Episode 174: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with the Return of Sports
This week, all 5 co-hosts are together again. Brenda, Lindsay, Shireen, Amira, and Jessica reflect on the return of sports over the last few months and give you the good, bad, and ugly in it all [3:25].
And, as always, the Burn Pile [23:58], Torchbearers, starring the San Diego Loyal [36:10], and what is good in our worlds [39:47].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist.
Links
Black Girl Hockey Club creates the Get Uncomfortable pledge to disrupt racism in hockey: https://www.bardown.com/black-girl-hockey-club-creates-the-get-uncomfortable-pledge-to-disrupt-racism-in-hockey-1.1530070/
The women battling for a national senior team in Egypt: https://www.bbc.com/sport/africa/53497893/
Sports team owners listen to players, but support Republicans to the tune of millions of dollars: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/2020/10/01/election-2020-sports-team-owners-support-republicans-millions/3562973001
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/
The emotional fatigue of the WNBA bubble: https://theundefeated.com/features/the-emotional-fatigue-of-the-wnba-bubble
Athletes Unlimited just the beginning of the final act for Cat Osterman: https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/30010836/athletes-unlimited-just-beginning-final-act-cat-osterman/
Haute Hijab's Striking New Sports Line Is Making a Statement: https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/haute-hijab-sport-line-47820566/
As WNBA Prepares for Restart, Players’ Kids Are Stealing the Show in the ‘Wubble’: https://people.com/sports/as-wnba-prepares-for-restart-players-kids-are-stealing-the-show-in-the-wubble
Top Belarus basketball player Yelena Leuchanka jailed for 15 days over protests: https://au.news.yahoo.com/top-belarus-basketball-player-jailed-161859756.html
Zarazua, Sherif qualify for Roland Garros, score national milestones: https://www.wtatennis.com/news/1841652/zarazua-sherif-qualify-for-roland-garros-score-national-milestones/
Porscha Dobson Named New Director of Track & Field and Cross Country: https://dartmouthsports.com/news/2020/9/29/womens-track-field-porscha-dobson-named-new-director-of-track-field-and-cross-country
Nikki Washington joining Utah Royals as interim assistant coach: https://www.rslsoapbox.com/2020/9/29/21494918/report-nikki-washington-utah-royals-coaching-staff/
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and I’m joined today by Brenda, Amira, Lindsay and Shireen – the entire crew! On this week’s show we’re gonna be talking about the good, the bad and the ugly since sports have returned.
Lindsay. Owners have collectively given at least $14.6 million to federal candidates during this election cycle, with nearly 86% of those funds going to Republican candidates and causes.
Jessica: And we’ll burn the things that deserve to be burned, highlight torchbearers that are giving us hope during this dark time, and let you know what’s good in our world–
Brenda: I made Jessica Luther’s recommended spoon cake…
Jessica: –and tell you what we are watching this week. On Thursday our interview will be with The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, who tells me all about whatever the hell is going on with college football this season. First thing’s first though – it’s now October, believe it or not. It’s officially fall. So I’d love to hear from my co-hosts what you all love about this particular season. Brenda, what do you love about the fall?
Brenda: I love plaid. I love flannel pajamas. I’m really excited because there’s good running weather; I can run further and I feel better than in July. And my very very favorite: Halloween Day. That is my favorite day of the year probably and I force everyone to dress up and have matching costumes and take pictures in the cemetery and I have parties and I do wacky stuff. So, yeah. It’s good.
Jessica: Shireen?
Shireen: I’m built for this. I love oversized scarves, – hey, Serge Ibaka! – faux suede…I love apple cinnamon tea. I love making fun of pumpkin spice latte drinkers, that’s a hobby of mine this season. I love all of it. All of it!
Jessica: Amira.
Amira: I love being able to use my electric blanket because it’s my favorite thing. I have like 5 of them, actually. And hot tea, because I’m a tea drinker. I love watching the pumpkin spice wars, kinda. I will say that I find it entertaining mostly because it’s so benign, like, it’s just a flavor. It’s cinnamon. People like the flavor and I think that that’s fine, like, the stakes on that are so much lower than every other dispute in life right now, so I’m like, let people drink their fucking pumpkin spice whatever it’s called in peace. I mean, I laugh when it goes overboard, when you see the whole aisles of it, but also, you know what? If you like cinnamon, do you, boo.
Jessica: [laughs] Lindsay.
Lindsay: Yes, I am a basic white bitch who loves pumpkin spice candles and all fall candles, and I make no mistakes about it. There are much worse things about white people, [Shireen laughing] like Amira said. But I also love leaves, colorful leaves.
Amira: Points for me, points for me.
Jessica: [laughs] Oh wow, that’s all amazing. As the southerner here, I like that I get to go outside and I don’t die from it.
