Episode 207: A Gastronomic Exploration of Sport
Shireen Ahmed, Lindsay Gibbs and Brenda Elsey start this gastronomic episode with their favorite kids' books about sports. Then they dig into the main course of the conversation: food, sports, food and sports. They discuss food based competitions, the impact of stadium food prices on vendors, classic food-event associations (we see you, tennis), the popcorn obsessed Steph Curry and more. Next, you'll hear a teaser from Lindsay's interview this week with Ashley Hart, the CEO and co-founder of She Plays, the first US fantasy sports site exclusively for women's sports. Following is the ever-flaming Burn Pile and the ever-glowing Torchbearers, including the Santa Clara women's soccer team as NCAA champions. They wrap of the show 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.
Links
5 absurd food-based sports you couldn't even make up: https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/food-sports-strange-international-competitions-involving-grub
9 Famous Baseball Stadium Vendors: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/21651/9-famous-baseball-stadium-vendors
Stadium Food Is Suddenly Getting Cheaper: https://www.eater.com/2018/8/29/17785134/stadium-food-fan-friendly-prices-atlanta-falcons-texas-longhorns
Barbecue and baseball: A love letter to Kansas City’s two favorite pastimes https://theathletic.com/2181361/2020/11/10/barbecue-and-baseball-a-love-letter-to-kansas-citys-two-favorite-pastimes
Steph Curry Ranks Popcorn: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/12/sports/basketball/stephen-curry-warriors-popcorn
PB & J: The NBA’s Secret Addiction https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/presents18931717/the-nba-secret-addiction
Boston Celtics' Enes Kanter Finds Taste Of Home In Boston's Halal Food https://www.wgbh.org/news/lifestyle/2019/11/05/boston-celtics-enes-kanter-finds-taste-of-home-in-bostons-halal-food
Weirdest Foods Served at Sporting Events: https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/weirdest-stadium-concession-foods-2351e4306f904f01/
9 of the strangest traditions in sports: https://tribune.com.pk/story/1141242/9-strangest-traditions-sports
Transcript
Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, and welcome to this week's episode of Burn It All Down. It is the feminist sports podcast you need. Shireen here, and I am joined by the wonderful Lindsay and amazing Brenda. Hello friends. How are we doing today?
Lindsay: Hi, we're good. [laughs]
Brenda: Hi. Good, good.
Shireen: This week our episode is phenomenal. We're going to get into a personal favorite topic of mine, one that I interrogate and immerse myself in: food. Food and sports. Before we start off, I actually have an announcement that I would like to make. Can I get a drum roll or a whistle or toot toot or whatever you guys want to do, please?
Lindsay: Wait, you want us to do a drum roll now?
Shireen: The Burn It All Down team is going on break for the month of June. Yay, resting! Yay, retooling. Yay, recalibrating. We will however be dropping new interviews, and this is going to be amazing. We're going to come back with our usual fantastic and timely coverage, particularly around the Olympics. So, look for those interviews in your feed. And I do hope everybody gets a chance for some repose in the month of June, along with your favorite podcasters. Now: books, books for kids. I love kid’s books. I actually have a really fun kid’s book collection that I don't share with my actual children, but I wanted to talk about something really quickly.
Bonnie Tsui, friend of the show who was actually with us on episode 71, actually dropped a new book called Sarah and the Big Wave: the True Story of the First Woman to Surf Mavericks. She's a wonderful, wonderful, beautiful writer, and the book is gorgeous, and congratulations to Bonnie. I suggest everybody pick it up. So, in addition to Bonnie's new book, which is absolutely my favorite, it's written by racialized woman, it's about women in sport and particularly in surfing. I wanted to ask what your favorite books are for kids around sport. Lindsay?
Lindsay: I am not a parent, [laughs] and I didn't really read sports books as a child. So, this question is not super duper in my wheelhouse. It's just a confession. But a few years ago, Ivory Latta, who was at the time of the Washington Mystics, released a children's book called Despite the Height, about how she succeeded in basketball despite being short. And I was covering the Mystics at the time and so I ordered it and gave it to my little niece. It's very good, it's a very fun book. So I'm going to say that one.
Shireen: I love that. I also wanted to mention Batouly Camara, who’s been on our show, former UConn player. And also Kayla Gray, who plays for the Canadian national women's basketball team, also WNBA, also wrote children's books and they're great. You should check them out. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Le Chandail de Hockey by Roch Carrier, which is a staple in probably every Canadian home, talking about a young boy who's a Montreal Canadiens fan, but his mother accidentally orders a Maple Leafs jersey and he has to wear it. It's a beautiful story. It's absolutely one of the first stories where, you know, you interrogate the idea of being left out in such a pronounced way. It's actually a really, really great story.
