Episode 180: Numbers Don’t Lie … Until They Do
How do we use (and misuse) data and statistics in sports? From ‘Moneyball’ to period tracking to a lack of numbers on the WNBA and NWSL, Amira, Jessica, Lindsay, and Shireen discuss statistics and sports. [4:52] Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [35:58], Torchbearers, starring new Marlins GM Kim NG [47:10], and what is good in our worlds [50:57].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is a member of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
A data journalist’s guide to sports data: https://medium.com/data-journalism-awards/a-data-journalists-guide-to-sports-data
The Economics of Moneyball: https://grantland.com/features/the-economics-moneyball
The author of ‘Astroball’ reconsiders the Astros and the dark side of ruthless efficiency: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/10/27/ben-reiter-astros-podcast-edge
Sexism in statistics is hurting women's sports: https://www.powerplays.news/p/sexism-in-statistics-is-hurting-womens
Inside the rise of MLB's Ivy League culture: Stunning numbers and a question of what's next: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29369890/inside-rise-mlb-ivy-league-culture-stunning-numbers
How tracking menstrual cycles helps women in sport: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49426349
What’s it like playing football on your period? The perils of white shorts, tracking your cycle and what clubs are doing: https://theathletic.com/2191424/2020/11/11/football-period-chelsea-usa
The unusual path of new Raptors assistant coach Brittni Donaldson: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27576018/the-unusual-path-new-raptors-assistant-coach-brittni-donaldson
Namita Nandakumar and the Seattle Kraken Are Diving Deep Into Analytics: https://thehockeywriters.com/seattle-kraken-analytics-namita-nandakumar
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. I’m Amira, I’m your host for this week. Joining me are Shireen, Jessica and Lindsay, and we’ll be talking about data in sports–
Lindsay: The lack of data is weaponized as a reason not to take a chance on women’s sports.
Amira: – and of course, burning some things. On Thursday we’ll have a great interview: Brenda talks to US women’s national team member and new member of Portland Thorns, Crystal Dunn. We’re in high spirits. It’s a festive time of year – happy Diwali for all of those who celebrate. I am just going into the last quarter of 2020 full of exuberance and I’m happy to be here with my co-hosts today to dive in to some things, burn some stuff down, and lift up some torchbearers doing the work. Before we get into all that, I had to jump on the bandwagon that’s trending on Twitter right now and I wanted to ask y’all: what feels like a sport, but isn’t?
Lindsay: So, I did say this on Twitter, but to me the first thing I thought of was when you are trying to pick out which grocery line to go into. [laughs] To see which one’s the fastest. You have to do so many calculations in your head, and for me I always lose this sport because I always end up behind the coupon lady, no matter what. [laughter] It’s always the coupon lady. I’m like the New York Jets of this sport [Jessica laughs] but it is a sport.
Amira: Shireen, what do you got?
Shireen: I am the coupon lady. [laughter]
Lindsay: OF COURSE YOU ARE. Of course you are.
Shireen: I have the app on my phone, like, 100%, 100%.
Lindsay: Oh, god. [laughter]
Shireen: So, for me a sport which has become quite exhausting and rigorous is booking athletes for interviews who are repped by really difficult people to get a hold of. So, you check in and like your 5th email to check in is like, “Just circling back!” and then synonyms for circling back, because how many fucking times do you say I wanna talk to this athlete will you reply to my email?! No shade for anyone. So I’m currently losing at this sport.
Amira: [laughs] Well, my sport is parallel parking, particularly in Philadelphia. Fun fact: when I was a tour guide at Temple University this used to be my joke, when I was giving tours. I would say, “I major in history and I minor in competitive parking, parallel parking.” [Jessica laughs] It’s so true. It’s not a surprise when Parking Wars the show was based in Philadelphia. I was like, uh, yes! Because it is cutthroat. And now I have not practiced in a while, there’s no traffic here. Anyways, Jessica?
Jessica: Well, I once paid $25 to park downtown in Philadelphia because I was trying to get to a studio to do Outside the Lines and it was so stressful. I ran in and they put me on immediately and I spoke for 30 seconds, and I paid $25. [Amira laughs] So, I feel that. My thing that feels like a sport but isn’t is trying to take off my sports bra after I’ve finished a workout. That is like…If you’ve ever experienced it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, it’s just the most difficult physical thing. I have the Nike Flyknit now, which is great, but super compact, and so it’s a whole thing.
Amira: Yeah, this is the biggest ringing endorsement for my Peloton friends for years have been trying to move to the SHEFIT bra which you zip in the front. So, you just unzip it and you’re free! [Jessica laughs] Free the titties.
Jessica: Yeah, that’s a good selling point.
Shireen: For our patrons, I spoke with Melissa Doldron, my friend, and Mel is actually a sports bra model for Knix wear and one of the bras they have is they have…I mean, I have concerns about the zip, like, when you’re all slimy and you take it off, how does that work? I dunno. We could talk about this forever.
