Episode 203: Climate Activism in Sport


In this episode Lindsay, Jessica and Brenda talk about feminism and climate activism in sport, thanks to a suggestion from flamethrower Dr. Maddy Orr. They discuss the ways mega events impact the planet, how climate change disproportionally effects marginalized communities in sport and what individual athletes and teams are doing to promote more sustainable leagues and events. They also burn the things that need to be burned in sport and highlight Torchbearers forging their own way, including the eternal light that is Simone Biles. They wrap up with the things that are good in their lives and the matches they're watching 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

Two fights in one: feminism and environmentalism https://www.dejusticia.org/en/column/two-fights-in-one-feminism-and-environmentalism

The Ethical Dilemma of Hosting Mega-Events in a Climate Crisis: https://www.sportecology.org/post/sport-and-climate-change

Laureus Environmental Action Toolkit (PDF) https://laureusuk.blob.core.windows.net/laureus/laureus/media/laureus/news/2021/environmental-action-toolkit

The climate crisis is hitting football – but the global game has time to take action: https://www.theguardian.com/2020/aug/21/climate-crisis-football-global-game-carbon-neutral

In Photos: Club Brugge’s electronics recycling campaign https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/165962/why-bruges-stadium-is-full-of-fridges-club-brugge-royal-excel-mouscron-recupel-jan-breydel

Seán McCabe: World football's first Climate Justice Officer https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/football/sen-mccabe-bohemians-climate-justice-officer-cmd-spt-intl

Resources from Dr. Maddy Orr –

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello hello hello, and welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you both want and need. I am Lindsay Gibbs and I am joined here today by two out of my four favorite co-hosts: Jessica Luther in Texas, and Dr. Brenda Elsey up in New York. How are you two doing?

Jessica: Good. Glad to be here.

Brenda: Yeah, very well. Thanks.

Lindsay: So, today we are going to be talking about Earth Day and the environment and feminism and justice. All of those things intersected. But first, I want to take a second because we've had in the time since recording our last episode the rise and the fall [laughter] of the European Super League. It's not often that, you know…We miss news between episodes a lot, but it's rare that it's the entire existence and collapse of a league, right? We didn't even take any time off.

Jessica: A super league, even.

Lindsay: A super league! [laughs] Of course, to hear more about this Super League, to get all the info about it, for our interview Shireen talked to Fadumo Olow, and Brenda showed up in that interview as well to talk a little bit about the ins and outs of this Super League. But for now we want to take a second, and with the three of us relive some of the most memorable moments of the rise and fall of the European Super League. Brenda?

Brenda: That's such a hard question, Linz. There are so many. Probably every minute it was happening was a new favorite moment. But it's a tie between the fact that the Super League – and we should really mention this on the show – still technically exists. There are three teams that may go on to rival the Champions League.

Jessica: Super, super. They’re so super. 

Brenda: They’re super. So, that thought of them actually trying to play just continuously gives me hope and joy. And the second one is when JP Morgan, which had put forward $5 billion for this, apologized and said kind of like, “we didn't know people like football so much.” [laughter] If you think the winners and the smartest people win at capitalism, then you would be really wrong.

Lindsay: It's just like…How? So, the very quick way of explaining is like the best teams–

Jessica: Monied.

Lindsay: Or the most financially sound and successful teams in European soccer run by these billionaires were like, we want to create a whole new system, we're going to create a locked league and everyone's just going to fall in line, even though we haven't talked to fans about this, we haven't really talked to players, we haven't done anything. And they announced it on Sunday night and it was pure, pure chaos. Jess, what are you going to remember most from this time?

Jessica: I felt really validated in my initial reaction, which was “I am not going to learn anything about this.” I don't want to understand it. I don’t care that much about European men's soccer, [Lindsay laughs] and I certainly am not going to get upset about the biggest, most monied sport having this existential crisis. I couldn’t escape it. I mean, I did eventually accidentally figure out what was happening. I agree with Brenda, one of my favorite parts is the billionaires having to apologize for the fact that they've invested billions of dollars in this sport and then being like, “we didn't understand that all these people cared so much about it.” It's like, why did you invest in this sport?

I mean, in my non-cynical part of me, kudos to the fans of the possible Super League teams for being as upset as everybody else and demanding and protesting that this thing not happen because in theory they would have benefited, I guess? I mean, obviously the fans didn't feel like they were going to benefit, but even they were really, really upset about what was happening here and about the importance of relegation and all the sort of stuff that makes European soccer, soccer in general, special. And that I thought was great, but yeah, seeing all these men–

Lindsay: So many men.