I was fortunate enough to be on the Maple Leafs podcast last year to talk about that, and it's great. We'll put it in the show notes just for fun. Brenda, you’re a mama. You're an educator. You read. You read about sports. Tell me your favs.
Brenda: I do, and both of you are making me want to read these things, but I have to admit the first time I heard this question, “What are your favorite children's sports books?” all I could think of is all the books I've read by kind of a romanticizing white male journalist, and I thought, by children? I think that most of the sports books I read feel like they're by children, for children. [laughs] And I know that's mean, but it's also true. So, I find a lot of sports books…I hate to say this, but have a very romanticized view of sports. And I guess my kids haven't had such a seamless integration, like, their gym classes, their scrimmages with boys, my girls haven't always had this triumphalist experience. I guess maybe that's why they just never loved the ones that are kind of laying around. But yeah, now you're inspiring me.
Shireen: Food. We need it. We love it. [Lindsay snorts] We think about– [laughter]
Lindsay: I’m sorry! [laughing] Are we doing…Is this an ad for food? Just food in general?
Brenda: Did you know that food needed a publicist?
Lindsay: [laughing] It found one!
Brenda: Because if it does, it’s Shireen. [laughter]
Shireen: Okay. I love food! I do. I feel strongly about this.
Brenda: It's a controversial take.
Lindsay: Please read them, please. Please continue to read it! Okay I will be quiet. Promise not to laugh. Please do it.
Shireen: Okay. Food. We love it. We think about it. It is important in our sports spaces. In preparing for this segment, there was so many topics that could cross weave into the field of sports – the field of sports, get it? So, I wanted to talk today about food, the history, the idea behind it, either sold in stadiums, the traditions around sports, traditions and celebrations. Brenda.
Brenda: So, there's something I just feel…I’m so sorry for being such a downer all the time.
Lindsay: You’re not that sorry.
Brenda: You know, I don't make the world this way. It's not my fault that everything's broken.
Lindsay: She's not that sorry.
Brenda: I am a little bit, because I support passion for food in this case, but I feel like we have to preface it by saying I think it's too far – food contests, food eating contests. They make me really sad. I just have to say, like, when I think food in sports, I want to just make sure that we can still condemn the Nathan's hot dog eating contest, for example, which takes place in Brooklyn every 4th of July. I've been there. It's been going on since 1916, and you know, New York is a place where there've been like refugees from famine. It's just, you know, what is more patriotic and American than forcing down a hundred hotdogs in 20 minutes?
Shireen: 100?
Brenda: Jeez. I don't even know. Whatever it is, its… [gagging noise] And anyway, that's first on the list our preface, and now we can get to the fun stuff, I feel like.
Shireen: That's what I wanted to get into, like, traditions around food and around sport. Whether it's peanuts at a baseball game…D’you know what's that song? “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack…” I think what what's really interesting is around food in different places. Like, I was in Argentina during the 2018 World Cup and there's a tradition of having a carbonated water and an espresso as you watch a game. That's it. And that's very much what I saw in these cafes. And so, the different places and different worlds…I come from a family that is really a Pakistani family, that's super into cricket. When we watch it we have kebab rolls with paratha, and actually my foray into cricket was because of the food, was the traditions. And, you know, that's obviously layered with family traditions and whatnot, but the idea of food being sport also intrigued me.
So, the Thrillist, there's a really good article we'll link in the show notes. I found out about the pea shooting championships. This is a thing. In a small English village of Witcham…So, I'm going to read this. “Every year, literally tens of people, not tens of thousands, tens of people gather in the little English village of Witcham to compete in the world pea shooting championships. Competitors stand 12 feet away from a circular target made of putty and fire pea beans as strongly accurately as their lungs and eyes will allow. Not to be confused with firing pee streams at a sporting event, which is pretty much given after six $12 beers.
Some competitors have developed specialized laser-sighted pea shooters, much to the dismay of their more traditional counterparts who prefer to do things the old fashioned way. Picture an arms race, only less deadly and more silly. The best shot at Witcham gets crowned pea shooting champion for that year and enjoys all the perks that go along with it – mainly just bragging rights of the best pea shooter in Witcham.” So, I found this fascinating, and also maybe they were bored.
Brenda: Well, you know, it's funny because kind of the whole emergence of modern sport does tend to happen around agrarian cycles. So there is a connection with food in terms of, you know, in the medieval period when you don't have enough to do, it's like a harvest festival because you're done with harvesting all the food and that's where we see like games being created and modern sport kind of take hold. And a lot of that, yeah, it has to do with those cycles. Or even baseball in Southern California – there’s a great article by José Alamillo where the farm managers didn't want farm workers to unionize, but then the cycle meant they didn't have that much to do. So, baseball kind of took hold there as one of the ways that they encouraged workers to kind of make use of their time.
