Episode 197: Sports & Music
This week, Shireen, Lindsay and Brenda take a look at the crossover between sports and popular music, including arena classics, workout jams, common influences and music as resistance. Check out the Spotify list of all the songs mentioned! ⤵️
Become a Patreon supporter to hear bonus content, including the vocal stylings of some of your favorite athletes. This episode was produced by Ali Lemer. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Shakeia Taylor: Baseball and jazz https://sabr.org/latest/taylor-baseball-and-jazz
4 Ways Music Can Enhance Athletic Performance: https://thehealthsciencesacademy.org/health-tips/music-can-enhance-athletic-performance
How ‘Swag Surfin’ became the unofficial anthem of the Washington Mystics: https://theundefeated.com/features/how-swag-surfin-became-the-unofficial-anthem-of-the-washington-mystics
Quavo, Migos and Hip-Hop Culture's Connection to the NBA: https://www.si.com/nba/2019/01/31/quavo-migos-nba-culture-moutain-dew-hawks-lakers-all-star-weekend/
How the WNBA brought home-court advantage to a soundstage at IMG: https://theathletic.com/1989124/2020/08/11/how-the-wnba-brought-home-court-advantage-to-a-soundstage-at-img
Essence Carson: Write Your Story, Babygirl https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/essence-carson-music-wnba
Transcript
Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, Shireen here. I’m so excited for this week’s episode. Today, Lindsay, Brenda and I will be talking about music and sports, or sportsy music, and sports in music, and music in sports. Before I start, I obviously want to thank our patrons for your generous support, and to remind our new flamethrowers that you can pledge a certain amount monthly and in exchange for your contribution you get access to special rewards. We have really fun stuff happening on the Patreon. We had most recently a “get to know your co-hosts,” which was a lot of fun. Later this week Lindsay interviews Sarah Spain about how she became one of the co-owners of the Chicago Red Stars and what goes on behind the scenes and the bright future of women’s sports.
But before we get started on all this awesome…And I’m in a very dancey mood, like, super dancey, so brace yourselves. I just wanted to share some of the news that we got, that the Olympics may be happening without spectators. So, I’m asking Lindsay and Brenda: if somebody offered you a spot on an Olympic team, which one would you choose and why or why not? Bren.
Brenda: Obviously women’s soccer, because I would wanna hang out with all the women soccer players, because I love soccer. [laughs] And I know some of the rules, and I can imagine playing – not at that level, but I can’t imagine getting in a bobsled, that’s unimaginable to me, that looks terrifying. So, at least I could imagine it. I think that’s what I’d sign up for.
Shireen: Linz, what about you?
Lindsay: My first thing was, “What doesn’t involve running?” because I just hate running. I hate it so so so much and I just am not…It just wouldn’t happen. I’d get kicked off very quickly. But I actually think that I could do the basketball team, because they have so many good players, like, they’re so deep that they really wouldn’t need me to do anything. [Shireen laughs] They would not notice if I did nothing. Like, soccer, you’re down to eight teams, that’s a tight number, you know what I mean? They might need you on the bench. Basketball, they would not…Nobody would know! Nobody would know.
Shireen: I thought about this, and the obvious answer is soccer, but I changed it because I knew Brenda would do it. We need to spread our expertise at Burn It All Down out through the sports at the Olympics. So, I’m gonna go with archery! And no, it’s not because I crushed on Legolas, because clearly Aragorn was my crush on Lord of the Rings. I wasn’t into the archer, yeah. You know, that rugged, mysterious, brooding man – that's my type. [laughter]
Brenda: Versus the entirely silent elf? [laughter]
Shireen: So, I feel like archery would be…[laughter] Sorry. I feel like archery would be more my thing. I just like shooting things at people that are not guns. So I feel like this would work well for me. Also, there’s no hijab ban in archery, which would be great. I wouldn’t have to fight the federation.
Brenda: Oh, I didn’t know that! One more reason to love archery. When I was in high school we were able to do archery if you were a girl because the boys had shot each other so often [laughter] that they had to go and do something really boring, I don't remember what it was. It was the most fantastic thing ever, that we would just walk back into class like, “Yeah, we just got done with archery!” and they were so jealous. So, I could totally see getting hyped about that.
Shireen: But also I would wanna join the curling team, because that’s a natural thing. I know also women’s hockey, but I can’t imagine playing women’s hockey at that level.
Lindsay: I thought we were doing summer Olympics. [laughs]
Shireen: Oh I know, but you know me! [Lindsay laughs] I think about this, because winter’s not too far off. We’ll talk about this in six months, no problem.
Lindsay: I just have to say, I need to gather myself because the idea of Shireen with a bow and arrow…[laughter]
Shireen: …Is amazing!
Lindsay: It’s a little bit terrifying!
Brenda: Point her in the right direction, though…
Lindsay: You’d definitely need some handlers, so, yeah. [laughter]
Shireen: So, flamethrowers, we’re getting into music! Music and sports. Obviously we’re starting with Shakira – and the Spanish version, because Brenda specifically said she would throw up. Being the resident historian, Brenda, can you take us a little bit through music and sports?
