to get this fixed?! I don’t think there’s a freeze on manufacturing for the next two years! This seems like something that could be fixed pretty immediately. Seems like Nike and Australia as a whole have the resources to do so. So look, I just wanna throw this on the burn pile, and everyone who has ever ignored women when making sporting gear. Burn. 

All: Burn. 

Lindsay: Jess?

Jessica: Yeah, so, a warning that I’m gonna be discussing sexual abuse of minors. I’m gonna tell you a story now, and it’s gonna sound sadly familiar. Earlier this year Sarah Abitbol, a ten time French national champion pairs figure skater, wrote in her memoir that as a teenager she was sexually abused by her then coach Gilles Beyer, who is also a former figure skating champion and national team official. As these things go, in the wake of this news other French figure skaters came forward to report abuse by their coaches. Abitbol said that when she first attempted to report Beyer’s abuse to the French sports ministry in 2008. 2008. They did not listen nor care, and so Beyer continued coaching young skaters. He has now been accused by at least four women, and it turns out he had been investigated for abusing minors in the past and it had no impact on his ability to coach.

Didier Gailhaguet, the president of the French Federation of Ice Sports was forced to resign after all this came to light, and he had one of those all-time sorry-not-sorry statements – “I committed errors, but not wrongdoing.” In August the French Sports Ministry announced that their investigation following Abitbol’s report found twelve coaches who had been accused of harassment or sexual assault, including three who were convicted on related charges; seven reported cases of physical assault or verbal violence; and two cases related to trainers who died before the end of judicial proceedings. The ministry said, “The volume of cases identified is indicative of practices and behaviors that have been replicated through generations of coaches. It is unparalleled internationally.”

Last week the AFP reported that the Paris prosecutors’ office has now opened its second investigation into all of this, the first being against Beyer. We know little about the second case, except it involves a person who has authority over a minor in the world of figure skating. It’s obvious why this deserves the burn pile; it’s yet another example of systemic sexual abuse about which no one cared enough to do a damn thing. I’m not sure what else to say about it, but I want to acknowledge that this happened and that it’s fucked up. I’m so sad right now in so many ways because too many with power in sport put a culture of winning and success above the safety, health and well-being of young athletes. So, burn.

Lindsay: Amira? 

Amira: Yeah. I don’t really even know where to start with the Big Ten. Like, do I burn the whiplash I have from having a vote 11-3 in favor of not playing, all of a sudden now 14 unanimous votes for playing when very little has changed. No, let me correct that – it’s actually gotten worse. Do I burn the politicians, namely the occupant of the White House, using this for political points and saying, “I brought the Big Ten back!” and other local seeing this as a great political opportunity, instead of working for a safe community. Do I burn the fact that the Big Ten has some of the fastest growing sites of COVID in the country? Here in State College we’re now #2 – yay! Michigan State University just put 30 large residence halls on quarantine for the next two weeks, but for fuck’s sake, let’s bring football back!

Which brings me to the other flammable things here. Football is not the only fall sport, and even though publicly it's been said that there's some conversations in the works around volleyball and soccer, there have been very few details, and officials in the schools don’t even know if their teams are playing. No direction. It’s a very clear caste system. All of this is a very clear indication of things we already know, that we’ve burned before – that’s it’s about money, that in the pursuit of money kids are being put at risk. Not to mention that there’s medical questions abound, and yet because they’ve built their entire business structure, right? Because they need that cut of the $2.6 billion revenue just from media rights to Fox Sports alone. Because really at the core they are football colleges who happen to have university happenings around them, and not the other way around.

And because of this they have set up a whole infrastructure of rapid testing, and their testing protocol is better than some professional leagues. But what message does it send if football players can get rapid test results that day when their counterparts on campus are still waiting days to find out if they’re positive or negative? In many ways it's just really showing what we’ve already said, which is don’t pretend this is a farce about student athletes, don't say that this is about learning and they happen to play spots, when it's very clear what the priorities are. 

That’s not even getting to the very burnable ripple effects, like, lemme just zoom in on State College here to tell you what it looks like on the ground. This is a small town like so many of these Big Ten schools, small towns that are dependent on athletic money, but also on the university, which is why they brought students back despite the fact that they knew it was going to have a rise in cases. We averaged 19 cases a week all summer. Now, since the students have been back we average over 500 cases a week.