Shireen: And have we seen that kind of solidarity in other places in sport?
Brenda: Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, you mentioned Argentina – a big part of the emergence of football there is labor unions pushing it. But anyway, I mean, I think the agrarian traditions has a link with food that's kind of interesting. So I guess I'm not surprised about the pea shooters, whatever. I don't know that I can really picture the pea laser pea shooting, but it makes sense to me that there's some connection there.
Shireen: I mean, in the article it looks like the photos of all the equipment is pretty much handmade. Like, I don't know if there's like a big industry for pea shooting equipment or not. I'm not sure. You know, something else that I wanted to mention is about, as we talk about workers and the industry, is vendors, Brenda, and that's something that you looked into as well.
Brenda: Yeah. I remember in February and March on Burn It All Down we discussed this and we were taking a look as COVID really started to hit and sports started to be canceled. There were workers that were being laid off really early, like the vendors and stadium workers, and there was even some players volunteering their salary to keep the workers employed and it really laid bare the vulnerability of that sector of sports workers. And then, you know, there was pressure on the owners, like, why are rookies who don't have the biggest contracts on the team and not the owners stepping forward to help some of these vendors? Because that is one of the exciting things about going to sporting events – or I think it's fun!
Even if as a vegetarian I don't eat all of their stuff, it's still cool to have somebody walking around, and a lot of these vendors have their own like dances and chants and songs, and they become kind of like figures and icons of the sport, you know, local heroes, and it keeps it kind of local, and TV can't really convey that. So it's one of the things that I think makes it exciting about live events.
Shireen: Lindsay, speaking about food and stadiums, you came across some really interesting stuff too.
Lindsay: Of course. I always associate, personally, stadium food as just being really expensive and like a treat, basically, kind of like a movie theater thing, you know? Where you go in and part of the price of the whole thing is buying the $10 popcorn or whatever it is, and the overpriced beers and everything. I've certainly had that experience at Carolina Panthers games at Bank of America stadium and Washington Nationals games. You know, eating is part of it, right? Treating yourself to some foods and some drinks when you go to these sporting events. But I found apparently a couple of years ago, Eater wrote an article about how some NFL teams are, because ticket prices became so exorbitant – basically you can't get into NFL games for less than $100 now, right? Even the nosebleeds.
So, there are some of these really gaudy stadiums that are trying to kind of like offset that with cheaper food. So Arthur Blank did this for the Atlanta Falcons games. You can get like a refillable soda for $2, pretzels, hot dogs, popcorn, all $2. Apparently the Baltimore Orioles do a similar thing. The Atlanta Hawks, the Detroit Lions. I think the Masters golf tournament famously has really cheap prices that have kind of remained the same over the years. I do have to say, like, that's interesting to me. I like the idea of kind of almost your ticket price like subsidizing the food cost a little bit? [laughs] And that just kind of being part of it. I think my only concern is just…I mean, the vendors and the people working there should get paid more anyways. So, you know, making sure that these lower prices doesn't impact their pay, but I'm assuming they don't get more of the higher prices.
Shireen: So, I have a lot of questions about that, just in the sense, like, how does it affect them? Are they independently owned businesses within that that rent out the space? While I do appreciate the experience being cheaper for the fans, I think about the small business owners at the same time, and lowering prices of food…Like if you've got vendors that have traditions of really good food, lowering the price means the food will be processed and not as healthy. And then you know, as I said this, I'm thinking about going to eat at the Scotiabank Center in Toronto is ridiculously expensive. I'm like, are those peanut M&M’s really worth $6 a pack? Are they? They're very expensive. But then again, the Rogers Center in Toronto has excellent French fries.
And I think about this a lot as I engage in sporting events. When y'all come to Toronto we'll check it out. In fact, if anyone's out there that wants Burn It All Down to do a food tour, please email, because I would be very open to this at stadiums. But Lindsay, food associating with different sporting events, what do you got? What is your experience with different foods and different sports?
Lindsay: Yeah, right now I'm just thinking about being in college in New York, and speaking of expensive stadium foods, when we would go to Yankees games, like when I was at NYU and then in my early 20s, there was this random corner store, you know, typical New York deli, like a couple blocks away that was kind of hidden off the main. So we’d go in there and buy 40’s and brown bag them and just chug the 40’s before we would go into the games because we were all broke, so we didn't have to spend that much money on beer when we got in there. And I'll admit, I think sometimes we were underage and probably couldn't get beer in there, but the corner store didn't care. So, I do have a great memory of just being young and brown bagging 40’s before Yankees games, [laughs] which is just hard to fathom that much alcohol right now!
Shireen: Brenda, do you have something like that, a memory like that?