Brenda: So, obviously that's a huge topic [Lindsay laughs] and it could be many many episodes. But I think just to frame it, it’s not that every moment or every genre has produced this tight intersection between music and sport or carries the same political meaning, but it is quite often. There are a couple of interesting things to just think about to frame it perhaps. Historian Gina Caponi has shown how basketball, for example, developed in the same spaces as dances. So, basically before and after basketball games were scheduled there were dances on those same courts that the spectators participated in. So, the very development of basketball for example happens in tandem and in the same spaces as those dances, and during the 1930s the lindy hop was a craze – probably nothing that many of us have ever seen, but you can Youtube it. [laughs] The lindy hop and jazz then, the improvisation, the freedom, it represented the Great Migration.
So, Caponi and lots of others have linked this to the change of basketball and the creation of the jump shot. It was like jumping Jim Crow, jumping out of the south and into Harlem Renaissance. This is a really interesting connection. And samba and football in Brazil are inextricably linked by footwork, so innovation coming out of samba schools in working class neighborhoods in Rio or Salvador were also places where football academies where, and so you can see there a really tight connection between those to things. Recently musicians in Brazil have worn the Brazilian national team uniform from 1970 with different twists to draw comparisons between the dictatorship when Brazil won the World Cup in 1970 and Jair Bolsonaro today and his attempt to create a new dictatorship.
So, it’s interesting how certain genres, you know – samba, folk; or corridos, the Mexican historic ballads; rap, Latin trap – lend themselves to preserving popular culture that textbooks don’t, you know? They have a lot of lyrics, they reference authorship of different older rappers, older Latin trap artists, older sambistas, and often they represent really local history and embody the place they come from. So, they’re both forms of representing histories, local and marginalized, that have been forgotten, and they’re making history in that sense. And the athletes and musicians so clearly inspire one another. So, I think it makes sense that as people who love and think about sports, we often find ourselves thinking quite a lot about and through music.
Shireen: That is so awesome. Thank you, Dr. Elsey. I feel like that is just a very comprehensive and, just like you said, we’re clearly not doing super deep dives into this because there’s so much content, as you said. Lindsay, talk to me about impactful sports songs and important ones, and when we think about sports what do we think about in terms of song? And you in particular?
Lindsay: So, I always think about songs that in other contexts are very cheesy or songs I wouldn't really enjoy, but in the context of sporting events or traditions hold a big place in my heart. One song I just always [laughs] associate with sports is Sweet Caroline, by Neil Diamond. It’s for multiple reasons. First of all, the Carolina Panthers – Caroline, Carolina kind of thing. It’s a song that is played at home games. A lot of you know I got into sports basically by going to Carolina Panthers home games, and after every win they blast Sweet Caroline and everyone kind of sings it as they’re leaving the stadium. It’s just a really happy moment, and it really has gone…Like, there’s a great video of they were playing it towards the end of one game and Cam Newton was there and Cam Newton is just singing along, and if you know Cam Newton you know he’s just like the epitome of joy, and so he’s just dancing and singing to Sweet Caroline on the sidelines and it's just awesome. It’s a little bit pandemic theater, but I think it did mean something this summer when the pandemic really first started in March, the Panthers stadium which is in downtown Charlotte would blast Sweet Caroline during the shift changes for healthcare workers and things like that so that other people could hear it which, you know, was kind of sweet. It’s pretty sweet.
So, I also associate that...If you’re a tennis fan you know it’s the Caroline Wozniacki song. [laughs] So, Caroline Wozniacki would always win the Newhaven Open – it's got multiple different names, but it's this tournament in Connecticut, that happened right before the US Open, and Sweet Caroline became kind of the track of that, because she won the tournament like four years in a row. And it was all of these, in Newhaven, like these Yale bros would be out there in their polos singing. [laughs] They'd just be filling…You’d have these polo bros filling the stands, singing. It was very weird, but somehow endearing, and when she retired at the Australian Open the entire crowd in Melbourne sang the song for her as well. I think the Mets do it too. It's just a happy song! It's a sweet song. I know it's a little bit random, but for me that’s kind of my sports staple of sports joy song.
Shireen: Do you wanna sing some bars?
Lindsay: No, no! [laughter] I really do not. Although, wait – speaking of great things, the Panthers, the new owner and coach this year, they decided because there weren’t crowds at games this year that they would all sing it in the locker room after wins, the players. And Robbie Anderson, who we’ve talked about on this show because he went viral for not knowing who Sir Purr was, you know, the Carolina Panthers mascot, if you all remember that clip. “Sir Purr? You call him that?” [laughs] But he's like, standing in the locker room as everyone’s singing Sweet Caroline and he has no idea what the words are! He’s looking at his teammates like they have lost their minds! [laughs] He’s like, “How does everybody know this song?” It’s a great moment.
