Episode 200❗️ The NCAA and the Supreme Court
On this 200th birthday-anniversary episode, Brenda Elsey, Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs talk about collegiate student-athletes' rights and the recent Supreme Court Case NCAA v. Alston. They also burn all that needs to be burned in sports and celebrate those bringing positive change, including many deserving Torchbearers in women's college basketball. They wrap up with what's good in their lives and what they are watching in sports this week.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Justice Clarence Thomas In Historic NCAA Case: Why Are Coach Salaries Skyrocketing But Player Economics Stay The Same? https://moguldom.com/345681/justice-clarence-thomas-in-historic-ncaa-case-why-are-coach-salaries-skyrocketing-but-player-economics-stay-the-same
The elaborate college admissions cheating ring is the real scandal of college sports: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/loughlin-huffman-scandal-college-athletics-89fa3a31294d
Transcript
Brenda: Hey flamethrowers, and welcome to this week of Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. It’s Brenda here, and I’m joined by my co-hosts Dr. Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs, and before we begin I wanna say happy birthday, or anniversary, to us! This is our 200th episode, and of course while we miss co-hosts Jessica Luther and Shireen Ahmed we’re virtually celebrating. This week we’re gonna break down the recent NCAA Supreme Court case, we’re gonna burn the terrible things in sport, and also celebrate people doing the work to change it. But before all that, this week Croatian tennis player Oleksandra Oliynykova sold the space between her elbow and her shoulder inside of her right arm, and the purchaser can commission a tattoo or temporary body art to be placed there. Is this something you would do, Linz?
Lindsay: I don't even know what anything you just said means. [laughs]. So, no. I’m so confused. I mean, I will say it sounds very entrepreneurial and we live in a world of capitalism and if people are gonna pay you for stuff, make it work. Especially women in sports. Make it work.
Brenda: [laughs] At a certain point it’s just hand’s up in the air, like, whatever.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Brenda: Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I mean, that’s kind of how I feel about it. I also feel like I really like her entrepreneurial…Like, I like her betting on herself. [Lindsay laughs] Literally, you can look at her quote, she’s like, “Listen, I’m only about to be a star. This part of my arm from my elbow to my shoulder–” which is where she’s auctioning off her body art, she’s like, “–this will be seen by everybody because I’m about to be the best tennis player ever.” I really like that belief in oneself [Brenda laughs] and I like that sales pitch. So, I enjoyed that a great deal. I mean, she’s not the first person to do this. It also reminded me of that growing, like Lindsay said, how much can get wrapped into earning potential. It’s not just like selling ad space. I read this article about influencers who sell the ability to decide what they're gonna do each day, and I think about how many ways people think to monetize their selves, whether it’s permanent body art or decision-making. I definitely was like, mind blown emoji. 🤯 Also, her standards for what could or could not be art, it’s like, can't be extremism or go against WTA protocols, and then that's it.
Brenda: Oh, it’s unbelievable.
Amira: Like, that is not enough stipulation for me!
Brenda: [laughs] Yeah. I’d live in fear. I would be living in fear of what someone could potentially think up to put on my arm.
Lindsay: I just have to say, the fact that she sold it via cryptocurrency is where it really, for me, just goes off the rails because I don’t understand anything about cryptocurrency. This is not an invitation to explain it to me. [laughs] Anybody.
Brenda: I think we can say that people just want it. I think that’s good enough to say, people want that currency, it is worth something, and thus she has now given away her arm to goodness knows what. Oof. Well, moving on. Last week the US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Alston vs the NCAA. Alston is actually more than one person that has been grouped into that name and it results from several cases that had been seen and heard by the lower courts. But it is the first time that the National Collegiate Athletics Association has appeared in front of the Supreme Court since 1984, and just like the last time – though that was about television rights – it centers on A) if the NCAA is violating antitrust by monopolizing a market, B) if there’s something uniquely wonderful about amateur sports to justify creating antitrust, meaning that the wonderfulness of amateur sports at the collegiate level is actually enough to supersede the laws related to basically fixing a market.
There’s a lot of interpretation about the way that justices’ questioning may indicate their thinking or decisions on it, but it’s still fairly early on. So, I wanna start by asking about some of the assumptions that go into the coverage and litigation of NCAA sports. The first is that almost everyone, and they're right but simply it's probably too one-dimensional to say, assumes that college athletic programs make a lot of money. I’d like to ask a little bit more about this. Amira, do they make a lot of money, and how do they make their money?
Amira: This is a complicated answer because part of the point is that it’s hard to track. So, a few things off the bat. When we’re talking about college sports we’re talking about so many things under that umbrella that are not playing with the same situation financially at all. The Power 5 schools – so, schools in the Big 10, the Big 12, the Pac 12, the ACC and the SEC – stand apart because of the money largely generated by their college football programs. But even within that, the gap between the top tier programs and other programs within even Power 5 schools is vast. Then of course you have a great majority of college athletics that should always be operating at a deficit just based on logic, right? They’re not filling stadiums, they don’t have TV deals, they don't have all of the kind of revenue streams that you would assume, and yet there’s gonna be a cost to operate them. This includes not only the way that people, critics, might say women’s sports don’t build into revenue, but this includes almost every sport. [laughs] Right? Except for these big football programs. And it includes football programs outside of these kind of lucrative conferences.