Amira: So, lots of things that feel like sports but aren’t sports. [laughs] And then we have actual sports, and we will dive into those now. What to do about data? Don’t run away from your radio, don’t turn the channel, don’t pause the podcast! [Lindsay laughs] When you hear “data in sports” I promise you it’s worthy of continuing to listen. I used to be that person, if you started talking stats to me my eyes would glaze over and I would be like, it’s part of sports that I just don’t want to engage in. But we wanna take it up today to think about how we use and misuse numbers and statistics and all of this data and tech around sports. I’ll start about when this came to my mind. Despite not caring about numbers and sports I realized how much we consume them, how much they bake into our minds. I realize this on election week when I was doing the “if Biden wins this, how many paths to victory does he have left?” etc etc. All I could remember in my mind was that one statistic that went up that compared the percentage chance of winning that Trump had in 2016 to the percentage chance of winning that the Patriots had when they were down with the Falcons in that Super Bowl, and how that’s just kind of baked into my head.
So I’m doing this election week math or whatever, and at one point I was like, okay, if they call Nevada for Biden what’s left? Then it was like, “Joe Biden has 28 paths to victory and Trump has 3.” I immediately was like, 28 and 3?! It’s a curse! It’s not gonna…! Like, I freaked out. [Jessica laughs] I freaked out so much, I immediately exited out of the New York Times model or whatever. I realized that that data point had been stuck in the back of my head and produced all of these feelings of terror, and it’s just become a shorthand for these statistical anomalies, etc, that even for somebody who said, “I don’t care about data in sports” – it’s still there. So I wanted to throw it to y’all to think about the ways we…How did we get here? How did we get to a place where it’s so baked in? How could we find both comfort and terror in these numbers surrounding the sports that we engage in? So, Jess, I wanna toss it to you first, because I know that you were recently watching a movie that purported to cover [Jessica laughs] some of the origins of this kind of rise of data in sports.
Jessica: Yes, so, even though I’m not a baseball person I am here to talk about Moneyball, which I feel like is really a quintessential example of the way that numbers have entered and altered the way sport happens. But yes, I did watch the first half of Moneyball, the movie with Brad Pitt, this week. So yes, I am the expert on it. The idea of Moneyball, which is the title of the book by Michael Lewis, is that baseball general managers, when they build their teams, use stats over and above the information that they would get from scouts to build that team. They see players as assets and they use cold numbers to determine the best way to fill the holes in their teams. They pick up players who are undervalued, they sell off overvalued players, and in theory they then are winning baseball games for less money. This has become an entire thing. The upside here – and this is a real one – is that players who otherwise wouldn't get a chance get chances to play in the majors, right?
The downside is that it really perpetuated the idea that players are cogs in a system, or like changeable stocks in a portfolio, right? The men who do this are from Wall Street, right? It’s very much that. It’s dehumanizing, it’s callous, it’s how we got to the point where a player like Roberto Osuna, who was suspended for, I believe, 75 games for violating the MLB’s domestic violence policy – he became what they call a “distressed asset” because he was still really good at the thing that he was really good at, but a lot of teams either for moral reasons or just because of the PR risk would not pick him up. So, the Astros brought him in in 2017 and this phrase around him became very famous because the guy who was the general manager at the time of the Astros, Jeff Luhnow, who had come directly from Wall Street, that was like his entire resume, and so they were really thinking of these people as just these moveable objects that they could place in and then they could justify it based on that. Osuna was justifiable because his value, the return on his money value, was so good for them. I feel like that’s such an obvious place to start when we talk about how it’s really shifted, the way that baseball works these days.
Amira: Absolutely, and it’s not just shifted the way baseball works but as these metrics and these stats have become so integral to many sports it’s also shifted the way we cover and who’s employed by sports. Lindsay, what does this tell us about the rise of even people working in and around sports?
Lindsay: Yeah, I would say it’s had a huge impact. There’s this really fascinating article by Joon Lee on ESPN over the summer and I’m just gonna quote him here. He said, “The rise of analytics has also resulted in another massive shift: an influx of white, male graduates of Ivy League schools and other prestigious universities into teams' front offices. In a data analysis conducted by ESPN, the percentage of Ivy League graduates holding an organization's top baseball operations decision-making position – which, depending on the club, could be its president, vice president or general manager – has risen from just 3% in 2001 to 43% today; while the percentage of graduates from U.S. News & World Report's list of the top 25 colleges – both universities and liberal arts schools – holding the same positions has risen from 24% to 67%.” This coincides, not coincidentally I would say, “with a drop in former players running front offices over the same period, from 37% to 20%, while the percentage of minorities running front offices has risen, but from just 3% to 10%.” So, those numbers are staggering, and I think show how…You know, I love stats, I think stats are great, but certainly it’s certainly changed who we think of now as “sports experts” and who we think of as bringing value to sporting organizations in a way that does not really help diversity and reinforces stereotypes and keeps power in the hands of those who already have so much power and so many options.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that bleeds into sports media as well in terms of what is seen as having statistical knowledge and having value in terms of knowledge about sports, and those goalposts keep moving. So it’s interesting to me, Lindsay, you say “I love statistics,” and I know Shireen has a very different view off the bat of statistics. Shireen, can you unpack a little bit why? I know when I suggested this topic to you you were like, [mock yelling] right away. I wanna unpack that first initial reaction.
Shireen: Well, I’ll preface all of this with saying I don’t love numbers, it’s just not a thing with me. I don’t do numbers. I don’t speak the same language as numbers–
Jessica: Except coupons!
Shireen: Except coupons. Yeah, that’s different! That’s like a system.