Shireen: That’s awesome. I’m gonna go next and I'm gonna talk about a couple that I love and that I think of…And I know soccer and global football is my thing, I love it, I’m obsessed with it. But there’s a couple more that I think are actually really fun to listen to. One we’re hit that right now – Ali! Ali’s our producer for this episode, and simultaneously the DJ. Okay, so you may or may not know this, but I absolutely love Method Man and anything he does. Gimme some Method Man, gimme so LL Cool J, gimme some Busta Rhymes, yes. I’m perpetually stuck in the 90s, according to Amira, with my music. But this jam is legit, and conveniently also called Space Jam. The song is called Hit ‘Em High, it's one of the most hype song. It’s a lot of fun; from the movie Space Jam. So, when I think basketball – clearly I’m aging myself – I think of this jam. It makes me feel cool to listen to it. My children will arguably tell you differently.
There’s a couple of other pieces in music and history…One of the things that I thought was really cool, and thank you so much to our producer Ali who actually put together a Spotify list which will be included in the show notes. There’s also songs when we think about winning and losing. There’s the “Na Na Hey Hey Hey Hey Goodbye” song, which is really really fun to listen to, and as a Habs fan growing up that was the song we sang to the opponents, in our living rooms at the TV. Haven’t sung it in a while because they’re doing real bad this season. But my point is there is a history there with how that happens, not just in terms of hype up music but songs that are really really connected to the sport itself.
Another song when I think of sports, and I would be remiss if I didn’t say this, is Darshan. It’s one of the songs from the Bend It Like Beckham soundtrack and it’s really pivotal for me. I had one of those visceral reactions when I saw the film because it’s a song that’s traditionally used and it’s a hype song at South Asian parties and it’s like a bhangra song, and it’s pure Punjabi beats that are hardcore. If you don’t move to this song you have no soul. So, I have a little bit of a hot take here right now. The Chariots of Fire music, I don't wanna play it because I will fall asleep and I can’t do that. I just find it boring. I know it’s symphonic and we can talk about the cinematography of it and I guess it’s impactful…It’s not impactful. I was bored with this song. I don’t want it to be a sports anthem, and it is. So, those are my thoughts and some songs that I found notable enough to mention. Brenda, which songs do you wanna talk about?
Brenda: This is really hard to narrow down, but I think the song that’s most impactful for me in mixing politics and music – and this is funny, because it intersects with you, Shireen, because Busta Rhymes is on it – which is the soundtrack for the Rumble in the Jungle documentary When We Were Kings, and it's the The Fugees and it has A Tribe Called Quest so the combination of those things is unbelievable. And Lauryn Hill getting in on a sports rap is amazing. She basically permutates Send Me An Angel (in the morning), that song from the 80s or 90s, but refers to Muhammad as her angel and she has this great line about rocking blue collars and she’s just amazing, and of course it's also because it’s probably my favorite sporting event of all time – October 30th, 1974, Rumble in the Jungle, when Muhammad Ali reclaims the heavyweight title from George Foreman in Zaire, what is today the DRC, being heavily the underdog.
I will tell you that there is Andy Warhol’s print of Ali over my bed, which comes straight from Lauryn Hill’s idea of sending me an angel in the morning. [laughs] So, it has obviously affected me deeply, in part because in that fight of course it's all about losing to win and strategy and getting your ass up every morning. Ones I hate the most, also for political reasons, is the montage in Rocky IV of Hearts On Fire. [sings] Hearts on fire…How do you not…My co-hosts are confused. He’s running through the snow, he’s lifting logs, he has a wheelbarrow full of an African American trainer and Adrian…
Shireen: Oh, this is the one where he’s trying to beat the Russians…
Brenda: He’s fighting the Russian, he’s taking the picture and crumbling it up. It portrays the Soviet Union as being this steroid-filled automaton society and the US as being this rootsy underdog and it’s absolutely disgusting. There’s the white dude lifting up African Americans and woman as his heart is on fire. It’s just gross. And Rocky’s so charming with his rugged US good looks, question mark, that he even has the local police on his side and rooting for him. So, it’s about US empire at the end of the Cold War and it makes me retch.
Shireen: Which I think is really interesting, because when you talk about Rocky and music I think of…[Shireen and Brenda humming Gonna Fly Now]
Brenda: Which has a way different political bent, right?
Shireen: Yeah.
Brenda: This is post-Rambo Sylvester Stallone.
Shireen: Mm-hmm. Fascinating.
Brenda: [laughs] I can make anything boring.
Shireen: No, I love it! Brenda, you know I’m here for this. So, one of the things while we’re talking about music, there’s also this weird ass video with football and Sergio Ramos–
Brenda: [laughs] Oh, god.
Shireen: –that I found, and I texted Brenda, I found it in the middle of a match we were watching. When we watch football matches we usually text each other and complain. This was a fascinating one because it was at the beginning of COVID and they’re referencing healthcare workers, and of course I don’t speak Spanish. Brenda does, so I’m like, what are they saying? And Brenda’s like, they’re literally just talking about how it’s important to shake your ass as a Brazilian. I’m like, ah! Check, check for Enrique Iglesias’s super sexist vibe, yes. Good.
Brenda: Yep, yep.
Shireen: But it’s just really interesting because in that video they have Luis Suárez, they have Messi, and they have Ramos, who we don’t like. But I’m just saying, it’s an interesting take on everything and weaving things in, Fútbol y Rumba, and it’s a catchy song. It’s a catchy song, we have it on this playlist. But what I was gonna say was I’m interested to know what floats your boat in terms of music. Lindsay, tell me what song you jam to or like to listen to? Because I wanna know this, just for me. What song do you love to work out to?