Brenda: If I brown bag 40’s? You know, I've been known to brown bag a 40, but in South America you can't bring in any alcohol to football games because, well, first of all, yeah, they're just throwing stuff on the field and trying to hurt players, and then they get drunk and hurt each other. That was one of the controversies of the 2014 World Cup was when Budweiser as a sponsor tried to force Brazil – and did force Brazil with FIFA’s muscle – to sell alcohol in the stadiums, and they really don’t, and they really ban that. So, there's a lot of chugging 40’s before the game. People are showing up pretty drunk because they can't get drunk when they're there. So, that's kind of an interesting dynamic.
But also, football lasts about 1/100th of the time of baseball, so it kind of goes by quickly [laughs] and then you're out of there and then there's a lot of kerfuffles after and around the stadium. So, what that means is that rather than so much within the stadium there's a lot of food, especially like pizza around Brazilian stadiums. That is a smell that I associate. There's this idea that you have to kind of cram it all in right before, it's more of a tailgate experience than the commodified food that we see here – though that's changing, because the owners are looking at places like Yankee Stadium and going like, whoa, we can make another a hundred million dollars in this year or whatever.
Shireen: Linz, so, some of the sporting events have particular foods.
Lindsay: I always think of tennis and all the different foods associated with the different tennis tournaments. You got strawberries and cream and the Pimm’s at Wimbledon, which are classic. The US open tennis tournament is known for having incredible food because it's in New York. I mean, it is overpriced, but you can get every single…It’s basically like an excerpt of the New York streets that they kind of bring in. So it's way more variety than your typical food court, you know? And I love it. For things like tennis tournaments, it's really key because you're going for an all…You know, until you get to the final rounds, you're not going for just one match. Early on, you know, that first week, you're often going for the entire day, you buy day passes. So a huge part of the experience at a tournament is where you get food and drinks, right? Because you're going to take breaks and you're gonna experience the grounds, and that's just like a huge, huge part of tennis.
French Open, I don't know what they eat, but every single time there's a midday match there are no French people there because they are having three hour lunches every day. [laughs] So it's just like, it's this thing where like the corporate boxes are like completely empty, even if it's like a Nadal match starting noon. It’s empty because they will not have their long lunches interrupted. And I appreciate, you know, I respect that.
And then the Australian Open, of course, there's Vegemite, which is a sponsor, and every year they do funny compilations of non-Australian tennis players trying Vegemite for the first time and doing reactions. I don't know…It’s always fun. It's always in good fun. The Australian Open always kind of produces them themselves or the ATP tour, the WTA tour does it. I don't know what Vegemite is really, but I know it’s at the Australian Open.
Shireen: Just a fun little anecdote, the first time I went to go see a live tennis match was Serena Williams playing at the Rogers Cup in 2019, and I'd never been to a live tennis match before and I didn't realize how quiet it was. So, perhaps buying chips and a salad at this concession stand wasn't the best idea because it was…So, for anybody out there who's never been to a tennis match, please don't buy chips and end up like me, because literally it is silent in this space. I wasn't made aware of this before I went. It's not like a hockey game that I'm used to, it’s not like a football match that I'm used to. It's very quiet. So, select your food choices accordingly.
One of the things that I actually did want to mention that some of the more interesting places that I found out about doing a bit, and our friend of the show, Meg Linehan told me about the Seattle Mariners serving chapulines, from what I understand them to be – Brenda explained this to me – which are crickets, which are fried crickets. Brenda, what did you explain about chapulines?
Brenda: Well, they're just a very popular Mexican snack item, so, they're fried and they're crispy and you know, it's not quite like just the crickets that might be in your garden. And I thinkfor a lot of people that was kind of cool, it seemed like a way to include an interesting Latinx tradition, Mexican American, there, and I guess they were really popular. I mean, as a vegetarian, I count insects. So, no thank you. But but I think it was pretty cool for people to see.
Shireen: Yeah. I mean, there's some other really interesting celebrations. This was one of the things that when you win something big, we see after championship wins, people are spraying champagne. Like the NWSL champs, Houston Dash were walking around with their beer, sponsored beer. Like, we see this very often. However, there is one sport that does not use champagne: the Indy 500 has a milk celebration, everybody. Milk. And this I'm also quoting from one of the articles that we'll have in the show notes.
“You win something big, you pop open a bottle of champagne. This widespread celebratory tradition is alive at IndyCar Series’s Indianapolis 500 too, except that in case of champagne, the winner sips a bottle of milk. This healthy yet weird tradition was born in 1933 when winner Louis Meyer photographed drinking a glass of buttermilk after the race. A dairy company sniffed a marketing opportunity and began offering milk bottles to winners every year — a tradition that has stuck since.” Did not know that. So, in all of the things too, there are players. Lindsay, can you talk a little bit about food in the NBA?