Jessica: Not just men, but a lot of men freak out about this possible change and like how their teams would suddenly be not part of the Super League and how that feels. As fans of women's sports, it just was deeply ironic and I enjoyed that. 

Lindsay: Yeah, it was a lot. One of the things, and I know we talked about this, but they hadn't even thought about the women's teams involved in this when they made it! Nobody had thought about how this would impact women's football at all. I didn't even have time to get mad about that because it was over before it even got there. [laughter] But I want to read…This is from James Benge over at CBS Soccer. He writes, “As the Super League collapsed on Tuesday night there was a curious document flying around European football. Surely it could not be entirely real. Who would send a docx file, typos and all, out to announce the collapse of this grand sporting endeavor? It's 2021. Stick your logo in the header, get it edited and PDF it. English clubs had left the party ‘due the pressure out on them’ [sic]. An announcement that they were ‘reconsidering the appropriate steps’ as teams sprinted to the exit door.”

He called this, “the defining moment of the remarkably ramshackle branding that came with the most disruptive moment in sport for a generation. The 12 Super League clubs proposed a radical reimagining of what football could be. They did so on a website that looked like it had been knocked for a middle school project due in 15 minutes, topped with a logo that screams "it looks like you're trying to brand a new competition that will irrevocably disrupt European sport. Would you like help?” And once again, they had hired one of the most powerful communications firms in the world for this, they had 5 billion dollars! It was just like, what a mess, and just glorious, honestly. 

Jessica: I would like to see JP Morgan take just a fraction of that money and put it into the women's game. The return would be so huge. Someone talk to these men with all this money and let them know, please. Thank you. 

Lindsay: [exhales] Okay. Well, you know, we will really never forget this time because the schadenfreude involved in it was so much fun to experience. It is great to see billionaires climb to the highest diving board and then face plant in front of everyone because they never actually learned how to dive before leaving. So, our main segment today is…Actually, all of our flamethrowers: we remind you to send us ideas, because we're often open to them. So, we got Maddy Orr who wrote in to us about thinking about Earth Day in kind of a sports and feminism and intersectional context. And Maddy has recorded a little bit of an intro, so we're going to hear from her to open up this segment. 

Maddy Orr: Hi Burn It All Down community. My name is Maddy Orr and I'm a sport ecologist, which means I study climate change and sport. I'm so excited to just be chatting a little bit about Earth Day and why I think it's really relevant to the women in sport context. When we think about Earth Day we think about sustainability and climate change, and it's important to note that in the context of the sports sector, women are leading the way on sustainability. This is at the professional level, at the college level, and then the lower levels of club and community sport. When you look at who's taking care of really pushing the sustainability agenda and ensuring that it's inclusive and intersectional, you see a lot of women in that space. And it's really an exciting time to be working in sustainability in sport because the women are really rallying around that.

We also know that climate change impacts women first and worst, and sport is no exception. If you think about how when events get canceled because of bad weather, often the sports sector will bend over backwards to make sure that the men's sports events get moved or postponed or pushed inside and the women's events just get canceled. And so I think it's really interesting to think about how Earth Day fits into this narrative, and to consider that when bad climate events hit and communities are traumatized it's also the women who take on the emotional labor of putting that community back together.

There's no climate conversation worth having, in my opinion, or no Earth Day conversation worth having that doesn't also address those racial and gendered implications of how climate hazards hit communities and hit sports in particular, and how we respond to those situations and how women really are at the forefront of that both in terms of who gets hit first and worst and who is the first to respond.

Lindsay: So, Brenda, I want you to, as our historian on call today, tell us a little bit about the history of this intersection. Take us back in time a bit. 

Brenda: So, there's a whole field of philosophy in activism that generally is called ecofeminism – though people can refer to it in a lot of different ways. Basically the woman who coined the term, Françoise d’Eaubonne, who is a French philosopher and was also an anarchist, thinks about the very idea of domination and that it's gotta be a feminist project to think about unjustified domination and that is perpetuated and reflected in the way that humans have been in relationship with the environment, the earth and animals. And so that the logic of prioritizing profit over beings, of exhausting resources, of depleting everything in the name of surplus – that that very idea, that that concept is at the core of patriarchy, and that very same thing is part of what continues to be the logic of depleting the earth’s resources.

So, it's really kind of interesting and, you know, we always have to be mindful of that in the Global South the women there are even further affected by this already and have been at the forefront of these movements that started in the 1970s in places like Kenya, where they were working against deforestation. So, it's a really interesting and exciting field that kind of continues to come up with great work. But I just think that fundamental idea about domination and the way that you're going to solve climate change has to be with like a feminist lens of thinking about exploitation, domination and capitalist surplus. I hate to say it, but that's what it is. You just need to consume less shit and care. That's just a thing.