Amira: BOOOOO! [laughter]
Jessica: So that is what we love about…We opened our windows for a day this week, and that just felt hugely momentous. So we’re very excited about mild weather.
Shireen: I just turned my heat on.
Jessica: It’s been a few months now since sports returned and we are still in the middle of a global pandemic that laid bare so many inequities in many different ways. Everything around racial injustice that came to the fore, again, after the murder of George Floyd, is still present. Through all of this, sports, as it always is, is a lens into how societies are operating right now. So we’re gonna do a roundtable today on the good, the bad and the ugly in sports over the last few months. But to end on an upper instead of a downer we’re gonna start with the ugly. So Amira, what is one thing that has been ugly recently in sports?
Amira: Yeah, so if you remember a few weeks back when I burned Brown Athletic’s decision to cut a range of sports while elevating sailing, one of the things I said in my burn is that it also felt like a cover for Title IX stuff, and what we’re seeing now with the emails that came out of there was that that was exactly what was happening. Unfortunately we’ve seen a lot of schools enter into the fray of Title IX discrepancy as they’re dealing with COVID cuts. University of Iowa, William & Mary, and the University of Minnesota are all experiencing lawsuits right now from women athletes who are challenging some of the cuts being made. They're also challenging cuts to men’s teams, because you can already guess which teams are not being cut.
As one athlete at the University of Minnesota put it, okay, we get you’re having a budget crisis, but cutting all the teams that make up 3% of your budget doesn’t seem like it’s actually gonna help. One of the things to keep our eye on is the way that the cover of COVID cuts is used to actually push away or deal with Title IX issues that have existed on those campuses long before, and then also watching Title IX be deployed as a shield, because that’s already happening when they cut sports and are like, “Well, Title IX made us do it!” It’s really just their lack of desire to support non-revenue sports across the board, men's and women’s. So we should keep our eye on that. It’s ugly things happening and it’s not gonna end anytime soon.
Jessica: I feel like I wanna boo.
Amira: You can boo, because it’s really frickin’ awful.
Jessica: Boo. I’m next. We all wanted to know what the protests or the actions around racial injustice would look like when the NFL resumed. Well, during the season opener it was answered for us. It was at Kansas City; they were playing the Texans. The players lined up and linked arms in a moment of unity, and during what was supposed to be a moment of silence enough of the 17,000 fans who were allowed into the stadium for the game booed the moment of unity. It was so loud you could actually hear that on the broadcast, and if that’s not ugly – booing during a moment of unity – then I really don’t know what is. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, we’ve seen Black Lives Matter become almost a safe thing for teams and owners to support this summer, which…It’s obviously a good thing that they can say Black lives matter, but behind the curtains their political donations tell a completely different story. USA Today Sports revealed that the political contributions of 183 owners from 161 teams across MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, NHL and the WNBA show that owners have collectively given at least $14.6 million to federal candidates during this election cycle, with nearly 86% of those funds going to Republican candidates and causes. The Ringer found something very similar in an investigation focused solely on NBA owners. It’s time to hold these owners accountable, not just with what they say and do publicly in order to try and get their players to play the game and fall in line, but who they’re supporting behind the scenes, because those are the things they can do to make real change.
Jessica: Yeah, wow. Shireen?
Shireen: So, just to take it to another part of the world right now, because there's garbage and ugly happening everywhere, I wanted to highlight a story that I saw. Although sports have returned, and terribly in some places, this is about Egypt and the women who are handball players and who don’t have a sport to go back to, because the Egyptian Handball Federation, the EHF, is refusing to put on a senior women’s team although there are junior teams. Now, the problem with this too…Mona Amin, who is the only woman on the seven member executive committee for the EHF, say there’s a lack of investment and dismissal of women in this upper echelon of sport in Egypt.
The women have no contracts and they play only at amateur levels, which is difficult for them because it offers them no negotiating space at all, and no movement within the sport. Not having a senior women’s national team means there’s no attention; the women can’t actually make any money off the sport, and it just really reduces them to nothing. If you want your women’s team to be better you have to invest in them. The men however of Egypt are in the top 10 in the world in handball. The other problem with this is that women are leaving Egypt to play and to get naturalized in other countries. Former captain Rehab Gomaa left Egypt to play for France. So, we’re also seeing a drain of talent and that’s really really shitty in my opinion. So, Egypt: get it together.
Jessica: That is really shitty. Brenda?