Lindsay: One of the things I love about the NBA since the seasons are so long and there's so many games, I think there's a lot of chance for kind of exploration of different things. So, first of all, there's this New York times piece written by Mark Stein in 2019 about Steph Curry's popcorn problem. It's all about how popcorn is a key part of every single Steph Curry pregame warmup, and I just absolutely love it. My favorite part about the Curry story though is that he gets the popcorn from whatever arena he is in. You know, as they're on these road games, he doesn't bring his own popcorn.
So, Mark Stein asked Curry if he was prepared to officially compile a 1 to 29 list of the popcorn offerings at all 29 arenas, and Steph Curry – this is in the middle of 2019, I think MVP season, like, lots going on on the court – the article says Curry not only agreed, but also suggested scoring five factors on a scale of one to five to support the rankings: freshness, saltiness, crunchiness, butter, and presentation. So, Steph Curry rated all 29 popcorns, and I got to say: the Dallas Mavericks are the best, total score 24; Brooklyn nets at 23. All the way down the bottom we've got my Charlotte Hornets and then the Staples Center where the Clippers and the Lakers.
Brenda: I really want to see this correlated to his performance.
Lindsay: We really should!
Brenda: I wand to do, like, how does Steph Curry perform when in a bad popcorn arena versus a good one.
Shireen: And where, where is the Air Canada Center or the Scotiabank Center in Toronto on this? Where did we fare?
Lindsay: I think you're in the top 10. Actually, number six. So freshness is a three and crunchiness is a three, but saltiness, butter and presentation all got a four. So… [laughs]
Shireen: I mean, represent, Raptors!
Lindsay: I mean, it’s just incredible. I had actually forgotten that this article was so detailed, and I love it absolutely so much. But then there's also…This kind of has a companion story by Baxter Holmes of ESPN, this is in 2017, all about what he calls the NBA’s secret addiction, which is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for pregame. I’m going to read another lead, and I'm just going to take my time here because this Baxter Holmes lead deserves to be read. “The legend has been passed down by NBA generations, chronicled like Homer's Odyssey. The tale they tell is of Kevin Garnett and the 2007-08 Celtics and the seminal moment of revolution.
Brian Doo, Celtics strength and conditioning coach, recalls it as if it were yesterday. How, before a game in December of that season, an unnamed Celtic, his identity lost to history like the other horsemen on Paul Revere's midnight ride, complained to Doo of incipient hunger pangs. ‘Man, I could go for PB & J,’ the player said, and then Garnett, in an act with historical reverberations, uttered than now fabled words, ‘Yeah. Let's get on that.’” And all of a sudden they did, and PB & J sandwiches – some labeled strawberries, some grapes, some crunchy – and it became an integral part not only of the Celtics, but across the league. And you know, there's a lot of of thoughts in the piece of why, but one thing is just comforting. It's not that unhealthy, you know, you've got a little bit of balance of the protein and the carbs and the fat and it's just become a thing. But I just love stories like that.
Brenda: Okay. So, call back to the top of the show where I said white male sportswriting by and for children. I just want to say, like Paul Revere– [laughs]
Lindsay: But that's fun!
Brenda: Okay. It’s adorable. It's adorable, but it is juvenile! It’s lovely, I love it.
Lindsay: It sounded more like it was written by Shireen to me. [laughs]
Shireen: I love this. I'm here for this report.
Brenda: No, I do too. I'm just saying. You know, women's sports, don't get coverage, but this does.
Lindsay: No, I don't think that…I disagree. I would love women’s sports to get this type of coverage.
Brenda: I would too. I'm just saying, there's so much taken up by these types of things. It's adorable, but you know, I think it's good proof.
Shireen: I volunteer as tribute to follow the WNBA around and watch them eat and photograph it. I would be so down to do a story like this.
Brenda: Yeah. I would read it.
Lindsay: I don't think we have to make it an either/or thing because this is some of like my favorite stuff. I'm not even kidding. Like, I just love…I don't know. It's very humanizing, right? To think of these great athletes eating PB & J, and Steph Curry literally ranking, like, caring so much about the popcorn that he has his own rankings. That is the ultimate, to me, like, “stars: they're just like us.” [laughs]
Shireen: Well, this is one of the articles that I came across, and this was talking about how athletes at home…I mean, all of us remember in the beginning of the pandemic, because we all watch Serge Ibaka who was still at the Raptors at that time, he has this specific show about food and different kinds of foods, where he feeds people – and Serge Ibaka, if you're listening, I'm happy to come on your show anytime. There was a really cool article about Enes Kanter, about cooking kebabs and how his favorite is this kebab, Turkish food. A particular dish really helped him. And so he also is a Muslim basketball player and he likes to eat halal food. And halal is specific to this type of way the meat is slaughtered. It's called dhabihah. So, it's also just labeled halal, which actually just means permissible.