Jessica: Sorry. [laughter]
Shireen: It’s a disruption in the system. So, I get irritated with the idea that understanding and knowing stats is the metric of being able to be knowledgeable in sports, and what does being a sports expert entail and why does this exclude people who look at systems within sports? Which is very much what my analysis is. Some academics and journalists can’t rattle off stats necessarily but I think their lenses and their frameworks for looking at things and talking about things is absolutely imperative here. So they can talk about context, history, problematic policy, etc etc. On this show obviously we stan sports historians and sports sociologists, cultural anthropologists who deal with this. So, I feel like Lindsay said – it’s a matter of gatekeeping. It’s a part of the industry that I find tiresome, and as much as I don’t do numbers I know this is a thing with sports people and I often manipulate it to my advantage when I’m debating with people on the validity of women in sports to begin with. So I’ll use stats from WNBA, NWSL, the viewership, to hit back at people saying that women’s sports don’t matter and there’s no interest in them when in fact there is. I’ll start presentations or Twitter fights with the most-watched match in soccer history in the United States: the US women’s national final in 2015, still. The numbers don’t lie. So I struggle with the numbers being the be-all and end-all with legitimacy in the sports world.
Amira: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s so true. I remember when I was younger and really obsessed with Emmitt Smith, part of what I did was commit to memory all of his college stats so that I could go toe to toe with all the boys that I played football with and ran around with, because then how could they doubt me. The thing was, it didn’t matter, right? [laughs] It didn’t matter that I could answer all of those questions, then they would just move the goalposts. But Shireen, you also bring up women’s sports and data, and I think that this is a really good segue into talking about the problem of not having enough data when it has become such an important feature of sports. So, Lindsay, what do you see about the lack of data and numbers on women’s sports that has perhaps hindered their growth?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, the lack of stats in women’s sports is a huge problem. Jacob Mox wrote an article for Power Plays about this in the spring called Sexism In Statistics Is Hurting Women’s Sports. But we’ve had this entire statistical revolution that started with MLB, as Jess said, and bled over. It’s now NBA and NFL and it’s really skipped over women’s sports. For me I'm not a super stats nerd, I’m not great with numbers either, Shireen, but I do love how good statistics can be used in storytelling. They help you find stories. If I’m looking through good statistics I can figure out what questions to ask a player, where they’re hurting, where they're going well, you know? You can find ways to tell stories about teams and ask questions about certain things, but it’s such a barrier in women’s sport. One thing that Jacob Mox said, so, he was using a play index in basketball reference and he said that in just under 30 seconds he hat the NBA team with the most made threes since 2012 was Houston, with 8,203. He did that in just 30 seconds. But it took nearly 10 minutes and he had to use Excel to manipulate the data to find out the WNBA’s leading team in threes since 2012, which was Seattle – and who’s gonna go in and put that work?
There are a lot of great groups. First of all, shoutout Jackie at Sports Reference, who has really helped them expand what they are doing with women’s sports. I know by talking with people from Sports Reference that they are working on making changes and adding things in, but there's a long way to go. A lot of grassroots organizations have been picking up the slack where others have lacked. I wanna shoutout Across the Timeline and Her Hoop Stats for filling in the gap when it comes to women’s basketball statistics. Those two are things that I…Not just myself – ESPN commentators, Rebecca Lobo uses this data to tell stories during broadcasts. Of course we have Howard Megdal whose salary reporting over at The Next, formerly High Post Hoops, has really helped tell more WNBA stories because he’s able to anonymously collect all the salary info and contact info because that's information that the WNBA and also the NWSL doesn’t make public. You have to really dig for the information in a way you don't in men's sports. Just like I said, what makes me sad is how it limits the ability to tell stories and that’s where it really makes me sad.
Amira: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s so interesting. I was intrigued by Howard’s point about the lack of transparency from some of these leagues, and I think that – I don't know, this is my interpretation, I’d be interested to see what you guys think about it – but there’s a way in which because numbers can be used so quickly to be a battering ram against the leagues as you’re trying to grow it that lack of transparency around these salaries is seen as a way of protecting the league, despite the fact that it would open up ways to not only tell these stories that Lindsay is saying but it helps for juxtapositions and comparisons, like, we shouldn’t only have to try to go find it to make a meme about how much Sue Bird has made vs LeBron James over their 17 year career, [laughs] you know? But I think it’s one of those double-edged swords in a way, because you can see they’re trying to be protective but lack of transparency in this world of sports with data can actually really really be harmful, as you’ve said, Linz.
Lindsay: Yeah, and I think either you’re a professional sport or you’re not, do you know what I mean? Part of that is there’s gonna be some bad stories, there’s gonna be some embarrassment, but sunlight’s the best disinfectant, you know? I know former women’s world cup stars who weren’t on the national team anymore who were getting salaries as low as $5,000-10,000 in the NWSL and they didn't want that publicized, but that’s gonna get news, right? That’s gonna get people outraged and you can’t have this protect-everybody cocoon, right? You’re either professional or you’re not, and sometimes that's gonna be hard and I get that, but that’s part of the taking off the kid gloves, right? In dealing with women’s sports. That’s just part of it.
Amira: So, we know the stats on the fact that these data analysis positions, etc, like Lindsay mentioned before, are overwhelmingly white and male. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not people from marginalized groups breaking into the industry. There are people out there doing the work, like Shireen, you have an example for us?