Lindsay: Absolutely. You know, it's important to just kind of realize how big of an issue this is in the sports world. We know how big it is in the world world, but with these mega events that we love, you know…We talk about the problems with the way they treat the unhomed, the way they treat all marginalized communities, the way they use these emergency building declarations to forget about everything. But there's so much environmental impact that these mega events have. I remember studying once that – and I think I actually talked to NOlympics LA organizers on Burn It All Down about this – was that because a lot of the stuff for the Olympics counts as like kind of this “emergency building,” like, they don't have to do the same environmental impact studies about the things that they're building.

And even something as little as that, you know, I had never even thought about the way that you can use these mega events and the urgency that politicians put on hosting them as a way to surpass laws, the very minimum standard laws we have even right now, to kind of go after this. But Jess, kind of just remind us of where these mega events fit in.

Jessica: I think on some level it's obvious, right? You think about the travel for participants and their fans, the stuff that you just mentioned, like the destruction of green land to build venues. I remember this was part of what happened in Korea. You think about, I mean, Brenda just talked about capital surplus – you think about the amount of trash that a mega event is going to produce when you bring all these people into a concentrated space. It just seems obvious on its face when you really start to think of it through this lens, as Brenda was talking about, as you were talking about Linz. It makes, I don't know, all the hairs on your arm stand up for like what this means to the environment. And I think about like last week we talked about in episode 202, the particular issues with playing soccer in Qatar considering the extreme temperatures in the country, like, talk about the environment's impact on the sport itself.

But we also mentioned Qatar back in in 2019 when the IAAF championships were there and all of the issues around extreme temperature then, and they were trying to air condition outdoor stadiums in order to make it possible to do these events. And you think about, like, this is the future, is to just air condition a bunch of these massive spaces. That alone…I don't know. Mega events seem like the perfect distillation, as they do for lots of things, to think about these problems that sports is participating in.

Lindsay: Yeah, and the air conditioners too, all the little resources they bring up, you know – water bottles and stuff like that. To go back to Maddy's point, these mega events are often really big drivers for women's sports, and yet if we do lose mega events it's so bad for women's sports in theory, and yet there's no way to really do these sustainably. And so that's a really big problem. I do want to mention something that's going on on kind of the global scale. There is a United Nations climate change sports for climate action framework, and a couple of other organizations signed onto it on this Earth Day. World Athletics and organizers for the World Athletics indoor championships in Belgrade ’22 signed onto this.

The aim of the framework is for international federations, leagues, clubs, and event organizers to take collective action to limit global warming to the 1.5 Celsius degree rise, the levels agreed at in Paris during the climate change conference in 2015. The United Nations is really…I think it's interesting that they're organizing these, you know, seeing the role that sports have to play in this, but anytime it’s Sebastian Coe and other of these leaders that haven't really shown us any reason to believe that they mean what they say. I look at events like this with a lot of skepticism, although I do think one of the things that makes me somewhat hopeful is the voices of the youth. Jess?

Jessica: Yeah. So, as Maddy mentioned at the top of the segment, climate change is racialized and it's gendered, and so it makes sense when we get to public advocacy that we'd see people of color and women and especially women of color speaking about the effects of climate change and that it turns out that dynamic is true when it comes to athletes. I want to play a couple of clips from the 2019 United Nations youth climate summit. First, here is gold medalist, snowboarder – we love her – Chloe Kim. She's talking about her fears about climate change. 

Chloe Kim: I'm so terrified that one day when I have a family, my kids are going to be like, “Mom, what’s snow? Is that like when the dinosaurs were around?” So, we have to keep fighting to save our planet. Some people won't listen, but we need to make them listen before it's too late. To everyone here, I wanted to tell you guys that you have a voice, and never lose hope. We will make this change and we will save our home.

Jessica: And next is Pita Taufatofua, a two sport Olympian from Tonga who competed in both Taekwondo and skiing. Now, Tonga is composed of 170 Islands in the South Pacific, and I linkthink that's an important context for what he spoke about at the summit. 

Pita Taufatofua: But we were at the forefront of climate change. The seas are rising, they’re coming into our houses. I'm here to advocate for the oceans that have looked after us since the beginning of time, you know? it's time for us to be looking after them. We've got young kids who are marching to help the planet. I mean, we, need to listen to these kids. It's their future that that's in our hands. Malo, ofa atu.