So do I burn the fact that this has all but killed public education in these places? My kids had school for four days. Four days before it shut down. Do I burn the fact that the Big Ten decisions have influenced sports here? Last week alone a local wrestling tournament, citing Penn State being open, staged a tournament with 1,200 participants and another 1,500 spectators from around the country, despite that it violated all of the supposed safety protocols and ordinances in place! That’s just it – that those are just on paper, but we’ve already seen and watched people defy them. Football coming back is gonna bring with it gatherings and tailgates and all of the football Saturday shenanigans. To watch players be exploited and sacrificed in the pursuit of the money that they are going to raise for everybody else but themselves…There’s almost too much to burn here. Guess I’ll just have to burn it all down.

All: Burn.

Lindsay: Alright. After all that it is time to have some hope, so this is our Torchbearer of the week segment. Shireen, who’s giving us a kernel of hope this week?

Shireen: I’m so happy to say congratulations to football specialist Lipa Nissa who was actually voted the ‘Ones To Watch’ by the Asian Sports List.

Lindsay: Awesome. Jess, who’s our MVP of the week? [laughs]

Jessica: It is none other than A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, who was named the WNBA’s MVP; Crystal Dangerfield of the Minnesota Lynx took home Rookie of the Year, and the Lynx’s Cheryl Reeve was awarded Coach of the Year. Congratulations all around.

Lindsay: Awesome. For our barrier-breaker of the week we have Madison Hammond, who signed with OL Reign and will be the first Native American woman to play in the NWSL. And Brenda, what about our whistleblower of the week? [laughter]

Shireen: I love what you did there, I just figured it out!

Brenda: Tori Penso will be the first woman center referee of an MLS match on September 23rd, the DCU vs Nashville game. Last time that happened was Sandy Hunt in May of 2000.

Lindsay: Awesome. Can I get a drumroll please?

[drumroll]

Our firemaster and Torchbearer of the week is none other than…Amira?

Amira: Yeah, Maria Taylor. This week Doug Gottlieb came for Maria Taylor after it was revealed that the sportscaster left Anthony Davis off her All-NBA ballot, something that Taylor has said was a quote-unquote “clear mistake.” Gottlieb though asked why Taylor even had a vote in the first place. Here’s the thing: it’s not about the vote. Or the ballot. It’s about the fact that when a man makes a shitty ballot it’s not a reflection of all men in every sport ever, nor do they have their very right to be in the room or in the space questioned. But when a woman – let alone a Black woman – does something like this, it’s like, run her entire resume, bring her to the gatekeepers. Maria defended herself by reminding people that she both played basketball and covers the league and she said, “I deserve everything I have.” Well, we stand with her.

The simultaneous erasure and devaluation and questioning of Black women in sports, from Crystal Dunn’s FIFA ratings to comments at the US Open that didn’t read Serena Williams as a leader in women’s tennis, to the crusty folks coming for Maira now. It’s exhausting. So, for standing up and defending this space that she fought so hard to occupy and paving the path she continues to pave for others coming up behind her; Maria Taylor, you are our Torchbearer of the week. Light ‘em up, sis.

Lindsay: Woo! Alright, let’s finish with some good stuff from our lives. [laughs] The only thing good in my life this entire week besides my co-hosts was Robby Anderson having no clue who Sir Purr was. [laughing]

Robby Anderson: What’s that bear doing?

DJ Moore: The bear?

Robby Anderson: Panther.

DJ Moore: That’s Sir Purr, bro.

Robby Anderson: Who?

DJ Moore: Sir Purr. 

Robby Anderson: How you say that?

Curtis Samuel: Sir Purr.

DJ Moore: Sir Purr.

Robby Anderson: Oh, Sir Purr? Wow. You call him that?

Curtis Samuel: That’s his name.

Robby Anderson: So you be like, “What’s up, Sir Purr?”

Lindsay: This is the one thing that's made me wanna watch football in a long time and made me proud to be a Carolina Panthers fan. Jess?