Shireen: I do: Namita Nandakumar of the Seattle Kraken, NHL. This is the first time we’ve seen a racialized woman doing this kind of work, and it's great, particularly when you’re trying to reframe and retool what hockey culture looks like.
Jessica: And then there’s Brittni Donaldson of the Toronto Raptors – she’s a former collegiate ball player who has a degree in statistics and actuarial sciences. She spent two seasons as a data analyst in their front office before she jumped to the bench as an assistant coach of the team, the youngest woman so far – she was 26 at the time.
Amira: It's one of these two-pronged fights where people are using these pathways as entry points into the game and trying to diversify that, but also calling into question the use of data in and of itself. Now, speaking of this lack of data in women’s sports, I imagine Lindsay that the repercussions are not necessarily just around salaries and stuff like that, but in terms of actual ability to get sponsorship, right? It seems to me like there’s a connectedness, it has a ripple effect.
Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things I talk to when I’m doing some dives on merchandise and all this stuff, and people point to the lack of data as a reason not to take risks on having more merchandise and selling more women’s merchandise, so just like we talk about with investment and stuff, you know, the investment vs success. The sport itself, it does. It goes into merchandise, it goes into sponsors. The fact that only 4% of sponsorship dollars go to women’s sports, it’s because people don’t have the data in front of them to feel like they can take that risk. They wanna keep doing the same thing over and over again, and that goes with buying the rights for women’s sports and just literally every single thing you can talk about. The lack of data is weaponized as a reason not to take a chance on women’s sports, but if you don’t take a chance then how are you gonna get the data?! [laughs]
Amira: Right. I mean, I think it all leads me down to here, like perhaps my framing question isn’t the right one. Perhaps the question is not whether data is good or bad but rather it lies in how it's used, right? Because I think that we can see a few examples where it's used in ways that actually would do some of the work that we would be applauding within sports, and there’s a bit of a tension there. Jessica?
Jessica: Yeah, I think it's interesting. Shireen mentioned numbers don’t lie, which is true, right? So we could take these numbers and we could compare two athletes and we could say this person does this thing better on the field, and so in a way there’s the meritocracy of sport. You can find it in the numbers, right? If you’re just looking at them side by side. And that’s great, but as soon as you add in any other cultural thing the numbers become subjective in a way that is often terrible. So, I think of Michael Sam in this regard – SEC defensive player of the year, he’s gonna go in the second, third round of the draft. He comes out, he publicly discloses that he’s gay, and suddenly he barely makes the draft. Everyone was justifying this because of his numbers, right? Suddenly all the things that got him all of the accolades were the very things that made sense to why he would drop that far in the draft. The rest of us are screaming, “Homophobia!” and it sucks that numbers get used that way. I think a lot about Black quarterbacks, right? We can look at their numbers on paper and be like, “These are phenomenal quarterbacks.” But then they’re told that they should be wide receivers, right? We know that that's race, but then they use these numbers and manipulate them in a way that tells, as Lindsay said, tells the story that they wanna tell us. And we’re all again yelling, “Racism!” But they can fall back on the sort of “numbers don’t lie,” and I think that’s a real tension with these statistics and these numbers, because numbers are rigid until you apply any real context to them.
Lindsay and Amira: [in unison] Until they’re not.
Jessica: Until they’re not, right! Exactly.
Amira: And I think that example of Black quarterbacks is so interesting because it’s also talking about Lindsay was talking about it becoming cyclical. If your assumption about Black quarterbacks is that they're not great passers, they don’t drop back, they need to run. So your offensive coordinator draws up plays, multiple running plays, to let them scramble over and over again. So then their stats have a disproportionate amount of on the ground running stats. It’s very easy to be like, see, here’s the pattern, we told you all Black quarterbacks are runners and scramblers. It’s like, it becomes a justification of that very false faulty premise in the first place. It’s like, well, maybe if you don’t assume that they can run and you actually just let them design plays for others. So I think that’s a really great example to keep in mind. It also reminds me in academia like tenure math, right? How your tenure file…Maybe I shouldn’t say any of this. [laughs] But how your tenure file, like, they can count articles one way if they wanna make some…You know, anyways! Numbers are all a lie.
Jessica: Fuzzy math.
Amira: Fuzzy math, there you go. But we have seen some really interesting ways that statistics and math and data, all of these have been used in sports, right?
Lindsay: Yeah, we absolutely…One of the things that’s interesting is of course we all know not just statistics breed sexism but science as a whole, right, has for a long time ignored bodies that are not cisgender men. So that has limited the data on those bodies, but finally in the year 2020 – or maybe like 2018 – we’ve started realizing that period tracking can be very useful for those who have periods in sports. At the Women’s World Cup the Team USA used period tracking in order to help them, and this taboo subject has become less taboo. I loved this quote in a BBC article that was written by Nicola Smith. This quote is from Dr. Richard Burden who is a technical lead at the English Institute of Sport, and he said, “The menstrual cycle has long been viewed as a barrier to training and performance. But if you flip it on its head, there is real potential to utilize hormone fluctuations to be more specific and precise about the training you do rather than just not training.” So, the more data we have, right, about the bodies and about different bodies, the better we can utilize exercise science to accommodate these bodies. What a thought! [laughs]
Amira: What a thought indeed!
Lindsay: Oh my goodness!
Amira: Just a reminder, we have two previous interviews. One with Layshia Clarendon on Diva Cup and periods in episode 77, and also Kate Elston joined us on episode 160 from the menstruation-focused podcast Vicious Cycle. So, check those out for more about periods and sports.