Brenda: Something else really shitty is once sports have returned a lot of the things that are painful about them such as racial and homophobic abuse returned. It’s rare, or it's been rarely reported I should say, that this has happened in US Soccer. But on Wednesday, September 30th in the USL a Phoenix Rising player verbally abused the openly gay Loyal player, Collin Martin. You probably remember he’s perhaps the first person actively playing in men’s soccer to come out. During this match basically there’s a lot of ugly about it, obviously the homophobic abuse. But the other part I’d like to kind of highlight is that the official had no clue what his options were. The ref could've stopped the match, should’ve stopped the match.
The Phoenix coach – right now my least favorite coach – Rick Schantz refused to do the bare minimum, which was to sub off his player. This happened at the very end of the first half, so they actually had the entire half to contemplate this but came back with absolutely nothing except just let the play go on. So it’s pretty ugly; it’s also ugly when this happens again and again and people don’t know what the hell they’re doing. There are protocols and there are things out there, and Rick Schantz…The fact that he didn’t sub off his player is just unbelievable. So it’s pretty ugly.
Jessica: Yeah. I feel like this is such a Burn It All Down thing that we’re doing here where we’re going from ugly to bad. [laughs] So, we’re gonna do another little round here of things that aren’t great that are going on in sports. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah. Silence of white players when it comes to Black Lives Matter, particularly talking about the NWSL because that’s the one I follow the closest. But all white people: this goes to you. Of course, the sports returned in the middle of a national and often international reckoning over anti-Black racism and a lot of the burden – the majority of the burden, almost all of the burden – has been on Black players to educate their white teammates about racism, to explain to them, to almost plead for their humanity with the people that they’re taking the field with every single day. Midge Purce really spoke out about this after the NWSL Challenge Cup, which went well and there were a lot of great moments of symbolic activism for the Black Lives Matter movement during it. But she said, “We were just having conversations within our teams and across teams, and it was exhausting,” and that often the white players didn’t believe them. They just had to keep pleading. Sarah Gorden tweeted in August after Jacob Blake was shot seven times by police, “I sent this to my teammates today and I’ll say it here. MLK said ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ Say more. Do more. Your silence is hurting us all.”
Jessica: Shireen?
Shireen: First of all, I wanted to say that racism is bad, anti-Blackness is bad, homophobia, all bad. Now, what I’m doing here is…Props to Black Girl Hockey Club, I love y’all so much. What Black Girl Hockey Club has done is a real point to allyship and commitment to eradicate discrimination in hockey. What they’ve done is the hashtag #GetUncomfortable campaign. What that is is a commitment to encourage, employ and educate. According to their website of which I’m reading from, and we’ll put it in the show notes, “this Campaign is committed to centering Black women, women of color, BIPOC communities, and all others who are impacted by prejudice and injustice both inside and outside of hockey.” So I hate that they have to do this this work – the work, again, being carried on the shoulders of Black women. But thank you for doing this because all of that is so bad.
Jessica: Yeah. It’s been great that these bubbles have worked so well as far as COVID goes, right? They’ve been incredibly successful. But players from the NBA, WNBA and the NHL have all expressed how difficult mentally being in the bubble has been. A’ja Wilson, the WNBA season MVP, told The Undefeated, “I’ve been emotionally fatigued all the time.” The bubbles were the best temporary fixes for getting sports back, but they are not a long-term solution if we care about athletes’ mental health. Going into whatever the next seasons look like, we really need to keep that in mind. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, and so the bubbles were very contained spaces, and the NFL’s return, we see, is not being played in a bubble. One of the first major tests of a non-isolated league, and here we are in week four with the first COVID outbreak this season, which actually started in week three when a Titans player and personnel member tested positive before the team played the Vikings last week. Then the day after the game news of the COVID positive tests broke and the Titans confirmed it and was like, “Yeah, it was contained, he didn’t travel, it was all okay.” Well, the next day they announced EIGHT more positive tests. By the end of the week they would add five more cases. At that point the NFL finally decided, hey, maybe this is an outbreak and we should postpone the game! So they postponed the Steelers and Titans game. Okay, problem solved. First test of the season: success. [laughs] Psych!
By the next day Cam Newton tested positive, and then that came with massive public outcry because he is such a high profile player. They announced his status but had no intentions of moving forward with any kind of postponement for the Patriots-Chiefs game. It’s one of their marquee games of this weekend. They really don’t wanna lose it. Well, a Chiefs practice squad player also tested positive, so the NFL was like, “Damn it! Alright, we’re postponing it 1-2 days.” ONE TO TWO DAYS. Because everybody knows that’s how long it takes to cure COVID. [laughter] I mean, it’s not like you just had another team with a COVID outbreak that you saw took a week to really see the full range of the…Oh, wait, they did. Then, like I said, I have to keep updating this because before I went to bed last night – admittedly at 2 in the morning – there was another report of a positive test, this time a Saints player who made the trip on the team plane to Detroit, and so they are trying to see what’s gonna be happening there.