Jessica: And I’d just like to mention that there's another global organization that is focused on these issues and was particularly focused on the environment for Earth Day this year: Laureus, which is a global organization that has over 200 sports programs in 40 countries in the world, they put out a new environmental action toolkit and it's pretty cool. We'll link to it in the show notes on our website. It talks about how to launch and sustain a green team, what organizations can do collectively, what individuals, players, fans can do; and it provides a ton of resources. It's a great checklist for people within sporting organizations, from like the top of the chain owners down to the fans who want to figure out how to make sport more sustainable. So, it's really cool to see that we are now getting resources like this. It's literally a checklist, so you can just go down and check what it is that you're doing and not doing, and you can think about the ways that you could be more sustainable as an athlete and as a fan.

Lindsay: I love that so much. Brenda, what are we seeing clubs doing right now? 

Brenda: Yeah, it's really interesting because…I’m going to just be honest, I get so overwhelmed about this topic and I just feel like it seems terrible and scary and boring to start to research it somehow. [laughs]

Jessica: Yeah because it's too big. You can't wrap your arms around it in a way that feels…It’s so easy to suddenly just tune out as soon as you start looking at it. I agree.

Brenda: Exactly. And so it's Earth Day and then it feels already co-opted and gimmicky and I'm depressed. I know what my problem is, which is that this is horrific and apocalyptic and thus I want to do a show about something else. And so, when I started to look at what some of the football clubs were doing, it really is actually very exciting and smart, and it makes me feel the opposite. So, a couple of things: David Goldblatt has written a lot about this. He's been doing a lot of articles since 2019. He's a very well-known writer about football, and this has become his new raison d’être, right? This is Dave's thing. And so it's good to check him out. He's written pamphlets for different alliances, like transportation alliances that are trying to reduce their carbon footprint.

But here's some of the things…One of the most exciting is a club called Forest Green Rovers. It's a professional football club, you can check them out. They play in like the fourth tier of English football, and they've been around since the 19th century and they have gone UN certified zero carbon emissions. They only serve vegan food. Their new stadium is wooden, and they have a hundred percent renewable energy use, and it's real cool. The stadium is beautiful and they did it with absolutely no footprint on the environment. Of course, it cannot be 80,000 seats. There are things you just can't have, you know? It’s a 5000 seater and it's like, right, cool. 5000 people is a lot of people, I mean, I've been with nobody during COVID.

Jessica: Especially if you pack them in. 

Brenda: Yeah. You know, can't do that right now, but soon! Soon, soon, soon. And so, it's really gorgeous. I encourage you to take a look. Also, the Bundesliga, the clubs in Bundesliga are trying to figure out how to subsidize public transportation, and that's huge, because of all the way that global football impacts the environment it's the travel. UEFA is offsetting the aviation emissions by reforestation programs, and so that's really exciting too. But all of this is, you know, really easy to get out of for some of these big organizations. So, I liked looking at the clubs, and it actually put a little spring in my step. I thought to myself, I wonder what we can do at youth level soccer here in the US? We better start carpooling and stuff. [laughter] It didn't make me think like, wait a minute…

Lindsay: Well, it's so interesting you say that because I've been thinking so much about how COVID, you know, in a lot of ways what we learned from sports during COVID is that they're much more flexible than these billionaire owners would have you believe, right? That change is so much more possible when it's necessary. And there was so much less travel during COVID and so many of these leagues found ways to do things in single sites, or even the NBA finding ways to limit their flights, right? If you go to one part of the country you're playing back to backs against teams and you're not traveling quite as much and, you know, stuff like that makes me really…I don't think it’s sustainable or mentally healthy for these teams and clubs to have bubble seasons. But what about mitigating the travel as much as possible, you know, within the seasons?

And trying to find ways that buses can be taken and the travel schedule makes geographical sense and results in fewer cross country, or inter-country when we're talking about over in Europe, flights and everything. And I hope that lessons like that do carry forward with us because that could make a big difference. Jess, there was another interesting kind of COVID adaptation we have here.

Jessica: Yeah. But it's also a great example of the way that sports can encourage better local environmentalism, right? There was a club in Belgium, a soccer club in Belgium, that when they can't fill the stands they decided instead to fill it with a bunch of old electronics in order to teach the community that these are things that can be recycled. So, it was a big messaging about the importance of recycling, but you should…We’ll link to this in the show notes. You should go look. It's really cute to see a lot of washers and refrigerators…And some of them were set up so they looked kind of like WALL-E the little robot. So, it was it was a cute initiative, but the point was to encourage recycling within the local community. So, I liked that idea of using sport in that way in this moment.

Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. Going forward, we've seen so much activism on racial and gender justice from our athletes, and it's probably unfair to put this on them or to hope that they incorporate this perfectly. But I want to, because of the power they have, you know, to continue to intersect climate justice as part of this activism, because we know that the most marginalized communities are, again, the ones who are disproportionally impacted by climate change. We've already seen…I know Renee Montgomery was on some panels last year about racial and climate justice. You have Midge Purce over in the NWSL who is a climate activist, an NWSL player, and is on the Harvard board trying to be part of climate change initiatives. Most recently we've seen the WNBA take on, as they are continuing their activism, they're doing health campaigns and trying to encourage people to get the vaccine especially those in Black communities.