Lindsay: Okay, I have lots of cheesy cheesy options here. I’m trying to go…[laughs] I need a couple. So, my beginning of the workout I’m trying to get in a good mood to feel like I actually like doing this shit are Lizzo’s Good As Hell, of course is just for me the ultimate good mood. But also don’t hate me, but Miley Cyrus’s Party in the USA is a jam and it makes me feel like I’m dancing. [laughs] But while I’m in the middle of the thing I need stuff like Kelly Clarkson’s Stronger, like, reminding me what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you know? It's like I’m going. And then also Destiny’s Child Survivor, you know? “I’m not gonna give up, I’m not gonna stop now” – I really need the very literal lyrics to remind me that I’m not gonna die, because I just feel like I’m going to die. So, that's me.
Shireen: Brenda, what about you?
Brenda: So, I have tons of stuff because for running I always feel creaky in the beginning, right? But I would say all time if it was an album it would have no grooves left in it. It would be Combat Baby my Metric.
Shireen: So, with me there’s a couple, like Linz, I have a bunch. It depends if I’m going to a soccer match and I need to pump up, I listen to Closer by Tegan and Sara because I can see myself doing my footwork in my head as they’re singing, and “closer” is just sort of this metaphor for getting close to defenders and deking around them. So, in my head the real video of me doing tricks which doesn’t exist but in my head, I have that there. Also, the song that we used in my family with the kids for ball, for soccer, for whatever pump-up was definitely You Don't Know by Eminem and 50 Cent. It’s just a hype song and gets us going.
Then if I’m running, which I don't and I hate, I have this song that I found that’s called Laces Out by USS and I love this song. It’s quick, snappy, and when I start the run – which, again, I don't do often, but if required – this will get me in the mood to do that. Then there’s also Enrique Iglesias Finally Found You, because I like the beat. I like the beat, I feel I can run to that beat. I try to avoid running as much as possible, but there it is. Like I said, we will have all of these songs in the Spotify list in the show notes. Brenda, talk to me about music as resistance, because that’s another part of this that you mentioned briefly in the introduction. But let’s talk a little bit about that.
Brenda: Yeah, I think about how athletes who…I mean, we’ve just been talking about how much music gets us hyped up or might change moods, you have physical reactions to it. So, I guess it’s not surprising that it’s always been a really important part of athletes’ lives. I think about Chile for example right now redoing their entire constitution and the ways in which different genres influence them. So, back in the 70s it was Victor Jara radicalizing Chilean soccer players; Ana Tijoux today, who is a rap artist, is really central to feminists; and how they become sort of slogans and then how you can see it manifest, like in the Chilean national women’s team that will take different lyrics that she has…Or you see them kind of singing Somos Sur, which is pretty powerful.
Shireen: Linz?
Lindsay: I always just think of, when we’re talking about in-arena or in person performances, the political statement that Beyoncé at Super Bowl 50 in 2016, where she payed homage to the Black Panthers and had the raising the first, and this is of course the year that Colin Kaepernick had been taking a knee and was not supported at all by the league. So, I just think about how she was able to really bring the Black power salute into it and it was really powerful. “Get in formation.” She also referenced both Hurricane Katrina and the protest over the police and that was a really powerful moment in a sport that tries to usually avoid anything, and probably Beyoncé’s the only one that could’ve made that happen at that moment, and for her to use that stage and use her music in that way in front of that audience in 2016, I mean…One again, this was five years ago. It was really powerful.
Shireen: I can’t believe that was five years ago. It feels like it was just a couple of days ago. One of the things that when I was doing research into this particular episode I was looking at music in football culture, and one of the things I thought about in terms of music and how the World Cup uses anthems, and then I thought about co-optation of music. Initally when K’naan, a Canadian-Somali artist, came out with Waving Flag, which is very much…His music has always been very political, but then it was bought and then there was something called the Coca Cola version. I know that his song was translated…Not translated, but he did duets in Arabic and he did duets in Spanish and English. So, as much as I enjoy those mashups I kind of am like, uh…You took this really awesome song…But then again I’m thinking, take all that corporate money, because why not. Brenda, I know you’re cringing, but I just think about that and I think about the way that the corporate world of sport takes songs and it takes things.
It also gives me flashbacks that really stress me out about things like We Are One (Ole Ola) which Pitbull and J Lo and somebody else sang and I’ll forever have nightmares about it because I literally don't want Pitbull anywhere near my soccer. I just don't want that to happen. I’m also gonna give you a little bit of a spicy opinion here, that Força by Nelly Furtado, which was the anthem of the 2004 Euros, is one of my favorite songs. I absolutely love it. I love it when artists from English-speaking countries don't sing in English. I get very happy about that. So, this is one of those situations and one of those times, and the Portuguese version is beautiful. For those of you that don't remember, Portugal ended up winning that year, so that was kind of a thing.
Anyways, so in addition to that there's many other songs that I think about in terms of this, but when we talk about specific events, Lindsay, is there a song in North Carolina that you wanna tell us about?