So, this is again the first test of this in this season. So far the response has been…Not great. The NFL did send a memo, you’ll be happy to know, reminding players of all the fines they will occur if they don’t go up to their testing standards. Which is, again, penalizing the players and making them uphold a system that shouldn’t even be in place because pandemic football shouldn’t really be a thing. This is just week four; I’m glad you had three good weeks. This is just gonna get worse because they’re playing teams who go play other teams and it’s why sports was cancelled in March. It’s bad.
Jessica: It’s bad!
Amira: It’s bad.
Jessica: It’s bad. Bren?
Brenda: More in the ‘bad’ category is: this week FIFA’s disciplinary committee came out banning the president of Paraguay’s dominant club, Olimpia, and it’s for match-fixing. It’s so bad on so many levels, but part of it is that they did not come out and release information about which matches were fixed. Not only does this mean that over the past few years the Paraguayan football players have to question whether they really lost or they really won, and I can’t imagine how devastating that is. Coaches who lost their jobs or kept their jobs, etc, etc, and fans. I should say that one of my all-time favorite players Roque Santa Cruz is on Olimpia, and so I love him so much and he’s like 40 and…How can he deal with this shit? He must just be like, what the hell? I mean, this is two decades. So anyway, what’s really bad? Nobody knows which matches were fixed, and it actually compromises the integrity of the entire South American championship because they got into the Copa Libertadores, so that means the entire continent just isn’t quite sure if their biggest club tournament was fair at all.
Jessica: Yeah. That sounds bad.
Shireen: Very bad.
Jessica: So before we get outta here, we’re gonna go positive. We’re gonna do some good, and Brenda, I’m gonna throw it back to you.
Brenda: I am so impressed with the maturity and adaptation of the girls’ soccer that I’m around right now. The league, which is Dutchess County, NY; they have made all kinds of new rules. Things like, you can only dribble and maintain the ball for like 5-7 seconds – they say 5, but they’ll give you 7 and a warning so that there's less tussling. It’s the parents fighting this. The official yesterday at my daughter’s game stopped the match for the parents to put on their mask. The kids are just amazing and so mature. Each family has a square that is spray painted on the grass, and one woman shouted out, “What if I don’t like my family?” and the ref was like, “Not my problem.” [laughter] Fantastic. This ref is like, 18, you know, like all girls’ soccer officials. So it was just fantastic. I’m so impressed, and the girls, they are all hand-sanitizing after throw ins, all the masks. It’s lovely to see. I wish adults could follow their model.
Jessica: I love that so much, thank you. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, if you remember a few weeks ago I shouted out the inaugural season of Athletes Unlimited which is the fantasy-like pro softball – and in the spring will be volleyball – competition that brought pro softball back. Every week they re-choose their teams and you get points for hits and runs and stuff you generate in game. They just finished their inaugural season, they had that partnership with CBS Sports, they had great ratings and a lot of visibility and they just crowned Cat Osterman as their first champion – which is really tremendous, especially as Osterman locked it up with a week left to play. If you don’t know Cat Osterman she’s a tremendous pitcher; she actually retired, and then she was like, okay, I guess I’ll play in this newfound thing, and she absolutely dominated and hasn’t ruled out returning and playing again. The runner-up, Jessica Warren, said, “This was the best experience I’ve ever been a part of. The lifelong friends and memories I’ve made in these six weeks will be held in my heart forever. I love these women so much my heart hurts to have to leave in a few days. @AuProSports Thank you!!!!!!!” I just loved seeing this get off the ground in a safe way and I’m looking forward to the AU volleyball season.
Jessica: I really enjoyed that video that AJ Andrews did of her in her different uniforms.
Amira: Yeah, that was awesome. If you haven’t seen it check out her Instagram where she does her own mini Don’t Rush Challenge with all of the different team uniforms from AU that she switched to each week, and AJ obviously is like the Beyoncé of softball so anything she puts out is gold.
Jessica: Yeah. That was definitely gold. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, so the beginning of this pandemic I was really really really concerned about the impact this would have on women’s sports and the momentum that they had kind of created in 2019, and I remain conflicted about any sports playing, of course! [laughs] You know, the NWSL and the WNBA and women’s leagues around the world, a lot of them have done some really excellent work. People have been watching. The NWSL, the Challenge Cup final averaged 653,000 viewers, which was up almost 300%. Those good ratings have continued for the NWSL Fall Series, which is not a tournament as much as just a series of games, and has had next to no publicity for it. I believe in one of the recent games in September their first game was like 417,000 viewers on CBS. The WNBA ratings were up 68% this year, which is especially amazing when you consider that the WNBA ended up going up against NBA and MLB and all these other sports, and obviously now the NFL. Women’s sports are coming, they’re not going anywhere, and if you put them on TV people will watch them.