I do have faith that they're going to continue to lead us forward on the climate front as well, because they're so well-organized, and they seem to understand intersectionality better than any other group. I think that ultimately though we're going to need the athletes to use their voices to fight for this stuff as well within the sports world, and not just those young athletes kind of speaking at the global conferences, but the biggest ones, you know, encouraging, calling out their sponsors and their team owners and everything to include sustainability as part of these platforms. Again, I think it’s unfair that that burden falls to them, but maybe the reason I'm calling them out is because I have the most hope that they can make the change happen as opposed to these, you know, billionaires at top, just like sitting on their wad of cash.

One thing though that really interested me that I would have completely missed if I wasn't researching this is that there is a team in Dublin, Bohemians, which has been a member owned team since 1890. This is a men's soccer team, and they've done a lot of messaging welcoming refugees and anti-racism work, and they've recently hired world football's first climate justice officers. So, they have someone making sure that their team is focused on leaving the smallest carbon footprint possible, and this is Seán McCabe. I'm very interested in seeing what comes. It's a voluntary role of course right now, but it's about activating the community, holding the community responsible, holding the club responsible, and keeping all the focus on climate justice.

They've been called football's first Greta Thunberg – of course that's CNN's title, we’re sensationalizing things a bit. But I'm going to include this article from CNN in the notes, because I think it's very interesting and I think it goes with what I was saying before that I hope something along these lines is the way that these clubs continue to prioritize this. Jess?

Jessica: Yeah. And before we head out, I just want to remind everyone we talked about the intersection of climate change and sport back in episode 172. I think we're all very proud of that episode, and so I encourage people who care about this to go into our archives and check out episode 172. And of course we recently talked about the impact of the environment on refugee populations and intersection of refugees in sport in episode 199. So, I know we'll continue to talk about this as we move forward. 

Lindsay: Absolutely. And you know, just to echo what we heard from Maddy at the beginning, this is going to and already is going to disproportionately impact women's sports. So, because we know that these billionaires are willing to do anything to fight for the preservation of men's sports in the face of anything, it's just important to kind of pay attention to what's happening on this front in the sports world. We're going to bring back Dr. Orr who is highlighting a couple of organizations that are doing the work of bringing sports and climate change together.

Maddy Orr: Protect Our Winters has an amazing roster, a ton of women on that athlete roster who go into schools on a regular basis, go and lobby at the federal government in Washington, DC, and advocate for climate action that is really considerate of all of those intersectional aspects of how women get hit first, how people of color get hit first, and how we can do a better job in the sports community and in the outdoor community of making our space more inclusive and also making it more resilient to climate change. Another organization that's really amazing and doing cool work lately is EcoAthletes, and it's based in New York but they have athletes really all over the country.

And you have Mara Abbott, who competed in cycling at the Rio 2016 Olympics, and Alena Olsen on the US women's rugby team, a number of women who really stand out and are out in their communities helping to take care of the community after major events happen, but also at the forefront of demanding action from the sport industry and demanding consideration for things like reducing our energy use and reducing water use and being more considerate of the biodiversity where we live, work, and play.

Lindsay: This week's interview, which you'll get to hear in full on Thursday: our Dr. Amira Rose Davis talks to Andrea Williams, author of Baseball's Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues.

Andrea Williams: I do think Effa, just by virtue of being a woman, saw things and understood things about the future of Black baseball in a way that men weren't thinking about. The co-owners that she's with, who are less inclined to speak up, but it's also the Black press who is doubling down on Jackie and the other guys who get signed and are completely abandoning Black baseball as if it’s somehow unnecessary at this point, that now Black baseball is obsolete because here we are, we have arrived. And Effa was like, how can you not see that it is not going to be this automatic thing that we are…We are for sure going to lose something in the process.

Lindsay: All right, friends, it is time for the eco-friendly burn pile. Brenda, can you get us started?

Brenda: Sure. So, I'm putting on the burn pile this week…It’s sort of like a fire starter, like one of those things you put in…It's not fully fleshed out cause we're waiting for information, but apparently it comes from good sources. The Faroe Islands football association has instructed clubs to ban players from wearing rainbow bands in solidarity with the LGBTQ community, and the players were told that they would be disqualified from any competition if they continue to use them. For people that don't know, Faroe Islands has its own football association. It’s part of the Danish kingdom. It actually won an international competitive match against Austria in the 1990s. So although it's very small, it is significant.