Now, within that, why it's sometimes hard to track about if they’re making money is because they also have gotten very good at spending as fast as they earn, so it’s not uncommon for schools to operate at a deficit because they’re participating in an arms race because they can’t recruit in the same way. So the schools that are on the top wanna stay there, so they build spas and mini golf things. I burned this a few weeks ago that Penn State, in a year that everybody is getting furloughed and athletics was eliminating positions, still found the ability to borrow and add a multi-million dollar football building renovation, right? So, this is something that is quite common. I’d point to a report, great reporting in the Washington Post by Will Hobson and Steven Rich, a few years ago. One of their reports, one of the things that they talk about is Auburn, and Auburn asked in a year where the Auburn athletics department said that they lost $17 million they still got the Auburn board of trustees to approve a $13.9 million expense for these things, right? These cherry on top things.
That is very common at schools who are trying to stay at the top, but it’s also common for schools who are aspiring. So, that same year Rutgers, who has not had the same type of football success, but is always justifying or reaching for it, their aspirations for it, also uses this justification to try to push through more and more investment in the program. So, This is why it's really hard to say, “Are they making money?” Hell yeah, they’re making more money now than we’ve ever seen before in terms of the ballooning of revenue deals and things like that. But the expenses…And it's not just the arms race. One of the biggest expenses for these programs are severance pays of coaches and athletic administrators who leave. We just saw this in the wake of Jessica's reporting on LSU. All of the athletic administrators in various places who are losing their jobs – they’re losing their jobs with buyouts, with $8 million as they walk out the door. So, all of these things mean that it looks a lot more muddled than it really is, which is, yes, a lot of money is coming in, but who sees it? Obviously not the players, but also a tiny percentage of people in athletic departments.
Brenda: Yeah. Thank you for that. We should keep in mind that every year US News & World Report – which is trash, but what do we have to go on – gives us at least a sense of the percentage of alumni donations, and the top 10 universities in terms of how much their alumni give do not have big time sports programs at all. I mean, it’s almost always Princeton, Wiliams, Bowdoin, Amherst, Carleton, College of the Holy Cross. These are liberal arts institutions. I mean, Princeton is an Ivy, but if you add the Ivies it gets even more pronounced. So, the argument that somehow this is pulling in these amazing alumni donations seems like straw man at best when you look at the actual rates of these things. So, okay. That brings us to kind of the central question which has to do with a line of questioning started by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who seemed concerned – and again, we don't know what's going on in her head when she asked these questions yet – but seemed concerned that paying players may effectively “kill college sports as we know them.” This was interpreted as perhaps her being worried for amateurism, and I think I wanna ask, and I'll start with you, Linz: should we care about the death of college sports?
Lindsay: Yes, I mean, because it’s become just such an integral part of so many sports, of so many lives, of so many pipelines, right? There are so many people who that’s their dream, that’s their goal, and I don’t wanna trivialize that by saying this is all so corrupt, it has no merit, bye. D’you know what I mean? Which I think I tend to want to say sometimes. [laughs] Because that’s the easy answer, you know? I think especially for, let’s be honest, for women’s sports there’s no doubt that these collegiate programs offer a lot of support for women and offer them a pathway through to the Olympics in a lot of sports, to playing overseas. There are options. That being said, that just means we need to make sure that we're doing this and making changes intentionally and purposefully. That doesn't mean we have to keep things exactly the way that they are because we're afraid of what change might be, because the way that things currently are are not tenable, and so I’m absolutely not in favor of keeping things the way they are.
But I do wanna go forward keeping in mind the value these have and either finding a way to provide that value elsewhere or to keep some parts of this system in tact. I mean, one way that people are saying that if it's just the name image and likeness rights, the schools aren’t actually paying anything technically for that, do you know what I mean? That’s all going on outside of the schools essentially for athletes. The schools themselves aren’t actually paying. So, I don’t know. But those are kind of my rambling thoughts. I’m certainly not clutching my pearls.
Brenda: [laughs] I feel like that’s not an activity we ever do on this show. Amira, how do you weigh in on this?
Amira: Well, mostly that the concern is as old as college sports itself. Almost immediately after we see college football introduced in the Ivies in the early 20th century you have articles and screeds about how they’re losing touch with the real foundation of what the competitions should be, right? Even as Black college football is picking up in the same time period. By the 30s you have Du Bois writing about how it’s lost its way and it’s so bloated and they’re sneaking in professionals and there’s money in it. So, for me what I’m lost with is that the long history of college sports has been a history of profit or attempt to profit under the veil of amateurism and that is the history of it. There’s a very very small window of time in which you could possibly point to college sports being anything else, and so for me it’s like, this is college sports as we know it.