Lindsay: Well, I really don’t think this is a North Carolina specific things. [laughs] I just don’t. Although I’m shocked to hear that my co-hosts have never heard of this. But part of this cringe for me is what I feel like in a lot of sports music there’s a lot of co-opting of cultures and uncomfortableness here. So, I don't know that I’ve even talked about this on the show, but before I would even go to Panthers games we had season tickets to the minor league hockey games in Greensboro, and we had tickets right behind the penalty box. We were front and center, I loved it. We would just go all the time, it was my obsession. But if you think regular hockey crowds are white, like, the minor league hockey crowds in Greensboro were extremely white, right? [laughs] Just very white. They would always play the Tootsee Roll song, which somehow my co-hosts have never heard of!
Shireen: Never heard of this.
Lindsay: [laughs] So, this is a song for everyone where all of a sudden it’s just white people on the big screens, you know, that's when they would do the dance. So it's a bunch of white people doing their interpretation of the dance the Tootsee Roll and of Black people dancing, and it's just so uncomfortable. So, I always cringe a lot at that.
Shireen: And this is in hockey?
Lindsay: Yeah, it's like the song that you put for the dance cam. It’s definitely not a North Carolina specific thing, nor is it a minor league hockey specific thing.
Shireen: Okay, so I feel like I have my finger on the pulse on hockey a little, and I've never heard of this phenomenon! [laughs]
Lindsay: I did not think that this was such a specific song, like, I’m pretty sure this is a bad sports crowds song in general, and honestly I think the 69 Boyz [laughter] who are the ones who are responsible for this song, I think they probably wanted…Like, I don’t know how you could write this song without really wanting this, but there’s something very cringe about this for me. But in better news was how Swag Surfin’ became the unofficial anthem of the Washington Mystics during their championship run, and that is such a good example of bringing back older music to inspire a team and a crowd, and we’re gonna link that article in the show notes because that was cool, and to see the city of DC and the team embrace Swag Surfin’ of all things as the official anthem of their championship run, that’s like the right marriage. That was amazing.
Shireen: [laughs] I’m glad that union happened, to a degree, just so you could talk about it. One of the things that I also wanted to say was that when we talk about music…And I don't know if this is resistance, but this gets into the idea of sports and identity, and can we talk about hockey songs really without mentioning the ethereal Stompin’ Tom Connors and The Hockey Song? If you don’t know this song, do you do hockey? Get ready to rock your world, friends. [Shireen snapping along to the song]
Brenda: Nooo?
Shireen: [sings] It’s the good ol' hockey game! [Lindsay laughing] The good ol' hockey game–
Brenda: This is a grown ups song?
Shireen: –it’s the best game you can name… [laughs] So, this is literally the anthem that everybody knows.
Lindsay: How in the world have I from North Carolina never heard of that? After my years in minor league hockey circles? And you’ve never heard of Tootsee Roll? How is this reality right now?
Shireen: Well, this is why this segment is so important, because we can exchange these notes! This is Stompin’ Tom Connors, he’s a country singer from Canada, he's a legend actually from PEI. It's just a song that we all love and we think about, and he's part of this very Canadian, white hockey space/culture. All that being said, I do know all the words to this song and it’s pretty fun. I don't do country, which should come as a shock to nobody, but I appreciate Stompin’ Tom, I absolutely do. Speaking of music as an influencer, we’d be remiss to not talk about basketball and hip hop. I found a really great article that we’ll put in the show notes from Sports Illustrated, and it's actually Quavo who I do love talking about basketball and music and inspiration.
So, this is what he says: “[With football] you’re already in armor—you’re already under a helmet, shoulder pads. But basketball, you just gotta express yourself. Throw on the jersey, throw on this sleeve, rock the brace, and you can see it. It’s more visual, so it really attracted and really was like a magnet to basketball, hip-hop was.” I just love that. I also wanna play a quick clip of LeBron talking about Kendrick Lamar because I love these cross-cultural exchanges, I love the interwoven discussions that are being had about sports and music and art and this is very much it. Here is LeBron James on Kendrick Lamar.
LeBron James: I haven't stopped listening to it since he sent it to me. I don’t even know if it was last week or not, before it came out. The guy’s an unbelievable talent. His wordplay in his lyrics is unbelievable, and it hit home for me at times because I was a kid who grew up in the inner city. His story of the notion of you either play basketball or sell drugs, that’s it, there’s no out. You become a statistic. As an African-American kid growing up in the inner city, they don’t believe you can get out and become something. That’s why I’m able to relate to a lot of his lyrics and relate to a lot of his stories. He’s an unbelievable artist and an unbelievable person. I’m glad he’s able to put those words onto a track for all of us to be able to hear. For me, I definitely appreciate it.
Shireen: Linz, speaking about music and basketball, talk to me.
Lindsay: I love this story from the wubble, the WNBA’s bubble last season, where the DJs came…So, essentially one production company was in charge of all of the in-game music and they ended up flying in DJ Heat, who’s a Washington Mystics DJ, to be the primary DJ and to create home-court atmosphere for the “home team" because there’s still technically home teams during the game, and the only way that was differentiated was basically on who’s sounds were coming out. I thought that was really cool, and there actually was such a difference between teams. Arike Ogunbowale said you could tell who’s sounds they were making, what team’s favorite songs, what was going on. We just think of kind of arena music as just being there, right? Just existing.