The president of the Faroe Islands football association is Christian Andreasen and it is unclear what exactly prompted this, except to say that it's been notable that the Faroe Islands was one of the last, if not the last, UEFA countries to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So, what the fuck, Faroe Islands? For right now your association’s decision is going on the burn pile. I will update as more becomes clear about why and hopefully FIFA puts the kibosh on this right away. Burn.

All: Burn.

Lindsay: Jess? 

Jessica: This is a hard week to pick a single topic, so, I do want to mention an in-depth report at the LA Times about the USC Song Girls, the school spirit squad. “Ten former Song Girls described to the LA Tmes a toxic culture within the famed collegiate dance team that included longtime former coach Lori Nelson rebuking women publicly for their eating habits, personal appearance, and sex lives. So, many burn on that. For my main burn I want to do a follow along to our discussion of women's March Madness and Shireen's burn about the NCAA women's volleyball tournament. This week, Molly Hensley-Clancy at the Washington Post published a piece about the differences between the men's NCAA baseball tournament and the women's NCAA softball tournament.

None of this will surprise anyone, but it's still worth recapping some of what she covered. Both tournaments happen in front of sellout crowds and they draw similar audiences on ESPN. But as Hensley-Clancy writes, “Softball athletes play in a stadium with less than half the capacity and subpar facilities and their tournament is condensed into a much smaller window than the men’s.” And that's after what coaches describe as a year's long battle with the NCAA for such basic amenities as bathrooms, which were eventually added – and showers, which they're still waiting for. I think what really got me in this piece where the quote.

Here’s what Jacquie Joseph, who has spent three decades as a head coach at Michigan state, said: “Women’s basketball is the premier women's sport. When I saw that, what I wanted to say is, imagine how we feel, the rest of us. They’re the chosen ones, and they're treated like afterthoughts. What's lower than an afterthought? That's us.” That just breaks my heart. One specific issue – this one really burns my butt – is that the women play at a much smaller venue. Theirs seats 13,000 and they sell it out almost immediately, like, overnight. The men’s stadium holds 24,000 and can expand up to 35,000.

One coach said, “I think we could easily get 20,000 fans just like the men, but they won't give us the chance.” And, you know, you just know that this is going to be used against the women to say they don't pull in the same money or whatever, right? And then there's also the women's schedule. It's condensed down into seven days as compared to 12 for the men. Hensley-Clancy writes, “In the women's tournament teams get a single rest day and are asked to play double headers if they lose an early game. There is no room for weather delays and no days of respite for the final series. In the men's tournament there are frequent rest days and teams can have as long as three days off before the finals begin.” That is brutal to the bodies of these softball players!

I'm just fucking tired of the shit. Next year is the 50th anniversary of Title IX. 50 years. I've been thinking a lot about how hard the NCAA fought Title IX and about how the NCAA was not created to include women's sports, and that still shows half a century later. I want to end with a quote from Carol Hutchins, the head coach at Michigan. She said, “The NCAA never asks, ‘What’s the least we can do for the men?’ With the women, that's always the question. We have to fight to get things. We’re fighting with the NCAA and it all comes down to they don't want to spend the same on the women.” Burn. 

All: Burn.

Lindsay: On that note, I have two burns, but I want to start with the cancellation of the women's hockey world championships once again. So on that kind of note, this decision was just made this Wednesday by health officials in Nova Scotia because of COVID concerns. The decision was made as some teams were already en route traveling, as players and teams had been quarantining and doing all of the right things in order to get there, and while of course everyone is concerned about safety, the truth is there were no positive tests from the players and the players were holding up their end of the bargain. And the most infuriating thing is that the IIHF had no contingency plan for the women's tournament – something they've had for all of their pro men's world championships.

I'm gonna read some of Kendall Coyne Schofield’s USA players statement, which will just remind you a lot of what Jess just said. “There was not one positive test case. Every single player and staff member committed to the protocols the Nova Scotia health officials outlined, and we successfully did everything that was asked of us in order to safely compete until we were told we couldn’t. We all are wrecked. Devastated for so many reasons, but to learn that there was no contingency plan and the IIHF is letting 250 of its best players in the world return to their homes today with, ‘we are seeking new dates’ is simply unacceptable. Does that mean we should keep training every single day like we have been since the last international competition two years ago, without knowing when or even if it should be played?

Should our staff be prepared to tell the families and jobs they may be packing up for another potential 31 days if the new dates are being solved? This response shows the lack of care the IIHF had when it comes to making sure the women's worlds were successful like the other international hockey events we have so joyfully watched over the last year. Those tournaments had contingency plans and plans to pivot the locations if the dialogue between the local health officials and the tournament couldn't be mutually agreed upon. Like so many of us, I'm tired of saying this, but even more exhausted from feeling that women's hockey, once again, deserves more and better.”