Shireen: I just wanted to add in off of what Linz is saying, there's a fantastic article by our friend Katie Whyatt in The Athletic specifically talking about data and period-tracking and explaining how Chelsea women's side used it and how there’s a sports science company called Orreco that developed what’s called the Fitr app and you can use it and what it does is it helps with prehab, rehab, and checks if you have preexisting injuries that could be affected by your cycle. I think it’s really important to have, and just this idea that our bodies are affecting our physical performance is somehow novel. [laughter] I think that it's just weird. The Lionesses, the English national team, was starting to look at this – Katie talks about this in the article – after Rio 2016 and a less than stellar performance. So I think this is something that people are looking to and will look forward to and incorporate it. So it lessens the taboo, and this is something that’s really key here, how is it taboo. There’s this really funny thing here she actually says, that when she was younger she would look at the women who played Doctor Who who was Amy Pond and she says, “Amy Pond must have periods at some point, and she still runs from (or to) danger and acts and does stunts. It doesn’t have to stop me.”
Amira: I think, closing out, it got me really thinking about biometrics and the rise of biometrics in not just athletes but in our daily lives. It’s no secret that I’m fond of a certain fitness company [laughter] but even before them when I was at Orangetheory, one of the things that I like about all of these things is that immediately on my phone after my workout I get a graph, I get stats, I get steps, I get calorie counts, I get all of this breakdown, right? There’s this way that I have in my palm or on my wrist with my Apple Watch data about how I sleep, how I’m sleeping, how I’m running, is my pace trending upwards, all of this stuff. I imagine this is something personally, like, I love to see all the data, I love to see these graphs. But when me and Jessica were talking about this, about our Apple Watch sleep detector and things like that, you also raised a really great point, Jessica, about how people are taking other people’s biometrics for their own kind of stuff, and that is terrifying.
Jessica: Yeah, I did the classic Burn It All Down move, which is take this thing that we love [laughs] and say, “But wait a second!” I say that as I sit here with my FitBit; it tracks my sleep every night, it tracks my steps, I love all that stuff. But I do get nervous when I think about how the biodata for athletes is going to be used, because the systems in which athletes operate are so exploitative, right? So in the US I specifically worry about the fact that we don’t have socialized healthcare and what does it mean to be handing over your medical or health data to anyone else other than you, and how that could fall back on you when we don't have…You know, when preexisting conditions can really harm your ability to access medical care and have insurance. But then I also worry about how a league would use it. We just talked about how this math is fuzzy and fungible when it needs to be, so are they gonna use it to drop you in the draft? Are they gonna use it to make sure they don’t have to pay you as much next year when you renew your contract? Those sorts of things. Then it brings me back to Texas Tech and that basketball team and that coach who as using their heart rate, right? Monitoring their heart rates, and then punishing them if they weren't able to sustain a ridiculously high and potentially dangerous heart rate. So, I really do love biodata and I can see why athletes want it and they will use it and it will get better. At the same time, we do have to be I think incredibly careful about who’s getting access to that data and how in the end they're gonna use it.
Amira: Well, as you can see, flamethrowers, there is no simple and quick takeaways from this fungible and fuzzy math, these stats and these datas. But it doesn’t behoove any of us to ignore it, because as we’ve also documented it’s here, it's around us, and we're consuming it intentionally or not. So, consider this an opening conversation of a topic that I’m sure we’ll continue to explore in a myriad of ways. Okay, bye. Just a reminder, our interview this week is Brenda chatting with Crystal Dunn. Check out a preview of what you can expect from this conversation on Thursday.
Crystal Dunn: We’re in a very unique time now where we as Black women feel like we should not be asking permission for some things. We should feel like this is how we feel, this is our voice, and therefore you’re kind of either really with us or you’re off to the side. I think the NWSL is realizing that we can no longer really sit back and let them kind of take the wheel, it’s actually our time now to be in the forefront and really drive these conversations. I think they responded really well and they understand that we don’t want just anyone speaking for us.
Amira: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite part of the show, the burn pile. Lindsay, can you kick us off?
Lindsay: Yeah, it’s another tale of COVID and college football. I just don’t know how to keep putting this on the burn pile, but I also don’t know how to leave it off because the situation just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. So, this week 15 week 11 games were postponed or rescheduled. That includes 4 games in the SEC, games featuring 3 of the top 5 teams in the country – Alabama, LSU, Ohio State, Maryland, Texas A&M and Tennessee. The Pac-12 has been hit especially hard. The Pac-12 entered the weekend of the 14th and 15th having cancelled as many football games as it has played, which is just staggering. Arizona State and Utah have been hit particularly hard, and both of their games against Cal and UCLA were cancelled or postponed or whatever, to the point where now we’re gonna have a college football game on Sunday because the Pac-12 couldn’t just cancel the weekend, they decided that Cal and UCLA would play on Sunday. So, that’s happening. But let’s just talk about Arizona State and Utah. So, according to the Salt Lake Tribune there was 17 confirmed positives among Utah football players, coaches and staff, and there have been 28 members of the program who have tested positive or are in quarantine. Utah has yet to play a game. On November 28th they could potentially play ASU, but Matt Barrie at ESPN reports, “The situation within the ASU football program is dire. The facility is closed. An entire side of the ball has it. 6-staff members are positive. And they’re just at the beginning of the outbreak. When asked to describe it I was told: ‘This is bad. Really, really bad.’”