But it’s cultivated, it's part of the experience, and it was an important enough part of the experience that even when you took away the crowds completely and were kind of creating this sound stage environment in the middle of COVID, you know, the DJs were brought in to create the music, and I love that. I loved that that was a non-negotiable part of the game-day experience for both people watching and for players in house, and I think it made a huge huge difference. For me it goes back to the link between all this, right? You couldn’t create an atmosphere for these games that was anywhere near believable if you didn’t have a DJ there, if you didn't have someone doing that.
Shireen: So, one of the things we did do is talk about basketball and DJs – this is a really cool segue for this – I actually interviewed Essence Carson, then of the LA Sparks, in episode 21. So, we were baby baby podcasters, early in the show. We had Essence Carson on to talk, and she has a beautiful essay that she penned about how music is absolutely embedded and interwoven into her life from a spiritual, emotional and very physical level, and we'll put that in the show notes as well. So, if you wanna check out that interview with Essence Carson on basketball and music please do so. Then when we talk about music and we talk about, you know…Sport is often linked to nationality and nationalism. Let’s talk about one song that I don't understand for a variety of reasons: it’s the Star Spangled Banner. Brenda, let's talk about this though, with a twist.
Brenda: The Star Spangled Banner is an incredibly difficult song to sing, based on Francis Scott Key’s poem. So, the lyrics are also a little bit strange. People have tried to put different things forward, and yeah, I would say…The strange thing in and of itself is that the Star Spangled Banner is played when every team is from the US. It’s very odd. [Shireen laughs] I don’t know another country that has a national anthem played when both teams are from that country and are playing in that country. It would perhaps make sense if it was like the New York state song was played vs the Massachusetts state song, but it literally has just made sports a kind of platform…I think that musical rendition, it's actually made it a platform, whether it’s the 1968 Olympics or kneeling, so it’s interesting. On the one hand of course it was meant to reinforce patriotism; it hasn’t always been done in sports games, it's relatively new. Now it’s also been used as a platform for social movements, and so this past week with the NBA All Star game I was so happy to see Marvin Gaye’s anthem make the rounds again. It's a fascinating song. Can you sing it, Shireen? Do you know the words?
Shireen: I know the “oh say can you see” part…And the “land of the free, home of the brave.” I blank out. There's something in between. But this particular rendition was really fascinating, so if we can just wind down this convo with this particular one that impressed me to no end.
Brenda: Here’s to Marvin Gaye, always and forever. It’s just such a beautiful rendition of it, and is it a straightforward resistance? No, but it certainly was not lost on anybody that it was about his ongoing involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and that ongoing struggle.
Lindsay: So, this week for the interview I was so so excited to get to sit down with Sarah Spain, ESPN personality – we went over what her exact title is – [laughs] but we talked about how she became one of the co-owners of the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL. We talked about what goes on behind the scenes…Well, Zoom meetings now, with so many owners. And just about the bright future of women’s sports. I think you’re all gonna really love this conversation.
Sarah Spain: She was thinking to herself how BS it is that women could have the same number of hours and tears and injuries and passion and devotion to something that they love, they can work their entire lives at sport, and be done with it and have so little to show for it in terms of both monetary gains and also cache and power within the sports world compared to their male counterparts. She was like, “This is BS, how do we fix this? What can we do?” Part of Abby Wambach’s Book Wolf Pack was about if they don't offer you a seat at the table, build a new table.
Shireen: Onto everyone's favorite segment: the burn pile. Linz, what are you burning?
Lindsay: We’ve made it through college basketball season and into what is the NCAA tournament for the men and the women, and the men are gonna be around I think the Indianapolis area – is that correct? And the women are gonna be in Texas and kind of doing bubble-is type things. It's incredibly concerning and problematic, the way that this is rolling out, for multiple reasons. So, we just kind of wanna put the NCAA back on the burn pile. First of all conference tournaments, for whatever reason, were not moved up. There was time that all conference tournaments could’ve been held a full two weeks before the NCAA tournament began. That didn't happen. Now you have teams that had to pull out of their conference tournaments, which…Conference tournaments don’t even really need to happen, but you've had teams pull out of their conference tournaments because of COVID and now their entire NCAA tournament bid is up in their air, and if there had been two weeks we could’ve solved that.
So, that’s the first burn thing. But here’s what really gets me, is there’s so much talk about health and safety, and we've talked a little bit about this with the NFL, whereas what do you really mean when you say “health and safety”? This will give you some insight. So, the Associated Press reported this week that the NCAA has reported that all a team needs to play in this year’s NCAA tournament is five healthy players. How about a coach? Well, the NCAA will get back to you on that. So, there's essentially a possibility where a team could come into a game with all its players except for five in COVID protocols and the team would be allowed to play, even though that means all the players are gonna have to play the entire game and if there's an injury you’re just completely screwed. This is not about health and safety, this is about making money.
