Episode 226: Very Superstitious
In this episode Amira Rose Davis, Shireen Ahmed and Jessica Luther dive into sports superstitions. But first, they start the show with some recent headlines that had them ROFL. Then they discuss some of the most infamous sports superstitions and rituals of athletes in hockey, tennis and global football as well as their own sports superstitions. They also discuss the how fans' superstitions form, the murky line between a tradition and a superstition and the ways sports superstitions often mirror religious rituals.
Following this superstitious discussion, you'll hear a preview of Amira's interview with authors of Hail Mary, Frankie de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D'Arcangelo. Then, the team burns all that needs to be burned in sport this week on The Burn Pile. Next, they lift up those making sports better, including Torchbearers of the Week, nine student activists from Northwestern University that stormed the football field during a game to demand better from their university. They wrap up 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. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
(PDF) The Psychological Benefits of Superstitious Rituals in Top Sport: A Study Among Top Sportspersons: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.314.2165&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Athletes who wear “lucky socks” aren’t wrong: Psychologists say superstitions yield real advantages https://qz.com/757757/athletes-who-wear-lucky-socks-arent-wrong-psychologists-say-superstitions-yield-real-advantages
Water Bottles, Lucky Numbers, And Obsessive Serving: The Weird And Brilliant Superstitions Of Tennis Players https://www.gq.com.au/fitness/sport/water-bottles-lucky-numbers-and-obsessive-serving-the-weird-and-brilliant-superstitions-of-tennis-players
The Strangest Superstitions in NHL History: https://thehockeywriters.com/the-strangest-superstitions-in-nhl-history
Jinx, Control, and the Necessity of Adjustment: Superstitions Among Football Fans https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.740645
12 weird and unique football fan traditions explained: https://fneews.blogspot.com/2018/11/12-weird-and-unique-football-fan
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the sports podcast that you absolutely need in your life. Amira here. I am joined by Jessica and Shireen today, and we are going to be talking about sports superstitions. Of course we're going to be burning things and telling you about torchbearers and what's good in our lives. But before we dive into all of that, there are some ridiculous things happening in the world of sports. And I would like to just read tweets and maybe a headline to see your reaction to some of these ridiculous things happening. So first, there was a tweet, that's a very online tweet. This is coming on the heels of Aaron Rodgers being ridiculous. “Have we considered the possibility that Aaron Rodgers is Nicki Minaj’s cousin's friend?” [laughter]
Shireen: Oh my god!
Jessica: That is so funny. So, Aaron Rodgers, it turns out, is not vaccinated. Has COVID, lied about being vaccinated by doing some like skeezy wordplay saying, “Yeah, I'm immunized,” in response to, “Are you vaccinated?” And then he went on Pat McAfee to just like, I mean, checklist of the anti-vax nonsense, like just a bingo card of it. [Shireen laughs]
Amira: “I heard it from my good friend, Joe Rogan…”
Jessica: “If you can get COVID once you have the vaccine, what's the point?” [Shireen laughs]
Amira: But it was peak Twitter.
Jessica: [laughs] It was peak Twitter.
Amira: Victoria said, “I bet he’s ‘allergic’ to latex too.”
Jessica: [laughs] That’s sort of my favorite. She's no longer a romance author, but she was for a long time.
Shireen: This is probably my favorite. This one.
Jessica: Like, all parts of Twitter were involved, is what I’m saying.
Shireen: I'm going to go down a rabbit hole. Thank you for distracting me during this episode.
Amira: Well, I want to distract you by one more rabbit hole to fall down. You have to hold on tight, because this headline packs a lot into it. “While we were all celebrating Halloween…” [laughing] Sorry. It’s so bad. [clears throat] Okay.
Jessica: It’s real, too.
Amira: This is a hundred percent real. So, there was something that happened last week during Halloween that has turned into a little bit of a thing around these parts where me and Jessica live. But worldwide, too.
Jessica: Deep in the heart of Texas. 🎶
Amira: This is a real headline looking back on the week that was. “UT football coach's pole-dancing girlfriend defends emotional support monkey that bit child.” [Shireen laughs]
Jessica: Just like, all those phrases together in that order are–
Amira: It’s just a lot.
Jessica: On Halloween! This child was bitten by the emotional support monkey–
Amira: –of an assistant UT football coach’s girlfriend, who also pole dances.
Shireen: Okay. The monkey…? No, not the monkey pole dances.