I think what we’re seeing here is we don’t know exactly how bad because college football programs aren’t opening up, they’re not being transparent about the data, but this is happening at a time when on November 14th, Saturday, there were at least 1210 new coronavirus deaths in the United States and 159,021 new cases. Over the past week there has been an average of 145,712 new cases per day – that is an increase of 80% from the average just two weeks ago. We’re in the winter now, people are getting indoors more, and we're dealing with this worse, and college football is just an example of that. The Ivy League cancelled its winter sports this week and I think that's a good idea because winter sports, while they’re smaller – you know, you’re not dealing with football-sized teams – they’re indoors. We’re about to go to basketball being played indoors, and as excited as I am about basketball I’m terrified. I’m terrified for everything, I’m terrified for our country, and I’m terrified for these students. Their bodies and their health and their future are being put on the line while these coaches rake in millions. I’m so scared for everyone, and I’m just devastated. So, let’s do a cathartic burn. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Can’t believe we have to keep burning this.
Lindsay: I know.
Amira: Well, college sports aren’t the only things bungling their COVID response, right, Shireen?
Shireen: Yeah, I’m gonna talk about this report that came out from FIFPro. For those of you that don't know what FIFPro is, the initials stand for Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels. Basically it just means professional footballers, so what they did was they put out here – and I’m quoting from Stephanie Yang, friend of the show – her piece in All For XI. They surveyed the 62 member unions and that exposed the “fragility of the women’s football ecosystem” due to the pandemic. So we’re talking about younger leagues, we're talking about women's academies, we're talking about soccer opportunities, solidified sponsorship, concrete contracts, lack of contracts, and just lack of consistent investment here. What seems to be happening is that people are using – and when I say “people”…It’s really a situation where men are sort of using the pandemic time to make an excuse for lack of supporting women's football.
Of those surveyed, 34% of unions said that they offered some kind of physical well-being – only 16% were offering any kind of mental health support, and 40% had absolutely zero support. Those numbers are terrible. Some unions also reported that there was absolutely no communication about he pandemic at all, and one thing we know is that communication is key here. This is a time that’s awful, and to what Lindsay said it can render a lot of panic and uncertainty, but not having communication from the higher-ups would be extremely frustrating and devastating. So, the FIFPro report also mentioned that due to this some women may be forced to retire early, and what that is is terrible, because of a lack of financial support and consistency. I think that this is terrible, and it again points to that when push comes to shove it’s always the women that get pushed and shoved. I hate all of it. I wanna burn it all down.
All: Burn.
Amira: I’ll go next. Many were shocked this week when the Texans announced the firing of PR director Amy Palcic, which has just been a clusterfuck. It’s been ridiculous. Partially starting because it was unclear who made this call, and they are a mess right now. They have an interim GM and then the team president was like, “No no, it was my call!” – whoever made the call was probably making a really dumb call. Further bungling this response, Palcic reported that she was told that she was no longer a “cultural fit.” [laughs] What? What culture would that be fitting into? Now, this comes just a few days after she’s tweeting positive things about the outcome of the election, so many people speculated that it has something to do with that, which would just be hypocritical given that Bob McNair famously walked into the locker room after the 2012 election and was very sad and talked openly about that. So it doesn’t seem like politics would be, you know, off of the table. But what else could “cultural fit” possibly be pointing to? This is somebody who is ridiculously good at her job, and that is one of the things that has made the fallout even more terrible for the Houston Texans; that players, media members, people who are usually quiet on a number of topics rushed – rushed! – to Twitter to praise the work of Palcic.
That’s the thing: when you have these questions, all you can go off are the words, and the words we’re left with ringing in our ears are “cultural fit.” Pray tell what that culture is? These words that you’re using when you can’t approach her work ethic, you can’t approach her knowledge, you can’t do that so you just fall back on “culture.” This is not even subtle, right? This is the policing of the boundaries of employment around sports. It's getting rid of a competent person and grasping for ways to justify the action. The best you can come up with is “cultural fit.” It's despicable. I wish the best for Amy Palcic. I am sorry that she talked about this being the most humiliating day of her life, and that humiliation alone makes me wanna light a match. We wish you the best, we are holding you up, as are so many people – ringing endorsements around the sporting world should tell you of how many hands are against your back and people in your corner. As for the Texans, particularly Rootes, the president, and Easterby, the GM, they can – as I like to tell everybody – they can fuck right the hell off. We here will burn it down.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright Jessica, please take us home.
Jessica: So, I’m gonna be talking about emotional and physical abuse, so take care as needed. Earlier this month Olga Sharapova, the ex-girlfriend of tennis player Alexander Zverev, who’s currently ranked 7th in the world and was in the US Open final recently, she talked to Ben Rothenberg at Racquet Magazine. Olya, as she’s known to her friends, says she was in a relationship with Zverev for about 13 months, during which he became increasingly more abusive, both emotionally and physically. Her account is harrowing and corroborated by others. Zverev was demanding of her time, controlling, and possessive. Olya told Rothenberg that the emotional abuse turned physical at the 2019 US Open. She says, "It wasn’t our normal fight—it was really scary. I was screaming, and because of that he threw me down onto the bed, took a pillow, and then sat on my face. I couldn’t breathe for some time, and I’m just trying to get out of it.” She did get away, barefoot, and a family member had to come help her. Olya says Zverev learned in New York that he could control her with physical violence. He would push her and twist her arms during fights. Eventually, she says, he punched her in the face in Geneva.