Brenda: And when it was like that it was totally segregated.
Amira: Right! [laughter] These are all these things, and like what is it that we want to maintain from it? What do we wanna extract, and what is not viable as Lindsay’s pointing out? I think a lot of it actually goes to the foundation of the idea of sports in the first place, or of college sports. It's like, what is the point? I’m not asking to say, oh, what is the point, but literally I think that the idea of college sports has always had a false kind of romanticism but in practice is what we’re seeing now, just ballooned. So, when I hear that line of questioning mostly I have questions about what do people think college sports is? Because I often feel like what we’re dealing with here is the gap between this romanticized vision of it and what it’s always been on the ground in practice, and to Lindsay’s point at a point now where it’s unsustainable. I mean, it's been unsustainable, but the ballooning TV revenues and salaries of administrators makes it even more blatant of how inequitable these systems are. So, I mean, college sports as we know it does need to be…[laughs] Like, that’s not worth saving. I would definitely invite conversation of what does a vision of college sports look like.
Brenda: In what other arena of US society is getting paid a moral quandary? I just…It’s unbelievable to me that the hyper-capitalist place in which we occupy is like, oh, it’s so awesome to not get paid, or something. I mean, we just talked about somebody selling part of their body, [laughs] and even on this critical podcast we’re like, “Look at that entrepreneur!” Right? [Lindsay laughs] And here’s this Justice, this Supreme Court Justice that’s sort of punitively progressive saying, you know, “Will we miss that activity in which it’s so awesome that people do not get paid?” So, it’s just amazing in terms of thinking about…Of course it matters who’s not getting paid, who’s the consuming party in all of this, and that just totally changes the question. I guess for me I look at the graduation rates of most college football players who are predominantly African American, and I think I would prefer them to have time to study. [laughs] March Madness comes around and I just get flamed. I get angry, I can’t help it. It’s midterms! I’m grading midterms and watching men and women players and they should be studying.
I’m sorry, it’s a super nerdy thing, but let them play in the summer. Fix it, change it, you know? Let’s not pretend that they're studying anything for the entire month of March. Then they’ve gotta recuperate in April, they’ve already been prepping January and February. They are not students. They’re not doing student things. I know that, you know that, everybody knows it. At least have them play in the summer, make March Madness in July or something. But for me to be grading midterms and watching these players put in hours and hours and hours in this is just a scam, and on top of it to fund these programs it comes from other student fees, and we know that college has only gotten more expensive over the last 40 years, exponentially. So when Amira you’re talking about the arms race, which is a great way to put it in many ways, it’s coming off the backs of other students and off of taxpayers. It’s not like it’s being made up.
Amira: And oftentimes those student fees for athletics are hidden in tuition bills.
Brenda: Yes. Yup.
Amira: So people don’t even realize how much they’re paying into athletic departments. One of the things that we do know is that athletic budget line on tuition statements has also ballooned disproportionately to the other activity fees from colleges and universities. I just wanna add this point and this question that you asked, Bren, by also kind of going back to the transcript of the hearing and looking at Justice Breyer and this point about romanticism, said, “This is a tough case,” and he went on to say, “This is not an ordinary product” – talking about college sports. “It’s not an ordinary product. This is an effort to bring into the world something that has brought joy and all kinds of things to millions and millions of people, and it’s only partly economic.” So, I worry a lot about judges getting into the business of deciding how amateur sports should be run. I think to me that’s what it’s coming back to, which is like, what makes this not an “ordinary product.” And this idea about joy and effort into the world, it reminds me of that terrible Inside Higher Ed piece that argued that college football needed to play because we need joy in our lives, right?
Brenda: Yes!
Amira: But I also thought about this in a different way last night, on Saturday night, if anybody watched the Gonzaga-UCLA game, which was a tremendous game – 19 lead changes, very exciting, end of the game theatrics befitting of Stanford and South Carolina. [laughs] It was just a wonderful, wonderful game. And on the timeline, a lot of people were like, “This is why we love sports! This collective energy, this excitement!” And for me it was like, well, I really think what people are loving is it was shock, it was awe, but it was also the collective engagement about it. There was this moment where it was like, oh my goodness, my timeline’s in synch, I love that energy. And it’s like, yes, it’s because everybody decided to watch it. I’ve gotten that same engagement like…Go on Twitter during a Bachelor episode, right? [Brenda laughs]
That’s not the only thing that brings a special kind of joy into the world, is amateur sports. But that enduring notion that this is “no ordinary product” is the foundation of so much of this, and that is a faulty ass foundation because to me it's like, I’m constantly shocked by how enduring that romantic notion that this is not an ordinary product, this is somehow very special and very precious and doing the main work of bringing joy to millions and that justifies all of the exploitation is something that I literally cannot wrap my head around.
Brenda: Linz, you’ve reported on kind of public opinion about this for a long time. Is this for you a partisan issue? Do you see it breaking down Dems and Republicans?