Jessica: Yeah, my good thing this week is a show on Apple TV+ – which is not actually a sentence I thought I would ever say! It’s called Ted Lasso, and the basis of it is that a D2 American football coach is hired by a Premier League team to be the manager. He has no experience in soccer and there’s a whole reason for it…It holds together enough for it to work, but it’s just a really very sweet, funny show. I just feel very good and happy when I watch it, which is not a feeling that I have a lot. So I highly recommend Ted Lasso.

Lindsay: Awesome. Bren?

Brenda: On Netflix there’s a documentary called My Teacher the Octopus. The octopus is really the star of the show, and she’s amazing, even if the guy doing it is annoying as fuck and has too much money to even look at half the time. It is so sweet, and the photography is just gorgeous, and also my kids…Even though they’re remote learning, thinking about something other than makeup tutorials for the first time since June is making me happy that there’s something going on upstairs.

Lindsay: [laughs] I love that. Shireen?

Shireen: Just wanted to say Shana Tovah, happy new year to all my Abrahamic cousins out there.

Lindsay: Yes.

Shireen: Love that challah bread, I can eat all of it. I did, yesterday. Just wanna say I’m reading all the time, academic reading, which is kicking my ass. I just wanted to tell everybody who may not know: I’m part of a new CBC podcast called Pop Chat, and other than Elamin Abdelmahmoud, who I love, who keeps sending me half-naked pictures of Mo Salah, it’s going really well. Which is not always a bad thing. Also wanted to say happy birthday to my brother Sulemaan, whose birthday was Monday. He is older and not wiser. I love him. Check it out, because I did roast him on Twitter.

Lindsay: I love it. Amira, bring us home.

Amira: Yeah, so Brenda’s little brother Ryan Steele this week had the best TikTok where he was using the sound, “I'm a potatooooo” – I’ve watched this 15 times, I’m not lying. He was supreme acting, serving all of the potato realness. It was the best thing. I also am reading The Rise of Kyoshi, which is a prequel Avatar young adult series. There’s two books, it’s so fun. If anybody is into Avatar you know that Kyoshi is literally that bitch, and so watching her origin story has been…I mean, not watching it, reading it has been great, and there’s so much wonderful world-building in it that I’m just all about it.

Last but not least, I have to send a hearty congratulations to my good friends Alanna, who we had on the Black Women Speak Out special episode talking about wellness, and her husband Marcely Jean-Pierre, who’s my husband’s frat brother and our good friends from college. They welcomed their baby girl this weekend. It’s their first baby, and everybody is healthy and doing well and thriving, and it was great to have a little bit of light and a new Virgo bringing all the kind of Virgo-ness that we need to organize our lives and get everything together and welcome her to the world. So congrats, Marce and Alanna. We love you very much, and babygirl too. 

Lindsay: That’s amazing. Of course, we wanna tell you all what we’re gonna be watching this week. The WNBA semifinals; Las Vegas Aces vs the Connecticut Sun, and Seattle Storm vs Minnesota Lynx. Also, we have of course the Barclays FA WSL going on, we have the NWSL fall series, the NBA conference finals, and we have Team BIAD which is participating in the Womxn Run the Vote relay this week! The event supports Black Voters Matter, so you can cheer us on this week – we’ll have info on social media about how to do that. That’s all for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down. We want to encourage everyone, especially this week, to burn very carefully, but to continue burning on, not out. This episode was produced by our favorite, Martin Kessler, and we of course have our graphics and website and social media guru Shelby Weldon, in the team as well. You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher – anywhere where you get podcasts. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, where we have all of our archives and transcripts and show notes, and for our merch you can use the code FALLFLAMES for 15% off, and from now until the end of the month if you join our Patreon or upgrade your Patreon you will get a specially designed sticker which we have made just for you to show our love and appreciation. Also new on our Patreon is fireside chats, for our top-tier subscribers. Just like FDR warmed our hearts in the depression… [laughs] Amira wrote that.

Amira: I didn’t! I didn’t write it!

Brenda: No, that was me.

Amira: That was Brenda!

Brenda: That was totally me.

Lindsay: Oh my god. Okay, okay.

Amira: Wrong historian! [laughs]

Lindsay: I knew it was one of the historians! [laughs] I blanked out and missed that last week, even though I was here. “Just like FDR warmed our hearts in the depression,” you can join your co-hosts too! Thank you thank you thank you to our patrons for your support.