We’re here, I’m gonna watch a tournament, I’m super conflicted about it. But I just wanna throw the NCAA on the burn pile for the way they've managed all of this and the way that they continue to show that they don't care about player safety, they care about their bottom line. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Bren.
Brenda: While we’re on NCAA men’s basketball, I think it’s worth burning Michigan State University’s recent decision to sign a five year deal with Rocket Mortgage. Now, Rocket Mortgage is owned by an alumni, they have been a longtime sponsor of the program. The initial press release – and all the details have not been released yet – but last week, “the men’s basketball team will now be known throughout the Breslin Center…” which is where they play, “…as MSU Spartans, Presented by Rocket Mortgage.” So, this new extension, according to Michigan State, is nothing new. They released a press statement basically to say this is absolutely par for the course, which means it’s totally not. It's obviously according to them about revenue. It’s another revenue stream for an athletic department that’s projected to lose $75 million according to itself due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The university, Michigan State University, which was founded in the mid-19th century, was founded as a place to democratize education as part of the Morrill Act. It was one of the very earliest co-educational institutions. It was supposed to be affordable, it was supposed to be a non-elite place. So, maybe a lot of Michigan State. There’s tons of large veterinary programs; it is the best place to study African history in the world outside of continental Africa. It also has amazing programs that you will never ever know about because you will only hear about MSU basketball, brought to you by Rocket Mortgage. I never wanna see another dime from the taxpayers in the state of Michigan going to Michigan State. It is criminal that student fees still pay for the athletics program.
The Larry Nassar epic awful tragedy is still out there and still people have not been made accountable for it, and still you haven't seen reform. March Madness happens during midterms. These aren’t students. This isn’t about a university – this is about a corporation. My diploma from Michigan State University is not presented by Rocket Mortgage, it is granted by the state of Michigan and their trustees, and I want to burn every single bit…And this isn’t new, no, you’re right, Michigan State. It’s not new. It’s just one more way to commodify something that was supposed to be about giving people an equitable chance at education, and I wanna burn it so so much. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: So, I will bring this home with my burn. If any of you were on Twitter this week you saw this huge horrible kerfuffle that actually happened because of Meyers Leonard, Miami Heat player, and his anti-Semitism. He was playing a video game and what happened was the words he used and the language he used was caught live. Now, I’m not gonna link to audio because we don’t need to share that, it’s just retraumatizing people and it's incredibly offensive. Then what ended up happening is Leonard issued a statement that he “didn’t know what the words mean.” We’ve done on this show episodes where we’ve actually talked about how non-apologies exist and how they function, and I just really wanna say that the not really knowing what the words mean defense is equally as terrible as the “this is not who I am” apology.
It was just brutal. Anti-Semitism is rooted in white supremacy and saying that he didn’t know what the words mean prevents Leonard from being accountable and that in itself is another crime. For what he did, Leonard was fined $50,000 and suspended for a week, and I just think that there needs to be more. I think there needs to be more, there needs to be conversations about this. I think there needs to be anti-oppression training and learning and unlearning, because this was awful. I wanna take all of that, I wanna take the way that these systems exist and they fester in sport, and I wanna burn it all down.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Now, after all that nonsense we wanna take some people and lift them up. Lindsay, who's first as our sparky of the week?
Lindsay: I wanna give a shoutout to Lisa Byington, who will become first female play by play broadcaster in the men's NCAA Tournament.
Shireen: Brenda, who’s our firecracker?
Brenda: Bringing the fuego is Grazielle Pinheiro Nascimento, Grazi, the leading goal scorer in the South American Club championship for women Copa Libertadores. She has thus far – the tournament still ongoing – scored six goals. She turns 40 this month and has played 150 games for Corinthians who are defending champions in the tournament. I just wanna say, she’s obviously been wonderful forever but haven’t seen her get quite this kind of attention, so yay!
Shireen: And for our mirchi mirchi of the week, which means hot hot: India’s cricket superstar Mithali Raj just hit 10,000 runs, and that makes her the second highest batsperson behind England’s Charlotte Edwards. These numbers are tremendous, and they’re huge. We’ve talked about Mithali Raj on the show before. Incredible. May I have a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Lindsay, who’s our torchbearer?
Lindsay: Our torchbearer is the nearly 550 collegiate athletes from across the nation who signed on to a letter sent to the NCAA last week demanding the NCAA stop holding championships and events in states that have passed or are considering passing laws that ban transgender women and girls from participating in sports aligned with their gender identity. This letter was shepherded by letters from Washington University junior Aliya Schenck and Alana Bojar, and our wonderful Jessica Luther has a hot take with them that you can listen to to find out all about that letter. It's just about 10 minutes and is a must-listen.
But we've talked about how the NCAA really needs to step up here and how important it is for women in sports to stand up and refuse to let these politicians and activists use women’s sports as an excuse to discriminate. So this is such an important, important step. It was signed by athletes from at least 85 schools including places like Duke, Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Villanova, Maryland. These are big dogs. So, thank you to those 550 collegiate athletes and let's get this to 550,000 collegiate athletes. This demands solidarity across the board.
Shireen: Lindsay, tell me what’s good.