Jessica: Amazing how that works. [Lindsay laughing] That makes me feel very good, Lindsay, thank you. So, recently on this program Lindsay burned the fetishization of motherhood at the US Open, but if anyone in media needs an example of how to combine motherhood and sport the WNBA, as always, is where you should turn. We got great coverage of the wubble babies, including Bria Holmes’s daughter Baby D, Dearica Hamby’s daughter Amaya, Bria Hartley’s son Bryson, that showed players as parents but never in a way that felt excessive – it’s just part of their lives. It was so much joy. I will go back and just look at those videos sometimes because they make me so happy, so thank you, wubble babies! Shireen, why don’t you bring us home?
Shireen: I like good. I really like good.
Jessica: Good is good.
Shireen: Good is good. This was a really positive thing that I exploded about a week ago, I believe. Haute Hijab is a designer hijab company, and they actually launched a sport hijab which is made out of sustainable fiber. It’s made out of ground coffee beans, it’s wicking, it’s odor-resistant, it’s UV protection…They’re not paying me for this, I’m just letting you know! But the thing is is that it was really exciting because what they did wasn’t just launch a product; they did a lot of campaigning around hijab bans in sport. Friend of the show Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir is their ambassador and she’s been all over the place and damn, she looks good! She looks amazing. She’s also got like a four month old baby. So, babies at the side while she does her videos and is doing this, filming…It’s wonderful to see. Their hashtag for this campaign is #CantBanUs, and that's really important considering the history which y’all know because I’ve talked about it on the show, of hijab bans in sport. So I love to see when movement and political movements are intertwined with sports. I think this is a fabulous example of that. I love the films; I may or may not be in one of them. So, I just am really excited for this product. I know a lot about sport hijabs and this is exciting when there's more. I get excited about it and I do not look like a scuba diver in this one, so I’m excited.
Jessica: This week on Thursday you’ll hear my interview with The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, about all things college football in 2020, how and why universities have chosen to play during a pandemic, how they’ve managed it (or not), how they’ve scheduled games as COVID outbreaks keep popping up, and if there will be a college football playoff this season.
Nicole Auerbach: It’s almost beyond an optics question, but it’s definitely an optics problem if the entire campus is in remote learning and the football team is still practicing and playing. We have schools that are doing that now.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. Brenda, what is on your burn pile?
Brenda: This burn is gasoline on an already burning pile of garbage that I threw in the bin a couple of episodes back. Neymar, the Brazilian footballer playing in France at PSG, was racially abused by Marseilles player Álvaro González on the pitch and then was inexplicably ejected. The disciplinary committee of the French league came out after an “investigation,” which is an amazing word for it. I mean, all of this is on video. Everyone has seen it. The league claimed it “didn't have enough strong elements to establish the materiality of the facts regarding Álvaro’s alleged racial abuse towards Neymar.” We all saw this, and now it’s just case closed and there’s no explanation. Neymar’s teammate, Angel Di Maria, got a four match ban for his actions in the same game when he spit towards Álvaro during the game. So, that's just fantastic. Spit towards someone, not even on him, and you’re benched for four games. But racial abuse? Scott-free. I want to burn the behavior of González and the half-assed proceedings of the French league's disciplinary committee. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Alright, I’m next. At this week’s US presidential debate – which honestly feels like it was five weeks ago instead of five days ago – Trump boasted, “I’m the one that brought football back, by the way. I brought back Big Ten football. It was me, and I’m very happy to do it.” The father of an Ohio State player quickly tweeted disputing Trump’s role in the Big Ten’s return, “Stop turning these young men’s future into politics.” Umm, too late, dad. Big Ten officials very badly want to separate their return from the president, instead saying their decision was all about science. [sighs] …Okay. I’m gonna move on. So, Trump was lying, which is his default, and burning his lies is reason enough to spotlight this quote in the burn pile, but there’s something else here. First, there’s the irony of the push for the return of play by a man who has lied repeatedly about the seriousness of this virus, refused to wear masks, and hosted political rallies that thwart prevention protocol; a man who now has COVID, who could’ve had COVID when he boasted about the Big Ten’s return.
We don't really know when he first had it because it’s a virus that incubates before presenting symptoms, which is why it’s such a problem. But there’s also the Big Ten’s desire to act like the decision to return was not political. Even if Trump had no influence over it, and he probably didn’t ultimately, sports are political, man! And they are especially so right now. Choosing to return to play during a global pandemic that was made political by the Republican party the minute it was first diagnosed in the US is a political decision, and acting as if it could be anything else is futile and ridiculous at this point. That man brought it to the presidential debate, and if we have another one he’ll probably do it again. It’ll still be a lie and it’ll still be political and I’ll hate every second of it, so, burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Shireen, what are you burning?