I'm going to ask you to hold your burns because I just want to throw one other thing on the burn pile, which is this week Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, something we all saw with our own eyes. And while it is good that he was found guilty, it’s little comfort, because George Floyd is not alive and because Black people continue to be killed by police and mostly without impunity. But of course we saw a lot of empty statements come out from sports teams and leagues in the wake of this verdict – some good, some not even saying the name,George Floyd, but I think the absolute worst was an image from the Las Vegas Raiders NFL team, which simply said, “I can breathe” with the date of the verdict on the graphic. This graphic was pinned to the Raiders' Twitter page, despite much criticism of people reminding owner Mark Davis directly that this is a phrase cops have co-opted for the blue lives matter movement. Mark Davis said he was going to continue to keep it up there and next time he’d do more research, but for now this statement which is horribly insensitive stands. And so, both of those things onto the burn pile. Burn.

All: Burn.

Lindsay: All right. So, on a positive note, we've got some torchbearers this week. Our record-setter of the week is Athing Mu, a freshmen at Texas A&M, who set a collegiate record in women's outdoor 800 meters with 1:57.73 – that is faster than the Olympic qualifying standard and it's the 10th fastest time for a US woman ever. Jess, we've got a few literal trophy holders this week. Who are NCAA champs of the week? 

Jessica: University of Michigan won its first ever national collegiate women's gymnastics championship last weekend. They had a program best score of 198.2500. I assume all those numbers matter a lot. The telecast of the finals aired on ABC for the first time ever and averaged 808,000 viewers. This was the most viewed gymnastics telecast in a decade and the most viewed collegiate gymnastics meet ever on any ESPN affiliated network. Put this stuff on TV! The Stanford Cardinals took home the men's gymnastics championship and the Kentucky Wildcats women's volleyball team, which defeated Texas in four sets to win the program's first national championship on Saturday night.

Lindsay: Woo hoo! And then we've got some international champs for this week. Bren? 

Brenda: Yes. The UMMC Ekaterinburg won the Euro women's league championship – that’s basketball – for the third time in a row, six times total, by beating Perfumerias Avenida 78-68. Breanna Stewart was named the final four MVP for averaging 14.5 points, seven rebounds and three assists per game in the tournament. This is the sixth title for player Alba Torrens. Torrens has now tied the Euro league women record with Diana Taurasi and Natalia Vieru. Also, Australian rules football, the Brisbane Lions are AFLW premiers for the first time. They stunned the Adelaide Crows – these are such good names – 38 to 20 in the final.

Lindsay: All right. And for the torchbearer of the week, can I get a drumroll, please? 

[drumroll]

Lindsay: All right, she's back again, but she really keeps earning it, friends! [laughs] 

Jessica: It's true. 

Lindsay: Simone Biles, for blazing yet another new trail, this time ditching Nike to sign a contract with Athleta. This contract was first reported by the great Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal. I'm honestly not sure if it's Ath-LET-a or Ath-LEET-a, but I'm sure because Simone is now the leader I will know very soon. [laughs] This is a women’s-focused sports group owned by the Gap company. Biles isn't the first to sign with them. They first signed a partnership in 2019 with sprinting champion Allyson Felix, the former Nike athlete who had criticized the company for failing to support pregnant athletes. Biles, in saying what attracted her to Athleta, said, “I felt it wasn't just about my achievements. It's what I stood for and how they were going to help me use my voice and be a voice for females and kids. I feel like they were going to support me, not just as an athlete, but as an individual outside of the gym.”

And what is incredibly exciting about this, even more so, is that Athleta is going to support the Biles’s Gold Over America Tour, a tour that they plan to run after the Olympics this year, that if USA Gymnastics decides to hold its own post-Olympics tour – which it usually does – this tour will be a direct competitor to that. And the company's also going to develop activewear with Biles, who’s going to collaborate of course with the design team. It is so big to see a top female athlete like Biles right before the Olympics ditch the company that everyone is told for women is the dream company to be with and go with, a brand that's going to fully support her and treat her like a superstar over and over again. We are seeing those in women's sports really acknowledge the power they have. And we are seeing brands who are willing to invest in them if the typical stakeholders aren't. So, I know I've rambled on a long time, but I am so excited about this. [laughs]

Okay, what is good? Bren?

Brenda: Whew…

Jessica: You can do it. 