Lindsay: The instinct is always to say yes because literally everything in society is a partisan issue these days and is becoming hyper so, but this is actually the one topic that is pretty shockingly bipartisan in my opinion. So, a couple of years ago during March Madness when I was still at ThinkProgress I talked to representative Mark Walker who actually…I was living in DC at the time, but if I was in Greensboro he would’ve been my representative. But he’s not in congress anymore, but he’s a MAGA Republican basically, very much on that. I was shocked that he introduced the Student-Athlete Equity Act, a bill that aimed to hit the NCAA where it hurts the most, in the tax code, to make sure that student-athletes could get access to their name, image, and likeness. It was pretty stunning talking to him because everything else he fights for is so against this, but in this one place he was saying…He told me, “A lot of these student-athletes come from impoverished communities, and there is a lot of money made on the backs of these young men and women. And these students, they can fight in the war, but they can’t have any access to their image or likeness. If you see injustice and you don’t do something about it, I think, shame on you. It doesn’t mean there aren’t other battles to fight.”
I was just like, yes yes yes, but of course do you not see the hypocrisy in every other thing you produce? But that's not a standalone issue. That kind of got lost in the House because this was during the Trump years and there wasn't really much momentum, but you have state bills that are on…Right now, the timeline is July 1st for all of this, and I'll talk about this a bit more later, but Florida has a bill that will go into place and we know that's run by Republicans, that state, that will give NCAA athletes access to their name, image, and likeness. Then you had during the Supreme Court argument, so, Justice Clarence Thomas barely ever speaks during oral arguments. He’s famous really for not talking during these, to the point where in 2016 he broke a 10 year silence [laughs] during Supreme Court arguments because he was mad that domestic abusers couldn’t have access to guns. That’s a true story. That’s a true story.
He’s only talked a handful of times since then, but he spoke up during this argument to say, “It strikes me as odd that the coaches' salaries have ballooned and they are in the amateur ranks, as are the players.” So, he’s essentially saying if they’re all amateurs why are the coaches’ salaries ballooning the way that they are? So, I think that’s one thing that kind of gives me a rare glimmer of hope, is that there is bipartisan agreement. I think where I’m concerned is that this is gonna get really bogged down in…I think we’re lucky that these state bills are kind of making a sense of urgency right now because Congress isn’t gonna prioritize this otherwise, basically because it’s not a wedge issue they're not gonna prioritize it.
Brenda: Amira, how much do we owe to Black Lives Matter activists and the last years for creating public pressure around this issue?
Amira: I think that it absolutely is putting a continued spotlight on conversations that have been existing for a while. I think that the activism, especially from college athletes over the last summer where they used their platform to address racial injustice, economic injustice in terms of what they were dealing with as college students and issues of health concern, being asked to play under a global pandemic; really gave them a very sharp argument to make publicly about their condition and their treatment to point out the racial disparities of college sports, the economic ones, and then the fact that given all of these things who are being put at risk to generate income.
Then you had coaches like Mike Gundy from Oklahoma State saying the quiet part out loud when he was like, “My team it young, it doesn't matter if they get sick because we need money to move through the state of Oklahoma again,” and I think that because of those kind of very clear what was exposed under the pandemic, a lot of their continued activism will remain amplified. Of course going into this basketball postseason you have Not NCAA Property as formational group and a hashtag, wearing shirts; you have that coinciding with conversations about disparity in the women's tournament that has also been brought up by people who are looking at Not NCAA Property, also talked about my women who also need access to name, image, and likeness rights as well. I think all of these things are compounding upon each other and really mounting.
But the one thing I would keep our eye on is really corporate pressure, because we know that this is where needles really move. We've recently seen of course the All Star game being moved out of Georgia, but that was not because of players saying hey we're not gonna play in it if it's here. It really was because of corporate pressure, and I think that that’s one of the things to keep our eye on, that oftentimes what’s gonna end up moving the needle is ultimately going to be corporations who pick up the call.
Then it’s obviously complicated by how much they're bound up in the college sports landscapes, but I think the more and more public pressure that mounts and the more and more these athletes are speaking up about it and keeping it as a conversation and keeping it as a conversation in a way that can't be ignored like it so often is, I do feel like it's kind of building to a certain type of crescendo. We’ll see what happens, and we know that power likes to reassert itself. So, the same thing with name, image, and likeness – that was a movement, and then you see how it's kind of being watered down and declawed. So, we'll see, but I think that there is absolutely an impact that this has had, and I would just keep the eye on the ball of corporate sponsorship to see how fast things will continue to move.
Brenda: I just wanna add, because I feel like it's worth naming Shawne Alston, who is on the case, the former West Virginia University football player – and Justine Hartman, a basketball player for Berkeley. And to just point out that one of the things that came up over and over and actually Christ Bosh wrote something about college athleticism and not being paid as well, and they all name food scarcity. So, I can’t think of anything less romantic than going hungry, and this seems to be perpetuated in most of the lawsuits I went back and read, that basically as the students are saying, “We need this to eat, we need compensation for also knowing that our families are okay.”