Zverev has repeatedly denied Olya’s account, but he’s also acted like a real asshole about it. He was runner up at the Paris Masters event a few days after the Racquet Magazine piece was published, and in his on-court speech following the match he said, “There's gonna be a lot of people that try to wipe the smile off my face. But under this mask I’m smiling brightly. Everything is great in my life right now.” More recently, before the ATP finals, Zverev read a prepared statement off his phone that took the report much more seriously, and again he denied everything. The tennis world has been pretty quiet, especially the ATP, the org that oversees the men’s tour. I think it’s important to point out that Olya herself was a former junior tennis player, so she knows a fair amount of players on the tour, and she says a lot of this abuse took place during tennis tournaments. As Tumaini Carayol wrote for the Guardian this weekend, “Tennis’s position so far is questionable.” I think he was being nice. Zverev’s response in Paris and the overall silence around this within the tennis world is distressing. Her account is horrific, and I just want to burn all of this.
All: Burn.
Amira: After all that burning it’s time to highlight some torchbearers of the week doing the work and lighting the way to a better sporting future. Let’s start with some honorable mentions. Jess, who do we have as our truth-tellers of the week?
Jessica: We have Sam Sachs, founder of No Hate Zone, an org dedicated to ending hate and racism. Sachs called out the NCAA for its inaction on passing rules to help foster diversity and inclusion He said that NCAA president Mark Emmert “led me down this path, told me what to do, encouraged me what to do, and it's a complete and utter failure. Now what? Either stop talking about what you're going to do or do it.” He went on to describe the NCAA as “a white supremacy structure that's unwilling to give up its power.” That sounds right and true to us.
Amira: Hear, hear! Alright, Shireen, who’s our charitable juggler of the week?
Shireen: Imogen Papworth-Heidel is a young English footballer from Hauxton, near Cambridge, who did over 7.1 million keepy-uppies. A keepy-uppy is literally juggling – she didn’t do them all in a row, consecutively. But 7.1 million of them! She has raised more than £10,000 for nine local charities. We see you and we raise you up.
Amira: That’s incredible. Lindsay, who’s our tenacious climber of the week?
Lindsay: Emily Harrington became the first woman to complete the first free ascent of Golden Gate route of the El Capitan in Yosemite. At 1:34am on election night she began her free climb of Golden Gate, and over the course of the next 21 hours, 13 minutes, and 51 seconds, she motored up the 3,000-foot line. Whew! Amazing.
Amira: It really is. Can you imagine?
Lindsay: No. [laughter]
Jessica: Yeah, literally, no!
Amira: Literally not at all. Alright, and a big drumroll please!
[drumroll]
Our torchbearer of the week is Kim Ng, just hired by the Miami Marlins to be their next general manager. [cheering] She becomes the first female and the first Asian American to be GM of a Major League Baseball team. She brings 30+ years of experience in baseball, time that has been spent with the Chicago White Sox, the Yankees, the Dodgers, and the last 9-10 years in the MLB’s commissioner’s offices. In her role she’s assisted in winning 8 postseason appearances, 6 league championships, 3 World Series. Frankly, this is a move that is about a decade or more overdue but it is something that we absolutely love to see. She said in a quote announcing this hire that when she got into this business, “it seemed unlikely that a woman would lead a Major League Baseball team, but I am dogged in the pursuit of my goals.” We raise you up, you light the way. If you want to get just a taste of how inspiring people around sports and particularly in baseball felt about this, please go look on Twitter at the outpouring of love and support. Jessica had a wonderful thread of just a reminder about girls in baseball, both historically and now – please go check that out. Also, keep an eye out! We will have an upcoming Hot Take featuring voices talking about how important and historic this is, so congrats, Kim! Madame General Manager! We see you, you are our torchbearer of the week.
[Amira hits play on the song ‘Broken Glass’ by Rachel Platten] [Lindsay laughing]
Very happy. Alright y’all, we made it. What is good in your lives? Lindsay.
Lindsay: I just realized I was going first and I don’t really…I’m having a tough time again this week! I will say, my trash reality TV is really doing a great job. [Amira laughs] First of all, Amira, have you seen the new 90 Day Fiancé?
Amira: I haven’t! I’m so behind!
Lindsay: You just need to watch the trailer–
Amira: I’m gonna do that.
Lindsay: –and read up on the couple. So, that’s good.
Amira: This is for the new season?
Lindsay: Yeah, there's a new season coming out soon. I don’t know when. If it’s out already I haven't watched it. I’ve just read up on the new couples, and I’m so excited. Also, I haven’t watched Real Housewives in a really long time but all this gossip about the Real Housewives of Utah has me DYING.
Shireen: Utah…?!
Jessica: Salt Lake City!
Lindsay: Salt Lake City, thank you! Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. We’ve got some Mormon DRAMA! I’m here for it, and look, my Mormon friends and my Utah friends have given me complete permission to enjoy the trash, just enjoy it. So I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.