Brenda: It's a tough one. Really, really this week is hard. Okay. I got it. I got it. I am teaching a women's studies course. It's an intro course to women, genders and sexualities, and I have – I’m not meaning this as derogatory towards my other classes – the best students this semester. Grading is still painful and it's still horrific, but I asked this essay question, which is about how big global economic changes shaped women's experiences in the Global South. And I just got these amazing essays, like, I'm embarrassed about how high the grades are. I mean, [Lindsay laughs] I’m happy about it. I'm thrilled about it, but I'm like, well, can I take points off for like spelling? This person’s going to get an A anyway, like, do I feel comfortable with like a hundred? Do I give it a hundred? Is this the best essay I can conceive of? And they're just so good and they're not plagiarized. So, there's my what's good. Women's studies, shout out. Women's studies 001 at Hofstra University, you are whip smart. 

Lindsay: That is awesome. I want to share a couple of things on my end. I have spent a lot of the past couple months feeling really bad and not quite knowing why and getting worse and worse, and that is shitty. I do not recommend that. But I think finally what I did do was use the little energy I had and get help from family and friends. I got to some doctors, got some blood work done, got some medicine changes. I don't know if I figured it all out, of course, but I've got some answers that have me hopeful and have me feeling better for the first time in a long time and it's like…I don't know. I mean, if you've ever suffered from depression or some sort of chronic illness that isn't just like very obvious, like, the moment you start to feel better after having felt really bad for so long, it's like light bulbs going off within you. It almost puts into perspective how bad you were feeling, you know? Because it's like, oh!

So I am I'm just feeling very grateful about that. And I got my second vaccine yesterday. I was afraid I was gonna be like dying through this recording today, but I'm not, I'm feeling fine with that. So, you know, here's to health and an encouragement to all of our flamethrowers to try, and if you're feeling really shitty, try and find people who will help you because we should not all feel shitty all the time. It's not normal. Jess?

Jessica: Well, your news Linz, that’s what's good for me right now. That makes me really happy to hear. I want to tell our listeners about a great documentary, it's tonight before we record, you know, Sunday morning, the Oscars are tonight and there is this Romanian film called Collective that is nominated for both foreign language film and documentary. We'll see if it wins anything, but it is so interesting, about…There was a horrific fire at a nightclub in Romania, the nightclub was called Collective, where more people ended up dying after then during the actual fire and it was tied to corruption and the hospitals there, and there was a sports daily that was very good at investigative journalism because they had gone after corruption within sports within Romania. They took on the corruption within the health department and within hospitals, and there was a documentary filmmaker along for the ride. It's very much got that Spotlight feel.

So if you're like me and you love to watch investigative journalists do their work, and especially as a collective, I mean, talk about the importance of a newsroom and talk about the importance of resources and people just following the story and having the space and the time and the guts to do it. Collective was just, you know, one of those…It’s corny as hell, but there was a moment where the main guy, the editor, is on a national program and defending what he's done and the other guy asked him, like, what is your goal here? As if there must be some kind of, you know, something beyond just reporting. And he's like, there is no goal. I'm just trying to show people the powers that affect their lives. And I just felt this real corny moment as an investigative journalist where I was like, yes! So anyway, watching Collective this week really felt great. I mean, it has the possibility making you feel bad because there's so much corruption within Romania and it's not like it ends on like a “we fixed it all!” kind of note, but it is a hell of a thing to watch all these people work together to fight the system. It's a really great documentary.

Lindsay: Well, look, I've got to say for what we're watching this week, my attention is going to be on getting back focus on this NWSL Challenge Cup. As I've been feeling bad, I really haven't had the mental space to be following sports of any kind, so I'm now that I'm feeling better I got to get caught up and watch that. And I think that's the main thing, you know? WNBA training camp is starting back up, we’re inching closer to the NBA playoffs. We'll have the NFL draft. These are the big of course American things. Baseball is continuing and getting in the groove. Anything I'm not mentioning?

Jessica: I will say for me, because this is my new bandwagon as I am paying attention to the MLS way more than I ever have in my entire life, I have now watched my second match last night. Austin actually won 3-1. That was super exciting, it was their first win. So, MLS is happening, everybody, in case you forgot. As I normally do. 

Lindsay: And of course, another round of women's Champs League semifinals happening this weekend as you're listening to them. So, please tune into that. And we want to thank all of our supporters. As always patreon.com/burnitalldown. It really doesn't take much to make a big difference and help make this podcast possible. Follow us on Twitter @burnitdownpod, burnitalldownpod@gmail.com. We got our website, where you can get transcripts and show notes and all of that fun stuff. We want to thank our producer Tressa Versteeg and our social media guru, Shelby Weldon, for helping us get this podcast out every week. We'll talk to you all soon. To quote our Brenda, burn on and not out.

Shelby Weldon