Basically the opposing attorneys are picking this apart and I just wanna say, you know, there's so much in this country about the shame of being poor and it's really reflected, I think, in the way that these students are being treated. Why is it that being poor is so shameful when we know that in a capitalist society it's structured so that some people are going to be poor? And when the students are point out, "I need this to help my mom, I need to send her some of my book money,” or something like that, the lawyers really have gone after these students and said, "How dare you? You were just sending this luxury good…"
And so, you have to look at the whole family. Coaches are more than happy to go and recruit students and their families and then once they get there they just are sort of forgotten, that these people come from a whole set of institutions. But to dismiss their hunger, to dismiss their concerns about their families is really heartbreaking when you read through these transcripts, and just that there’s no way for them to win. Not having any money is shameful, but then also asking for money and earning money is undignified. It puts them in this particular place where there’s just no winning. So, I hope that they're treated differently going forward and that this continues to be more acknowledged. Even if the NCAA manages to win its case, Lindsay, can you close us out on some hopeful possibilities that might still exist?
Lindsay: Yeah. First, just to build on your point before Brenda, I just want to bring up a reminder of the college admissions scandal that came out in 2019 with of course Felicity Huffman and all those people. But I think it's important to contrast that with what you were just talking about, about athletes who are sending money back to their families and trying to eat. The fact that there was this whole underground admissions scandal where the ultra-wealthy were bribing college coaches and admissions officers to get their underserving white children into these colleges to be placed on an athletic team and then not even show up for…They weren't even expected to play or participate in the sport at all. So, that’s the way this program has been working, literally to profit everyone except the athletes that need it, right? That’s just disgusting.
But yes, this case that we're talking about right now, the Alston case that’s in front of the Supreme Court: it doesn’t specifically target name, image, and likeness. It’s more about antitrust laws, so, whether the NCAA can kind of cap what schools are providing to the students. But it’s all wrapped up, right? And the NCAA is trying to find a way to maintain control over athlete compensation in a meaningful way. It’s basically begging to help from congress, it’s begging to figure out rules, because in states across the country we have laws that are about to come into effect. This started in California which passed in September 2019 a law that would grant students name, image, and likeness rights. But that doesn’t go into effect until January 21st of 2023.
But since then we've seen a litany of laws including, as I mentioned earlier, this one that is supposed to pass in Florida of all places on this July 1st. Other states already have these laws in place but that are scheduled to go into effect a year or two from now. Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska and New Jersey, and then there are seventeen other states with bills actively moving through the legislative process that all are gonna give athletes rights.
So, what the NCAA is trying desperately to do is to maintain the ability to control this so that it’s not these individual states popping up, because if a student athlete can go to Florida and have access to their name, image, and likeness, then they're gonna go there as opposed to the schools elsewhere, and the NCAA wants to keep things uniform. But I have hope kind of no matter where this goes because of these bills that are passing on the state level, and because the speed. But what I don’t want is the NCAA to come through with congress’s help and just water this all down, find a way to water this all down to the point that it doesn’t actually accomplish what we want it to accomplish.
Amira: And the only good thing, if you’re looking for good things to take away with this, is rest assured the NCAA has no self-awareness and will continue to show its ass. Actually if we’re talking about who's building the best case against them, it’s them! [laughter] If you tuned in to the men’s final four and saw Miley Cyrus host a full concert in the middle of halftime for instance, that was a spectacle and a production – you can imagine how much money was invested in bringing that show there. You can ask yourself A) why wasn’t there a concert on the women's side, but B) you can also ask how much Miley was being paid for that.
I saw one tweet that said, “I’m sure she just did it for some Moocho points,” – which is how we pay our student athletes here for their per diem for food. “A few Moocho points and credit hours towards her kines degree.” [laughs] But we know that’s not true. So, we'll also keep this conversation in the spotlight, and the tides turning against them is that they’re gonna continue to do ill-informed, unforced errors like putting on a spectacle of a concert while everybody’s talking about how much money they don't have to pay athletes.
Brenda: This week, Jessica interviews Dr. Cheryl Cooky about the 30 year study she helped to run that looks at the quantity and quantity of TV news and highlights for women’s sports. They discuss the abysmal and consistent lack of women’s sports coverage, why the latest study is titled One and Done, the term “gender bland sexism” and if there is hope for changing things.
Cheryl Cooky: I do think what is surprising about the study is the fact that in over 30 years, again looking at those media outlets and the specific timeframes that we examined, that there’s been relatively little change, and it's varied over time. So, we’ve got a spike up to about 8% in 1999; it dropped back down, it was as low as 3.2 or around there the last iteration. It has kind of “jumped up” to about 5%, which is where we started in 1989.
Brenda: And now it's time for the burn pile, where we take some of the most horrible terrible or ridiculous things that happened in sports this week and set them aflame in the metaphorical (mostly) burn pile. Linz?