Amira: My what's good this week has been all the Beyoncé-Peloton mashup content, no surprise here. I jumped over on The Sound of Victory podcast to chat with Courtney about this historic partnership and what it means for HBCUs, for 10 of them who are getting 2 years of free digital Peloton memberships as part of this partnership, and a pipeline to internships. I’m very excited about that, and I’m very sore from the amazing workouts that have occurred this week. Then I also finally started The Queen’s Gambit and I am very excited.
Shireen: Me too! Love it.
Amira: It’s tremendous, and on Jessica’s recommendation I started it. But my brother was like, “Wait for me to watch it!” and then Jess was like, “It’s RIVETING!” and I was like, to hell with him! I’m watching it right now. …Jessica, did I take your what's good?
Jessica: You want me to go?
Amira: Did I take your what's good?
Jessica: You totally did. [Amira laughs] We finished it yesterday, The Queen’s Gambit, and I just want to say Anya Taylor-Joy, she was the lead in the recent adaptation of Emma – which is my least favorite of the Jane Austens, but I actually loved that adaptation. I thought that was great. She is just spectacular. I cannot get over how riveting it is to watch these chess matches when I literally don’t know what’s happening. I know enough about chess to understand how the pieces move but I can't watch the board and understand what these people are doing. I have listened to a podcast where a former chess player explains it, it’s very good chess, that it's very accurate, whatever’s happening. But credit to the show, that I cared so deeply about what's happening in something I knew nothing about. My other what's good is that in a few days I’m gonna turn 40, so that’s my birthday week and I’m excited about the cake and I’m pretty sure that Aaron’s gonna make hamburgers for my birthday dinner, which is important to me. It’s my favorite food. So that’s very fun. I’m looking forward to it.
Amira: Oh! It’s the week of Jessica Luther! I’m so excited to celebrate you all week. Alright, Shireenie.
Shireen: Happy Diwali to everybody. I heard some firecrackers going off in my neighborhood last night and I was excited to hear that. Happiness, joy, and light to you all. I had a fantastic Thursday. I watched Bend It Like Beckham with our producers Martin and Tressa, with Brenda, and with Dr. Jessica Stites Mor, a friend of Brenda’s and also a film Latinista as well; she’s a historian as well. It was amazing. We ended up being on the call for like 3 hours and ended up taking some deep dives into my love life, ironically. It was a bit of a weird turn. I also wanted to say that because of Jessica I found Alisha Rai’s IG, her Instagram account. Her videos are hysterically funny and I'm really enjoying that. She’s a romance writer that Jessica has been talking about since before I met Jessica, so I just really like that. I’m finding a lot of joy and happiness and humor and intelligence in these places, especially IG. So I’m having a lot of fun with that, and last but not least – hit it, Martin!
It’s Jessica’s birthday! I am very excited. Let’s play Sana Helwa ya Gameel, which is my favorite version. It’s the Egyptian version of happy birthday! I’m so happy, and this is not the celebration we thought would be happening, but I will take it anyway. You are LOVED.
Amira: [laughing] I love it. I LOVE IT! Alrighty, y’all – what we are watching this week, well, there's a few different things. First, men's tennis: the ATP finals will be towards the end of this week, so a day or two after this episode’s posted we’ll be into the final rounds of the ATP. Shireen really wants you to watch darts, so from November 16th til the 24th the Grand Slam of Darts will be happening in England so I have no idea how to watch it or where to watch it, but darts will be happening. Go out and consult your local TV guides or illegal streams of it. There’s also some golf: both the PGA and the LPGA; the RSM Classic the men will be playing over there, and the Pelican Women’s Championship will also be happening later this week. Actually, this entire week, so check that out.
Plus the Nations League is going to do their world cup qualifiers – this is the men that we’re talking about, but that is starting midweek, and so if you wanna check out Albania or Armenia or Estonia or Norway or Denmark or Italy or Slovakia, Iceland. All of these teams will start in the Nations League in their march to the World Cup. We also have more football going on: Bundesliga, Serie A continues, and also if you missed our watch party with the Manchester derby this past week we got up super early, 7:30 on the east coast. We had flamethrowers joining us on the west coast at 4:30 in the morning there! Me, Shireen and Lindsay, Martin stopped by, and we hung out with flamethrowers, we watched the derby together. It turned out to be a really good game, and they are meeting each other again midweek and so if you missed the game the first time you’ll have the chance to see Man U and Manchester City meet again on the 18th. So check your listings for all of these fun things, much to watch indeed.
That's it for this week’s episode of Burn It Al Down. Thank you so much for joining us. You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down wherever you get your podcasts – Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play. This episode was produced by the one and only Martin Kessler; shoutout to Shelby Weldon on graphics and Tressa Versteeg who produced Thursday’s episode. We are on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. Check out our website, as always, burnitalldownpod.com for info about the show, links, transcripts for each episode. You can also email us directly from the site. Still use that code FALLFLAMES – this is the last week or two that you can use it to get 15% off your merchandise orders, so get it in, get cosy with a blanket or hoodie, get a cup to drink your mulled cider with. From all of us at Burn It All Down, I’m Amira Rose Davis. Thank you so much, and we’ll see you next week, flamethrowers. Fin. Fin.
Shireen: Fin.
Amira: Fihhhhhhn.
Shireen: Toque. [laughs]
Amira: Beanie.
Jessica: I feel like Shireen has been waiting this entire time to say toque. [Shireen laughing]