Jessica: No! [laughs]
Shireen: The woman! The woman. So, I know I'm not in Texas–
Jessica: I don't even know why you would–
Shireen: I have questions about this. You know this.
Jessica: –think that about the monkey! [Shireen laughs]
Amira: We all have questions about this, Shireen.
Jessica: They asked Steve Sarkisian about it!
Amira: [laughs] They did.
Jessica: The football coach at UT!
Amira: And there's a person at the game this weekend who had his sign taken down because he was making Monkeygate jokes. [Shireen laughs] So, this is what the head coach said. “That's a personal matter, not a distraction at all.” [Jessica laughs] So, I think the child's okay. Or else we wouldn't be kind of chuckling. But also, that headline will live rent-free in my head forever.
Shireen: The emotional support monkey has a name.
Amira: [laughs] I don't know the monkey’s name, Shireen.
Jessica: Gonna have to Google that one.
Amira: We will find it out for you, just for you.
Shireen: Tressa. [laughter]
Amira: Tressa! Our poor producer. Tressa’s like, “I'm going to produce a sports podcast!” [laughter] And now she’s Googling the name of an emotional support monkey. [laughs]
Jessica: And you know she is too. She’s gonna do it. [laughter] You know, I will say, if UT was having a good season–
Amira: This monkey would become the mascot!
Jessica: I know. It would become a superstition. So…
Amira: Look at you with the transition alley-oop, Jessica Luther.
Jessica: Everyone's lucky that it…Oh no! It’s named Gia! Is that real, Tressa? [laughter]
Shireen: Gia! Gia’s the name of the emotional support monkey. Oh my god.
Amira: So, as Jessica Luther mentioned, the thin line between the monkey becoming– [laughter]
Jessica: Okay. Hold on. Okay. Her stage name is Pole Assassin.
Amira: Oh yes. [laughter] That was what her Instagram thing was too.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. That was a wild ride that we just went on.
Amira: And also, if you haven't seen the video of the monkey on the pole with her– [Shireen laughs]
Jessica: What?!
Amira: Yeah, look…
Jessica: Oh, no! [laughter] If y’all haven’t seen the video…
Amira: They used to be in a routine together.
Jessica: Aw. She loves Gia.
Shireen: A capuchin monkey named Gia.
Jessica: Who apparently will do whatever to protect her from children. Aww. Well now it looks really cute. Oh, this is what happens when Shireen ask questions. [Shireen laughs]
Amira: So, the thin line between Monkeygate and that monkey becoming a Longhorn mascot is if UT was good or not good, because winning, turns out, helps make and breed and sustain superstition. But I have a lot of sports superstitions. And so I asked Jess and Shireen to come with me down this journey, this rabbit hole, of understanding why we believe the things we do around sports – whether it's playoff baseball, or just a random Sunday. And so there are some superstitions, traditions that have become superstitions. And I think a superstition is something you believe in because it helps you win. If you don't perform it, bad things happen. Whereas a tradition doesn't necessarily have to be tied to these desired outcomes. But there are traditional kinds of superstitions in sports that athletes believe help them perform better. Shireen, what sort of superstitions exist in hockey?
Shireen: Well, hockey is very, very superstitious. And the first one that I'm going to start with is probably one of the most famous ones. What ends up happening at the end of pre-finals – you either have an eastern conference win or a western conference trophy win. And I don't know if anyone remembers, that when the Montreal Canadiens won the eastern conference, they didn't actually touch the hardware. You don't touch the trophy. The Montreal Canadiens did not pick it up. They didn't win the Stanley Cup, but there's so much around that. And historically, there's not one specific tradition. It's basically up to the captain. And I remember one year Sidney Crosby didn't pick it up and they didn't win. Then the next year he did pick up the trophy, and then they won.
And then also superstitious: Patrick Roy, Hall of Famer, four Stanley cups, three Vezina trophies. He used to talk to his goalposts regularly, and he was superstitious about it that nobody could talk to him while he was talking to them. And somebody actually asked him, like, what do you say? He spoke in French, obviously, because goalposts are bilingual. [laughter] And I just totally made that up, but…
Jessica: Maybe they just speak French.
Shireen: Well, yeah. You know, he spoke with them. They had a little bit of, you know, bavardage. Ils étaient en train de bavarder, is what you would call it. And then he says, come on guys, help me out. “Before the game, I give them direction. The goalposts are always with me. They talk back to me, some nights. They say ‘bing,’ because when the puck deflects off them they say bing.” [laughing] “But some nights they have a bad night too.” This is a Stanley cup winning champion goalie that’s saying this! Like, straight-faced. He was very serious about this.