Lindsay: Okay, so, I have avoided this conversation on Twitter all week because I really did not want it to ruin my day, but I need to burn it so badly so I’m so glad we have this burn pile. Draymond Green, come on over. So, earlier this week Draymond started off by going on a big Twitter thread – except he didn't actually thread his tweets because it’s Draymond Green. But basically his tweet rant was all over the place. But it was essentially saying that women aren’t doing enough to push their own cause, they're just complaining about the lack of equal pay and that female athletes need to do more to advocate for themselves. [laughs] So, this didn’t go over very well, and Draymond Green though because he’s Draymond Green has spent the week using his press conference time to double, triple, quadruple down on this.
Here’s what he told reporters this week: “I'm really tired of seeing them complain about the lack of pay, because they're doing themselves a disservice by just complaining. They're not laying out steps that they can take to change that. It's coming off as a complaint because the people that can change it are just going to continue to say, 'Well, the revenue isn't there. So if you don't bring in the revenue, we can't up your pay.' They're going to keep using that, but the reality is, as true as that is, it's an excuse.”
So, yes. On the one hand, Draymond Green understands what the overall problem is. On the other hand, he's putting the entire solution to fixing this on female athletes, which is the most ridiculous thing I’ve probably ever heard. If you haven't noticed, women in sports are organizing on the ground. They are fighting for every single thing. They are starting their own production companies. They are wrestling their way to the top and doing this all with no guarantees, with no backup plans, with no million dollar contracts. They are demanding more.
Women in sports have had to advocate and fight for every single bit of air and money they get, and for someone like Draymond Green – DRAYMOND GREEN – to say that women aren't doing enough to advocate for themselves? Oh boy, that is rich. He needs to sit down, he needs to shut up, and he needs to look inward about what he can do to help this cause because women are doing it and you need to amplify that work, Draymond, not sit there complaining. And my favorite comment about this was someone on Twitter responded to me–
Amira: [laughs] This is my favorite tweet of all time right now.
Lindsay: There’s this Subway commercial that's been everywhere during March Madness time with Jayson Tatum producing his sub…
Lindsay: And the point is supposed to be, “Yay, steak, yay, Draymond Green.” Then the person responded to me and they said, “No matter what I’m taking Jayson Tatum’s sub from here on out.” [laughter]
Amira: But my favorite one was the one, Lindsay, where it was like, “This is what happens when you don’t put bacon on your sub.” [laughter]
Lindsay: So, we’d like to throw Draymond Green and every single thing he said this week – and his sub! – onto the burn pile.
All: Burn.
Brenda: I need to make this burn short because I feel like sometimes if I go through every detail I'll actually get more angry and, you know, it won’t do the work that it should. So, quickly, and hat tip to Kenny Jacoby who reported this. Tristen Wallace, who has graced the burn pile in the past and was twice expelled for rape from the University of Oregon, will be competing next month at the HBCU national combine for a shot at the NFL. I don’t know how many people remember, but the sexual assault was removed from his transcript with the help of the state department because his mother filed a civil rights suit saying that he was discriminated against for being a man, and that suit was not found in his favor or taken all the way, but instead they expunged his record, basically, as a result. So, NFL teams will be watching him. I just wanna burn that Tristen Wallace is allowed to represent HBCUs. I want to burn that he is allowed to play as a college player – he still has Texas A&M Prairie View next to his name. I hope that it doesn't go his way. That’s how mad and how awful it is, so that the survivors don’t have to see him and people rooting for him ever, ever, ever. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I have a quick burn update and then I’ll do my real burn. In episode 195, Jessica burned the Tennessee state Republicans who came together to sign a letter after the men’s basketball team at East Tennessee State University took a knee. If you remember, Jess reported that the head coach Jason Shay was really supportive of this action. I just wanna give you an update on this. After receiving this awful letter from all 27 members of the state’s Republican caucus that urged people to adopt policies to prevent athletes from protesting during the national anthem, there’s a lot of movement happening at ETSU. Multiple players are entering the transfer portal and they’re talking as they do so. In particular, they’re really concerned about why head coach Jason Shay is now out of a job. There’s a lot of murkiness around this, with some calling it a resignation, the players saying it was forced. One of the players, Hall, who was a freshman forward entering the transfer portal, said, “The donors said that if Coach Shay was still the head coach next year they were taking their funds. Everybody was pulling back if he was still there. I really think they are mad because Coach Shay is a white man standing up for the Black community.” This is still unfolding, and everybody – keep your eye on ETSU, it seems to be a fucking mess.