So, he ranked cities – like, unofficially, not like Steph Curry in the organized way the popcorn is ranked – but he just generally knows that Boston has a really great scene for halal food. So he started taking his teammates with him and, you know, it says, “feeding someone as big and active as Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter…” This is actually from 2019. Now, Enes Kanter is actually with the Portland Trailblazers, but at this time it was talking about him being there. He loves going out for shawarma, he loves going out and he looks for Turkish restaurants wherever he travels to.
His handlers, I guess, try to find Turkish restaurants for him to go to. And when you're away, he says in this and it's really profound. He says, “America gave me a lot. America gave me so much, but in the end you still want to talk your own language, eat your food and hang out with your own people. And that's what food does, just bringing people together.” And I think that's really great because restaurants and smaller restaurants are actually a place of community gathering. And that's something that we think about, international players, and if they come, how much food means to them and how it is a connector. Like, I can't wait to eat with y'all in person.
Lindsay: But you know, it's fun to kind of talk about all these pregame rituals that these NBA players have and stuff, but I think it's also, on a serious note, food and nutrition and everything is a really big part of athletes' routines, as we know. And of course the NBA has, and a lot of these men's sports leagues, have all the resources in the world to provide kind of whatever the athletes need, but in women's sports leagues a lot of times, like, even in CBAs, they have to fight to get more food offered them, like pre-practice, post practice, pregame. But I know that this has been a big deal also with the NWHL. I know it was talked about in the CBA negotiations. I'm not sure if it's in the exact CBA negotiations with their players association fighting to make sure that they had meals paid for, like, while they're on the road.
And just basic food spreads…When the Mystics and the Wizards are now the same training facility, and it's a nicer training facility, and so one of the things that they talked about – the Mystics players, a couple of years ago – when they moved there was that they get this same pregame spreads or pre-practice spreads and food availability that the men do, and just how much of a game changer that's been for them to have all of that there. And so, you know, obviously popcorn and PB & J are part of that, but also just getting more food provided to women athletes from the organizations is a form of care. It's a form of caring for your labor, and it it matters.
Shireen: For our upcoming interview, Lindsay interviews Ashley Hart, the CEO, and co-founder of She Plays, the first US fantasy sports site dedicated exclusively to women's sports. That drops on Thursday.
Ashley Hart: I would go into stores and be like, all right, let's look at all the sports magazines and let's see how many women are on the cover. And it would be like one out of 34, if one, you know? So, it kind of just became an idea of like, okay, that'd be really cool to help give them more exposure. And what's still missing that does exist and is popular in the men's sport side, and it came down to fantasy sports.
Shireen: Now, moving on to everyone's favorite segment, the burn pile. Brenda, what are you torching?
Brenda: So, I have to thank flamethrower Tracee with two e's. I don't know your name, but we appreciate you calling our attention to…First, there was some rain in the United States, in the Gulf region, if you can imagine. And the NCAA Baton Rouge’s women's golf regional of 2021 had to be canceled, and a lot of people have been taking some pictures of the golf course and what it looked like, including Sara Byrne. She’s also on Twitter and has been posting different things, including a petition. They had no provisions for this happening. It was like as if it never rained before, you know? They just had no idea what to do. So, they ended up canceling it. And then other venues offered to host it, and again the NCAA just seemed absolutely ineffectual, like an obstacle, because they had to wait for the NCAA’s permission.
So, not only did they not help them to reschedule it, but they became an obstacle by the slow response. So once again, why NCAA? I want to burn them being an obstacle to collegiate women's sport, and also they just need more independence. This is just ridiculous, because they just don't care and they're not planning to. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: I'm going to go next. Lavazza espresso is actually one of the main sponsors for Arsenal Football Club, and they are working behind the scenes, and although the FA has recently decided they're not going to take punitive measures against players, which they formally did forever, about anything relating to racial justice or social justice or any type of equity-seeking campaign, Lavazza espresso has decided that they want to silence Egyptian Mohamed Elneny for his tweet supporting Palestine.
Although Arsenal didn't say anything publicly against Elneny and the players seemingly have the right to say what they want on their own social media, Lavazza is not happy about this and feels as if sports shouldn't be political. I did not have a conversation with them. So, I'm paraphrasing what their actions mean to me. And this is something that I just did a hot take on, the issue of Palestine liberation in sports. And we talk about this, Dr. Sophia, and it just dropped on Friday, so have a listen to that. But specifically about the issue of players being silenced by sponsors, and although their club team may allow them or permit them to say what they want, the sponsors have said teams are applying pressure. So, you have capitalism that is bulldozing over free speech and any type of athlete activism. If you wonder why players are being silenced, maybe this is why. I want to take all of that bullshit and I want to burn it all down. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Linz, what you got?