Shireen: What the fuck, Stanley Cup celebrations? Are you kidding me? For those of you that know, Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup. Yay, hooray. What the fuck are you doing with your celebrations?
Alex Killorn: I wanna thank you, governor, for opening the bars just in time for the boys.
Shireen: Yes, that was Alex Killorn congratulating and thanking the governor of Florida for opening up the bars just in time. And yes, that’s what you did see on social media: fans along the boat parade drinking directly out of the Stanley Cup. [Lindsay gags] We’re in a fucking global pandemic! And for those of you that don’t know the statistics, Florida added 3,266 cases just on Tuesday. This is before this gargantuanly disgusting celebration. The state’s total for COVID-19: 704,568, and 14,143 Floridians have died from this disease. I’m sorry, normally I love myself a jolly good time. Not like this. And I’m sorry, none of this shit would’ve happened in the bubble in which you were in in Canada! You take that nastiness and those shenanigans and go back down to Florida?! Behave yourselves! People out there: do not blame Floridians only; I see a shit ton of Canadians on that team. WATCH YOURSELF. [Lindsay laughing] Burn.
All: Burn. [Lindsay still laughing]
Jessica: Alright, Lindsay, you’re up.
Lindsay: I’m sorry, I know that was very serious, but we do these on Zoom now and having Shireen stare straight into the camera and go, “WATCH YOURSELF…” [laughter] Okay, alright. I don’t know why I can't take that seriously in any way, shape or form. [Brenda laughing] Okay. This is very serious. Alright, so last month over 250 Belarusian athletes wrote an open letter to the government demanding among other things that they deemed the election of August 19th invalid due to fraud. They released all citizens detained during protests who were not involved in illegal activities – “free and rehabilitate all political prisoners, identify and punish those responsible for the beatings and abuse of citizens, and provide full-fledged medical, psychological and material assistance to all victims of illegal actions.”
If you are unaware of what is going on in Belarus, I’m not going to spend burn pile time diving into that right now; just to say, there is a lot of unrest. There was a fraudulent election and there are protests on the streets to find justice. So, these athletes also threatened to renounce their Belarusian national team status if the demands are not met. One of the athletes who signed that letter was Belarus’s top female basketball player Yelena Leuchanka. This is a player who has recently been in the WNBA and she was detained last Wednesday at an airport and detained for 15 days over these protests against President Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed reelection. She was detained at the Minsk airport as the planned to leave the country to receive treatment abroad. There is absolutely no way that this is acceptable.
The WNBA Players Association released a statement on Sunday saying it stands in solidarity with Yelena and that it is working with the international player’s movement and experts on the ground to ascertain her current status and assure that the global sports community uses its leverage to press for her immediate release and guarantee her safety. It was very good to see this statement; international players have stood in solidarity with American WNBA players, particularly the Black American WNBA players, and their fight against racism and police brutality in the United States. One of the things the WNBA has that a lot of leagues don’t is unity between its Black, its white, its international, its domestic players, and it’s so important that solidarity goes both ways. Here at Burn It All Down we wanna commend the Belarusians for their fight against authoritarianism. I wanna throw Leuchanka’s arrest, authoritarian regimes, Lukashenko, and all forms of police brutality and torture onto the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Alright Amira, what do you wanna torch?
Amira: Yeah, I wanna start with issuing a trigger warning: I’m gonna be talking about pregnancy and infant loss. Now, Jason Shitlock is no stranger to our burn pile and I really don’t want to talk about him, but I couldn’t let this slide. Earlier this week Chrissy Teigen and John Legend announced that their youngest child, Jack, had tragically passed away. They announced it with a black and white photo and some very poignant, touching words. Shitlock being, well, shitty, retweeted that and said, “I don’t understand this, or social media. Who takes a picture of their deepest pain and then shares it with strangers? Do other women/parents want a reminder of their deepest pain, the loss of a child? Is everything just content? Help me understand.” This was insincere. But what I wanna do besides burn that is talk about why this is particularly so shitty and so important with what Chrissy and John did.
1 in 4 people with uteruses experience miscarriage and pregnancy loss and loss of infants. I’ve had many friends in the last few years who’ve experienced this, and this public moment speaks to the fact that so many people usually hold this in silence, struggle to find the words. One such friend who’s unfortunately coming up on the second anniversary of the loss of her sweet son made a post on this and said, “I’m hopeful with them sharing their deep pain that we will all do better to show up for baby loss survivors who don’t have massive platforms to express their grief and gain support. We are here. Our babies have died. So many babies have died. We deserve to be seen and heard and held. Our babies deserve to be remembered.” So I just wanted to use this moment to remind everybody that October is pregnancy and infant loss month. To say to Emily: I see you, I love you and Coco, and we especially love and will forever love Sebastian, and remember him. I encourage everybody to look at local organizations, who are sometimes the only people who are talking and helping people experiencing this. In western Mass. what helped Emily so much is Empty Arms Bereavement Support. All of these organizations are doing vital work, and if you’re looking for a charity to donate to they are great choices.