The burn that I really want to hone in on this week regards comments that Baylor coach Kim Mulkey made after her team lost in the women’s basketball tournament during the elite eight. She took time in the postgame, unprompted, not really asked a question, just offered this, that she believes they should shop COVID testing. She said, “Wouldn’t it be a shame to keep COVID testing, and then you got kids that test positive or something and they don't get to play in the final four?” Obviously a lot of people were like, what in the hell? Geno Auriemma, of course, came to her defense and said, “Well, we were just talking in Zoom about comparing our own experiences, and we heard from a health official that at this point since we’re being tested every day there's a low likelihood of people continuing to get sick.” And yet Geno’s clarifications didn’t quite help. [laughs]
I don’t know if it helped you. It didn't really help me, because I think the overwhelming thing I feel is how flippant it feels like to have a concern as Mulkey expressed, that what happens if they get a positive and then they cannot play. It's part and parcel to me with this feeling that COVID is over. We know that vaccinations are rolling out, but there’s also variants. I mean, the Canucks have 14 players and 3 coaches right now seriously ill because of a COVID outbreak, and not to mention that we are now learning the news that Alabama superfan Luke Ratliff, who was Twitter-famous for being the kind of crowd leader for University of Alabama’s men's basketball team. He has passed away from COVID complications. He has passed away just days after he completed a trip to Indianapolis to watch Alabama compete in the men’s March Madness tournament. One of his last tweets say, “It’s been a hell of a ride, Alabama. A ride of a lifetime. Goodnight.”
There’s now an investigation to do contact tracing in Indianapolis to see about exposure at the tournament. It’s unclear if he contracted COVID there or beforehand or not, but what we do know is that within four days of returning from the tournament he was hospitalized with COVID complications and has since passed away at 23. This is devastating, as all losses of life are, and it’s a stark reminder that we are not out of these woods yet. In that line, to think how irresponsible it is to get on national TV and suggest that they should stop COVID testing “because it would be sad if somebody would have to miss a game because of a positive test” is beyond irresponsible. It’s harmful, it’s dangerous. Thankfully they're going to continue to COVID test, but the rhetoric doesn’t help at all. I can’t stop thinking about the decision to open up these arenas for fans like Ratliff who is no longer with us. It’s frustrating. I don't have any words. We’ve been seeing this for a year now. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: After all that burning, now it’s time to celebrate people who are trying to change things for the better in sports. For torchbearers of the week, honorable mentions go to trailblazing ally of the week, superstar coach of the Minnesota Lynx, Cheryl Reeve, wrote a statement against the recent group of proposed trans athlete bans.
Amira: The firelords of the week are Adia Barnes and Dawn Staley, who made history as the first two Black women head coaches to simultaneously coach in the final four of the women’s basketball tournament. Also, many shoutouts to Adia who, after her team pulled out an upset vs UConn, was seen giving an impassioned speech and flipping a double bird to tell the haters to fuck off [laughter] for who have doubted them. Of course, the moral police wanted to have outrage about this because god forbid a woman coach show emotion and swear, but all credit to Adia for handling the press conference like the boss she is and refusing to apologize and standing firm in the ground of who she is.
Also, shoutout to Adia, who has to be our coach-mom of the week, from being shat on before upsetting UConn to coming out late in the national championship game because she was pumping breast milk for her 5 month old daughter. Adia, such a badass. And despite the NCAA making it very hard for working parents in this tournament you were thriving, just like you had your team resilient and thriving all year. We got a bunch of basketball-related honorable mentions, so here we go. Our ballers of the week go to the many awardees in women’s college basketball. UConn guard Paige Bueckers and Baylor forward NaLyssa Smith both earned Player of the Year honors, Bueckers being the first freshman to win the Naismith trophy, and Smith bringing home the Wade trophy.
Bueckers also won AP Player of the Year, Big East player of the year, all of the honors. [laughs] Bueckers and Smith join Aliyah Boston, Dana Evans and Rhyne Howard as the Wooden award finalists as well. In addition to that we have our All American team announced, which includes Arizona’s Aari McDonald, Stanford’s Kiana Williams, South Carolina’s forward Aliyah Boston, Chelsea Dungee from Arkansas, Dana Evans from Louisville, Michigan junior Naz Hillmon and Kentucky guard Rhyne Howard. Congrats to all of y’all for your honors. We also have our playmaker of the week, which has to go to Aari McDonald. Aari McDonald carried her team, Arizona, on her back through the tournament, putting up 31 in an upset vs A&M, 26 in the upset vs UConn, and 22 in the national championship game. 22 is also the numbers of threes she hit over the course of the tournament, which ties the record for the most threes hit in an NCAA postseason women’s tournament.
Brenda: In the category of “shouldn’t be difficult, but surprisingly good decision of the week” – as we’ve mentioned, MLB moved the All Star game in response to a horrendous voter suppression law that was passed in Georgia last week.
Lindsay: Then in the Red Hot Talent of the week we’ve got Jordan Larson, the inaugural Athletes Unlimited volleyball champion, and we also want to shout out the second and third place winners: Bethania de la Cruz and Brie King. Congrats to everyone in the Athletes Unlimited volleyball universe for a great first season, and we look forward to season two.
Brenda: Can I get a drumroll please for the torchbearers of the week?