Lindsay: Yeah. This is something that's been bothering me for a while and it reached a tipping point this week. Layshia Clarendon, great friend of the show, wonderful point guard, got cut by the New York Liberty and it was a surprise to many, but when you look at their salary cap situation and I guess the team's desire to bring on young talent, you know, there's some, I guess, “logic” quote unquote behind it from, you know…This isn't necessarily me ragging on the GM choices of the Liberty, but it's looking at bigger picture in the WNBA and how desperate…We are beyond desperate for expansion, because we are the point with WNBA talent where we're just losing it. We're going to just start hemorrhaging talent in the United States.
And so, right now there are 12 teams, 12 roster spots on each team. Although teams only have to have 11 players on their roster, and due to salary cap reasons, because the salary cap only went up about 30% whereas the top salary for this last CBA doubled.
So, what’s happening is teams are spending more on their elite elite players, right? And then everyone else needs to be on really cheap contracts, which is really rookie contracts. We're just seeing so many WNBA players having their careers cut short. We're seeing so many young players never get a chance in the league, and there's no G league. There's no place for these players to develop, right? I’m just kind of devastated.
It's making players like Seimone Augustus, who probably could have played this year, but Seimone decided to retire for one reason, because she knew spots were so rare on WNBA rosters and she felt like her body was nearing the end. So, I think she might've retired earlier than she would have had WNBA rosters been closer to the 15 that NBA rosters are, or if there were more teams in the league, more opportunities. I'm just devastated by all of this. We've seen so many phenomenal players get cut. You're not getting to see…Like, we have right now on the Liberty, there’s Betnijah Laney who…It took her years to find her footing in the WNBA, and now she's literally one of the league’s best players, and I don't think we're going to get stories like that anymore because there's not going to be places for these players to go.
So, I would just like to burn the fact that people haven't come forward to fully fund new WNBA teams, and I’d just like to burn the lack of opportunities. It's wild to think there are the same number of opportunities right now in the WNBA that basically there were in the year 2000, and if you think about the number, how much more talent there is right now in the women's game than there was 20 years ago, I think that's absolutely infuriating. And there's only more talent coming in, like, every year more and more talent comes in. I know that getting cut is part of it. I know it's a business. I'm not saying under any system we’ll lose good players, but the bar is too high right now. The bar is too high for players to be able to make a roster, and the women's game in the United States is losing too many people far too soon, and…Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: After all that burning, we would like a little more levity. Brenda, can you get us started?
Brenda: Nina King is the first woman and racialized woman to become an athletic director of Duke University.
Shireen: I just want to say congratulations to everybody out there who watched the WNBA season kickoff, 25th season – also up 25% from last year, yay, you! Linz?
Lindsay: So, this week, look, I know some people get a little sick of the Sabrina Ionescu stans, and we certainly want to highlight all players in the league, but her feat this week was just too much. She became the fastest player in WNBA history by three years to record a triple double, which is absolutely mind boggling. She had 26 points, 12 assists, and 10 rebounds to help New York beat the Minnesota Lynx last Tuesday, and the Liberty are off to a great start. Sabrina Ionescu, man. She’s…Whew. She’s good. This was her sixth career game. The second person to do it was in ’99. Sheryl Swoopes did it in her 59th game.
Shireen: Damn. Brenda?
Brenda: Brenda. Kari Miller-Ortiz is a Paralympian and three time medalist who will be doing analysis and commentary for NBC sitting volleyball during the Olympics.
Shireen: Can I get a drum roll, please?
[drumroll]
You know I love that. This week's torchbearers are the Santa Clara women's soccer team for winning the NCAA championship in penalty shots! I just want to say that I was so excited about this because Santa Clara is a university that Juliette Paxton and Jesminder Bhamra went to in Bend It Like Beckham, so I can never not hear [British accent] “Santa Clara!” in Juliette Paxton's voice. So thanks, Jules. Congratulations to all these formidable athletes, what an incredible match to watch. It was riveting. It was also penalty shots. So, for everybody, both teams involved, I just want to say thank you for that. And Florida State, you guys were amazing and I hope you continue with these incredible feats. What's good, Lindsay? What's good?