So to Jason and all the other trolls tweeting at Chrissy, she might not see your comments but the people in your life who’ve experienced this loss are. They’re taking notice, and it’s reminding them why they were too scared or didn’t feel comfortable speaking out in the first place. Stop it. Lastly, I just wanna say that October 15th is officially the day, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. When one of the groups that started this started a thing where they would love everybody to light candles at 7pm at whatever timezone you’re in around the world, the effort being in remembrance of the babies that are lost, but also to create a wave of light around the world. So while we’re burning Shitlock, this is not about him. It’s about everybody who’s experienced this type of pain and deserves to be loved and supported. So I ask you to join me in lifting them up in a wave of light.
Jessica: Now to highlight the people carrying the torch and changing sports culture. First, rest in peace to Gaye Sayers, the NFL Legend, who passed away last month. Sayers is still the youngest NFL Hall of Fame inductee. He was played by Billy Dee Williams in the movie Brian’s Song, based on his autobiography, I Am Third. He was one of the first players involved in the concussion lawsuit against the NFL and suffered from dementia for years. Thank you for your career and for raising the issue of brain trauma in football. Sleep well. Shireen, please tell us about the encendedora habibtis of the week?
Shireen: At the French Open, Renata Zarazua became the first Mexican woman in a Grand Slam main draw in 20 years, and Mayar Sherif the first Egyptian woman ever to accomplish that feat.
Jessica: Out barrier breaker this week is Porscha Dobson, the new director of men's and women's cross country and track and field at Dartmouth. She is the first Black woman to hold such a role in the Ivy League. Lindsay, tell us about the glass ceiling-shatterer of the week?
Lindsay: Yes, Nikki Washington was named assistant coach of the NWSL's Utah Royals, which makes her the only Black coach – assistant or head – currently in the league, and I believe the second Black woman coach ever in the NWSL.
Jessica: Amira, who is our giver of the week?
Amira: Yeah, our giver of the week Jamia Fields of the Houston Dash, who partnered with OOFOS to deliver recovery footwear to teachers and staff at Jack Yates High School in Houston. She tweeted that it was “to show [her] appreciation.” Yates is the school George Floyd attended. Jamia said, “I wanted to honor him by doing something special for the people who make a difference.”
Jessica: Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Brenda, who are our torchbearers of the week – setting the standard for allyship?
Brenda: The USL’s San Diego Loyal, or lo-YAL, as I like to say. This week, during the first half of their match – which I referred to earlier in our ‘ugly’ segment – a player from the Phoenix Rising used a homophobic slur, and this was directed at Collin Martin. In response, the team walked off the pitch to forfeit the match, and the team then tweeted, “Last week we made it loud and clear that we do not stand for racism or homophobia. Nothing has changed this week,” in reference to the fact that the team also had experienced racial abuse the week before. Here’s how coach Landon Donovan explained their decision to walk off this week:
Landon Donovan: Our guys, to their immense credit, just said, “We’re not going to stand for this.” They were very clear in that moment that they were giving up all hopes of making the playoffs, but they said it doesn’t matter – there’s things more important in life and we have to stick up for what we believe in.
Lindsay: [smooth jazz music playing] Autumn colors means it’s getting cold.
Brenda: I love fall, but, brr….
Amira: It’s like mulled wine, so spicy and sexy.
Shireen: I love long fireside chats…
[record scratch, music stops] [laughter]
Jessica: Speaking of warmth and fireside, Burn It All Down will host its first fireside chat, open to patrons in the top 3 tiers. You’ll get to talk to all of us in an informal and casual setting about whatever you’d like. Our first fireside chat will be Friday, October 16th at 7pm eastern. It may not be sexy but it’ll be fiery as hell. Okay, what is good with y’all? Brenda, what’s good with you this week?
Brenda: Oh yes, what is good. I have so many things this week! For once. Usually I’m scraping. First, baby BIAD sticker videos. We have new stickers – amazing – and some people on the show’s kids sent little exchange videos about where they put them and it was just particularly cute. I made Jessica Luther’s recommended spoon cake, but instead of strawberries I put mostly raspberries. Fernando Tatís, who I said is my favorite MLB player…Mostly a meaningless designation, but he’s been awesome, and I loved just his whole performative thing. Football People Week’s at Fare, which means there’s all kinds of good social justice football projects around the world happening right now. And I even watched a movie, like, a mainstream movie, with Martin and Amira on Zoom last night because they are my millennial friends that convinced me to watch Booksmart. Now I can connect with more people in the world because I normally just watch Bergman over and over, so, yeah. Lots of good.