[drumroll]
Amira: Our torchbearers of the week, of course, have to be Stanford, who captured the national championship game. The team that spent 86 nights in a hotel, 10 weeks on the road, the epitome of pandemic basketball. The #1 overall seed went out on top, capturing the championship game on Sunday night with a 54-53 win over Arizona. Haley Jones led the team 17 points, MVP. Absolutely phenomenal defense by Anna Wilson and Cameron Brink. Full team effort. Kiana Williams was phenomenal as usual. The team was just all-around sound, weathered the storm like they’ve done all season to capture the title. Tara VanDerveer, the winningest coach, adds yet another win to their record books after a 29 year gap between championships brings Stanford’s third title, now tied in third place for the most championships held by a D1 women's basketball coach.
Coach VanDerveer said after the game, “Sometimes you just have to stick with things. For me as a coach, you want to win national championships, and we’ve had shots at it. I’ve had heartbreaks with teams that have had great shots of winning it, but this team won, and I’m so proud of them.” Coach, the whole team, we are so proud of you. You are champions, and of course you are our torchbearers of the week.
Brenda: And now it's time to talk about what is good in our worlds. I will go first. I started Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults, and it’s as good as I expected. I always love her, but it's such a treat to get something new. Also, it is my daughter Luna’s birthday this week so she is going to be 12! And that’s really wild. I'm excited for her, and at least with the weather she’s able to hang with friends outside and safely. So, I feel really excited for her for this week. It’s gonna be awesome. Amira, what about you? What's good in your world?
Amira: …We’re almost over with this semester here! I just received news that I had a successful fourth year review, so in academic spaces that’s the last hurdle that clears you for tenure in the next few years. So, that was a nice thing to receive. I’m feeling good about that and, yeah, I think that that’s mostly it. I am…I forgot. [laughter] I think that's mostly it.
Brenda: That sounds good!
Amira: Basically I see the light at the end of the tunnel of this semester and I’m just trying to wade through these next few weeks and – oh, I do have something else. Both of my moms in Massachusetts have now been vaccinated–
Lindsay: Yay!
Brenda: Yay!
Amira: So, early May I think we’ll be able to see them. It’s been a year. You know, we saw my mom and dad in Texas over in the pandemic, but my moms are older so we definitely haven’t had that same ability, so I’m very much looking forward to that reunion. We’ve already started planning for it and I’m already kind of energized by that reunion. So, good things. Good things.
Brenda: Good stuff. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, so, on Saturday afternoon I got to spend some outdoor time with my family. We had a little Easter gathering and some friends and cousins were there. I’m averaging about one gathering per month of seeing people right now, [laughs] and every time I do I’m reminded that I need to up that a little bit because I live alone and it gets real lonely. So, that was great. I’ve gotten my first vaccine dose since I last did an episode–
Brenda: Yay!
Lindsay: So that’s good. We’re on the road, and I don’t know…I just feel I need to mention, this is not something that’s good, it’s something that's sad, but it reminds me of good things. Roy Williams retired this week and I was not expecting that. For anyone who knows me, my two pure fandoms of just teams are UNC men’s basketball and the Carolina Panthers, like, those are who I grew up living and dying for. And so, Roy is not a perfect human – I’m not trying to get into any debates about it! [laughs] The UNC basketball program, I know that that's not perfect, but I will just say from a fandom standpoint, Roy Williams is responsible for some of my favorite sports memories of all time and he was joy on…He brought so much joy to the sidelines and to press conferences and I loved that. I’m gonna miss him and I’m grateful for him and yeah, I just wanted to say that, because I was not expecting that.
Amira: It’s also my pleasure to announce our inaugural of the month. For April 2021, I’m pleased to announce that we wanna put a big spotlight on Ellie Mazur. Ellie is one of our youngest flamethrowers, but so tenacious, and feel free to head over to our Instagram to read more about Ellie and how she came to Burn It All Down, what she has going on. But I will just share with you one of the things she told us about her hope for the future of sports. Ellie said, “I hope that women get paid equally and all the same stuff as men, and people watch them and realize how awesome they are.” We at Burn It All Down of course share in your vision for the future of sports, Ellie, and also want you to know how awesome we think you are. Congrats, you are our flamethrower of the month.
Brenda: Okay, well, some things that we are watching this week is: the NWSL is back, starting with the Challenge Cup. Also, there’s amazing activity in international friendlies in women’s soccer including some strange matchups that I’m not sure we've ever seen, like Japan vs Panama, and some standards that should be great like the US women’s national team vs Sweden. Germany vs Australia should be a really good game as well. I hear that there are people out there that watch the men’s golf Master’s tournament and that this is an important golf tournament for people, [Lindsay laughs] so, that’s happening. I’ve heard that from my co-hosts. So, golf fans can look out for that.
That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. Especially now more than ever, burn on and not out. This episode was produced by the wizard, Tressa Versteeg, and Shelby Weldon extraordinaire does our website and social media. You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down wherever you get your podcasts. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod. We are on Twitter @burnitdownpod. Check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com for previous episodes, transcripts, and links to the show notes. From there you can email us directly. There are also links to our Patreon. We want to thank always always, and especially eternally grateful to our patrons for your support. I’m Brenda Elsey, on behalf of Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs – have a great week.