Lindsay: It was a rough week I think for a lot of people, hitting this one year pandemic wall. There was more drama with my mom this week and it was the anniversary of my grandfather passing, which…I was telling people, I think I’ve been so relieved that he passed away right before the pandemic really hit, right? That I don't think I ever grieved because I was just so grateful that we got to be there with him, you know? It was right before. So, anyways, this week was sucky, but I think I am in a group that will be allowed to be vaccinated. The vaccines will be opened up to me in the next week here in North Carolina – thanks, BMI! So I think it’ll be a few weeks before I actually get on the list, but that feels like hope on the horizon. I’m really excited for that and really working on…I’ve got some projects I'm so excited about, and I'm really trying to focus on how the joy I get from my job and not the stress from feeling like I’m going to fail at my job, does that make sense? I haven’t really done a podcast since I became a lifestyle guru, since my tweet went viral about work/life balance. So, I’m not a lifestyle guru and #influencer. So, you’ll be getting lots of good nuggets like that from me throughout the podcast because I really know that's why you listen.
Shireen: Yeah, that tweet was amazing and it went so viral. So good.
Lindsay: [laughs] It was ridiculous.
Shireen: It resonated with people, and you have always been an influencer to me, Lindsay Gibbs. I’m gonna go next. I’m gonna talk about WandaVision. I had heard Jess and Amira talking about it and then I was gonna be a coward because I was like, I feel vulnerable these days for all the things Lindsay just mentioned, and I binge-watched it with Jihad and then my boys who had already seen it came for the last few episodes. Jihad knows me very well, my daughter, and she brought me Ladurée macarons so we sat and ate them and then we sat around eating and watching. It was a riveting show, I didn’t think I’d be that engaged. My children love the MCU and they love all these things and they know all the ins and outs and I don’t, like, the first film I think I cared about was Black Panther, although I do have a mad crush on Captain America and I’m really looking forward to Bucky’s film.
But the I started getting interested in Ms Marvel and that storyline, and anyway it was an experience and I’m glad I did it. Thank you for nudging me, Jess. I wrote my first book chapter for a book that I’m contributing to, and I was very excited about it because I write for a living but writing academically is very difficult. I love writing journalistically, I enjoy it tremendously. But academic writing is another level, y’all. So I was really really proud of myself for that, and I will accept the joy.
I just wanted to say one last thing. It’s been a really tough week here too in Toronto, particularly with the journalist community. The Ryerson school of journalism is arguably one of the best in this country and earlier this week on Monday the associate chair and chair resigned due to calls to action from racialized, trans and queer students. It was really difficult, it’s been a tough week, so lots of love and solidarity. I wrote an op ed in the Toronto Star about this. I’m not an RSJ student; I'm actually a student at Ryerson, but I’m in a different department. I’m in the radio/television arts, doing media studies. So those students, many of whom I've mentored, particularly the racialized ones, they have my solidarity forever. There’s a community of journalists who are looking out for you and holding you up, so always remember that, anybody out there. B?
Brenda: Well, oof. Also a hard week, but nonetheless some things got me through. I would like to say please no spoilers, and I guess an admission that I’m not finished with Nomadland yet – I will tonight – but thus far it’s amazing. I always love Frances McDormand, and especially with Amazon workers organizing right now I think it’s just such an important subject matter. If I hate the ending I might retract this, but so far it’s what’s good. Also, I wasn't on the show last week because I was very sore from a half-marathon that I ran, and I run all the time and I never really time myself or track it, and usually I hate the concept of a race, you know.
But in this case it was just a group of friends doing it virtually that were trying to motivate one another, so it will motivate me to run if it makes other people run. So, we got t-shirts made. We called it Chafing The Dream. [laughs] It was really great, and also shoutout to Burn It All Down’s onetime producer Martin Kessler for doing nine miles of it with me and trying to help me keep going. But to all the hot mahwms Chafing The Draem team, you are my what's good too.
Shireen: That’s amazing. I just would like to add that Brenda ran voluntarily, and that’s respect.
Brenda: [laughs] Yes, usually half-marathons are volunteer-basis only, otherwise it's like a work camp situation and that would definitely not be something in my what’s good. [laughter]
Lindsay: There was a gun to her heard, but…
Shireen: That’s what it takes to get me to run, Linz. What are we watching? We are watching the NHL, the NBA; Champs League is still on, we’re narrowing down the women’s Champs League, and even though we're recording Sunday morning today I will be watching the playoffs of the Brier Cup men's curling, only because of my friend Claire Hanna. Her partner Kirk is playing for Team Saskatchewan. Yay, curling! That’s what we're watching.
We’re done for this episode and you can find us as part of the Blue Wire podcast family, anywhere you find your podcasts. Please subscribe and rate and let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com and check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, where you’ll find previous episodes, transcripts, and a link to our Patreon. We would appreciate you subscribing, sharing and rating, which helps us do the work we love to do and keep burning what needs to be burned. This episode was produced by Ali Lemer, and thank you to our social media manager, Shelby Weldon. We wish you a lot of safety and whatever joys you can muster as we come up on the one year anniversary of the pandemic. As Brenda says, burn on and not out.