Lindsay: So, last night, Friday night, I met my cousins who are my friends in Greensboro at a bar and we had dinner [laughs] and one of them brought their baby who’s 15 months and we all drank – well, not the baby, but it was so much fun! I think I am good at self isolating, even not under pandemic circumstances, but I think that you forget some of the quote unquote “smaller" things that we've lost during this, do you know what I mean? I felt more like myself than I have in so long. It was my first real outing, you know, like not having a mask we’re all vaccinated, it just felt so normal. I was watching a little bit of the Mystics-Liberty game on my phone underneath the table, which, once again, for me, that's back to normal! [laughs] So, it was just perfect. And so, the pandemic still exists. I know I'm very lucky to be in a place where most of my family and friends are vaccinated and I'm vaccinated. But look, I’m gonna enjoy it.
Shireen: Amazing. I'm gonna go next. I wanted to say that half of my babies have been first dose vaccinated and the other half will be upcoming this week. So, I'm very excited about that. I do live in a hot spot, what’s designated as the hot spot, so they're prioritized, but I'm also very grateful. It also means we're at risk as a racialized family as well. So, I love that. I just want to shout out my son, Sallahuddin, my third guy, who actually made the provincial training camp for volleyball again, which means he will leave me for 10 days in July. So I'm trying to plan how to go with him, and he's like, please don't come, mama. I'm like, no, I will get an Airbnb and be with you forever. I won’t. Look at Lindsay's face. She's like, please don’t do that.
Lindsay: [laughing] I’m horrified!
Shireen: I know you’re horrified. I know. And so obviously he's going to go and he's going to grow and he's so exhausted. The last time he did this camp he had to do it online last year, and I watched him and I watched other athletes have to practice and do everything online. And to Lindsay's point, what we've lost, and it may seem like nothing, but, you know, I have kids whose arguably the trajectory of their life was changed and hampered, and, you know, disrupted by this pandemic, which is scary and terrible. I think we shouldn't minimize people and what they've lost, and I'm really happy for him. I probably will show up in Niagara at some point and just like drive by. But I’ll…Maybe not.
I also wanted to say that I'm recognizing the place where I am, where getting vaccinated as possible and it doesn't cost anything, and that is something that I do really do want to recognize. I also have been taken up by the Leafs and Canadiens playoff series, which is something that hasn't happened in 42 years and which is a really big deal. So, also shout out to Leafs captain John Tavares, who was hit with a really bad injury. So if anybody saw that, it was really horrific and, you know, just sending lots of good prayers up for Johnny, the captain of the Leafs – something I never thought I would say, but I am saying it. And that's about it. That's what's good for me. Bren, Brenny Bren Bren?
Brenda: What's good for me is as we are recording, I am stretching to do a half marathon, which means I will be so tired in a couple of hours that I won't be able to be stressed about anything. Hopefully I won't throw up. I had some Chinese food for breakfast, may or may not have been the best idea, but I did have oatmeal after that. So, [laughs] I don't really know what to tell you. If anybody knows my running style, it's I don't train at all. I just mostly run, you know, about five miles, six times a week. I know people are like, ew, you’re bragging –honestly, it's just my only mental health escape right now. It's got nothing to do with like competition. I'm so slow. I don't even look at my time. But I know that it's going to be a good experience just for my mental health, physical health, getting outdoors. So I appreciate that my old ass body can still do it.
Shireen: I love you and I am always awed by you doing this voluntarily.
Brenda: [laughs] Again, Shireen, hopefully most people out there aren't doing it at gunpoint. [laughter] If you are, please call 911 and don't listen to this podcast.
Lindsay: [laughs] My brain automatically went to – sorry, this is real dark – somebody trying to make that like the next fitness trends, you know what I mean? Like, we will literally come over if you want training, we will literally come to your house– [laughter]
Shireen: Terrible. Oh my god.
Brenda: Only in America.
Lindsay: The next training program. Oh, god.
Shireen: What are we watching this week? While WNBA season has begun and we are definitely watching that, the NHL playoffs have started as well as the NBA playoffs. The PWHPA is scheduled to begin and will be aired in unprecedented ways in networks that had never previously carried women's sports. So, please watch it. The French Open, exclamation points times 15 added by Lindsay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So please watch that, and eat a baguette. That's it for this week in Burn It All Down. Although we're done for now, you can always burn all day and night with our fabulous array of merchandise, including a brand new series of things at Bonfire. What better way to crush toxic patriarchy in sports and sports media than by getting somebody you love something with our logo on it? Check it out on our social media. It's linked.
This show was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media manager. Burn It All Down lives on the Blue Wire podcast network but can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and TuneIn. We appreciate your reviews and feedback, so please subscribe and rate and let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @BurnItAllDownPod and on Twitter @BurnItDownPod. You can email at us, burnitalldownpod@gmail.com. Check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, where you'll find previous episodes, transcripts, and a link to our Patreon. We would appreciate you subscribing, sharing and rating our show. It helps us do the work we love to do and keep burning what needs to be burned. We wish you continued safety, health, and joy wherever you can muster. And as Brenda always says, burn on and not out.