Jessica: Wow Bren, I should’ve gone before you this week. You had so much stuff! I only have one thing this week. It’s been a week, but Aaron and I started watching a show called What We Do In The Shadows. It is the dumbest show in the best way. It’s about vampires and all of their problems are ridiculous and everything about the show is ridiculous, and it’s exactly my kind of humor. Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords, there was a movie that they made and this show is based on that, so it’s that kind of humor if you’ve ever seen stuff by them. They write and direct the episodes too, and she show up in one of the ones that we’ve seen so far. So that is giving me a lot of laughter this week, What We Do In The Shadows. Shireen?
Shireen: Yeah, I have been making affogattos at home, and I love it. It’s just ice cream and espresso, for those that don’t know, and I top it off with a chocolate-covered shortbread biscuit. Then my best friend, Eren, was hanging out with me on the weekend, and as I woke up and did school work she made a galette in my kitchen. She was just standing there baking, and it was phenomenal. I highly recommend it. Also, I was on a show called The Social, which is like a Canadian version with far better politics, called The Social. It’s on CTV Network. It was a lot of fun. I got to talk about Tara on national television, because we had a segment on cat psychology, so that was really really fun for me. I’m also doing a Karate Kid grind with my sons, my younger two. We’re starting at the very beginning, and some of the lines Mr. Miyagi drops are things like, “Your fear is stinking up the air.” These are things I will actually say to my kids, so this is fantastic. I hadn’t seen it in a while, so we’re gonna do all four movies and then eventually segue into Cobra Kai. I’m excited, that’ll give us a couple weeks.
Jessica: That’s great. Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, it’s been…I don’t think anybody will be surprised, anyone who follows me on Twitter, another rough few weeks. But I still have lots to be thankful for. I’ve had aunts and uncles take me in, I’ve been kind of house-hopping with whoever will stand Mo for a few days because he’s my emotional support dog and I need him right now. I’ve heard from friends from all over and people I work with; Burn It All Down crew, gosh, it’s good to be here recording with you all. Power Plays is back in action. I’m so excited about that. And nurses, I mean, I hate the kind of “nurses are heroes” rhetoric because I think it kind of dehumanizes a little bit, but I gotta say the nurses that have been helping out my family this week have been just incredible, just incredible human beings, really just helping make the world a better place. So, lots and lots of gratitude coming from me.
Jessica: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I had so much fun on Friday night. We hosted our first BIAD watch party, we livestreamed it for our patrons on Patreon – check your email for the next time we do it. We dropped it on you with little notice, but it was still so great to have flamethrowers come through, watch the first game of the WNBA finals together. It was a really good time and it was a great way to connect with the community. I look forward to more of that. Then this weekend is ‘Fall into the arts’ which is the local arts show celebrating the work that these kids have done over the summer. Samari was dancing a ballet piece, dancing a contemporary piece. She was singing a few excerpts from Wizard of Oz. These are all the shows that they did this summer, socially distanced and masked, they learned these dances and these numbers, these entire plays. They put on Wizard of Oz in a week – really in four days. They said not to film or record the show because, you know, they like to sell it back to us. I’ll still purchase that, but my baby was on stage, and so…
Samari: [singing] Where trouble melts like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me!
Amira: Even though it was cold – it was very cold, because we were up on a damn mountain! – it was wonderful to see all the lights. We looked over the vista, we saw the stars, they had apple cider with cinnamon vodka…So really, it was wonderful. The last thing I’ll say, my highlight of the night though is Zachary, who’s an entire mood, who brought his dinosaurs to play with. About halfway through the show he was like, cool, I’m over this; packed up his things, rolled like a burrito in the blanket, over in the middle of the mountain, and fell asleep. [laughs] No crying, no fussing, whatever. He’s just like, you know what? I’m good. I’m gonna nap right here.
Jessica: So there’s still a lot of sports happening this week. The French Open second week is underway, the WNBA finals game 3 between the Storm and the Aces is Tuesday at 7pm eastern; game 4 and 5 if necessary will be Thursday and Sunday. The NBA finals game 4 between the Lakers and the Heat is Tuesday night. All the European men’s and women’s soccer league seasons are ongoing, as are the Mexican and Japanese women’s leagues. The NWSL: this weekend’s games feature the Orlando Pride at the Houston Dash on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday Sky Blue will play at Chicago and OL Reign to Portland. We are in the division series of the MLB playoffs. That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of all of us here: burn on, and not out. This episode was produced by the wonderful Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon does our website, episode transcripts and social media.
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