Eddie Belfour, another famous goaltender, he refused to let anyone touch his equipment, much to the ire of like, you know, the equipment manager. You weren't allowed to touch it. Another one that I thought was really, really interesting was Wayne Gretzky. He applied baby powder to his stick. Now, Wayne Gretzky is purportedly one of the most superstitious hockey players of all time. He never got a haircut on the road. He did it once, and his team lost really badly. He put on the equipment from the bottom half left to the right, and then the top half left to right. In his warmups, he would miss the first shot with the wide right angle. And then post-warmup before the game – this was very important – he would have a Diet Coke, water, Gatorade and then another Diet Coke.
And then the last one is Sidney Crosby. His hockey sticks have to be cut to exactly a specific length and width. And, when taped, nobody could touch the stick. And if you touched it accidentally, like if a teammate picked it up and gave it to him, the whole thing would have to be taped all over again.
Jessica: Wow. That's a lot of work.
Shireen: Yeah. So, he still does this.
Amira: But it's so interesting, right? Because sometimes you hear things and you’re like, “Ridiculous!” And other times you're like, no, that totally makes sense. Like, Diet Coke? Ridiculous. Talking to the goalposts? Totally makes sense to me. Of course you want help with the goalposts! Of course you should treat them nicely, you know? But it's interesting to me because also we know that psychologists have determined in a number of studies that there are actually benefits to these rituals. They found that they happen more when the uncertainty in the game is higher, rather than lower. So, if it's a big game, not clear who the winner might be. And if the importance of the game is higher rather than lower, which is why you see a lot of things develop in playoffs, right? Because the uncertainty and the importance increases.
A number of psychologists before the Olympics also noted that these superstitious rituals are way of calming and fending off anxiety, creating a mantra-like focus prior to performance. And so hockey is certainly one place we see this, but we also see it in other sports like tennis. Right, Jessica?
Jessica: Oh yeah. I feel like tennis is just full of it. Apparently Serena will tie her shoes the exact same way before she walks on court. So of course that's not something we're witnessing, but once they get on court, Nadal…I think maybe he has obsessive compulsive disorder, honestly. But he is so particular about like where his bottles are sitting, which order he drinks them in. When he comes off the court, he'll shuffle his feet in a certain way and then he waits for the ball kid to hand him the towel. I don't know. It always has to be exactly the same.
Amira: And doesn't he take alternating sips between the bottles?
Jessica: Yeah. He's very specific on how he does all that. You know, I don't know if he's actually ever said it's superstition. Like, that he has to or he'll lose. But you have to believe that that's part of what is happening there. He's been so consistent for so long. And you really see it a lot on serve – which makes sense, because they all have to serve over and over and over and over again. And part of doing that is doing it the exact same way. And so, I don't know, does that count as a superstition? Like Maria Sharapova tucking her hair behind her ears in the exact same order, which doesn't have anything necessarily to do with ball toss or anything like that, right? Djokovic used to get in trouble – or he now gets in trouble – for how often he bounces the ball before he serves. And it seems to be when it's a bigger shot, the more he bounces. And now that there's a shot clock in tennis, he has trouble making it in the big moments.
And so you see this kind of repeated behavior, like, it’s just integral to the sport. And I think that's also interesting, what you were saying about anxiety and control. And one of the other things I read in prepping for this is that it also creates confidence in the athlete, which makes total sense when you say it out loud, but like, it makes them feel more confident going into uncertain and high stakes situations. And so that is…I don't know. It's fascinating to me. So why not do them? Like, if they can help you, then just do it. Yeah.
Amira: That's what's so interesting to me, as you pointed out, like, there are certain things like cadences, like how you shoot free throws, how you do a serve, that you're right – it’s all about drilling a cadence and doing it over and over. So why would you disrupt that? And I also think what's interesting to me is how these things develop. Like I read, talking about hockey, Shireen, there’s a hockey player, Alex Danson who spins her stick 15 times each game. And so I always am curious about, like, where did that number come from, you know? Were you just spinning it one time and it was like 15, or were you even counting the first time? Or what about 12? What about 10, you know?
Shireen: And which direction?
Amira: Which direction! But then at the same time…And like, I'm even scared to say this because I don't say this out loud, like, just to put on the record. But the confidence thing is really important. Like, I'm scared of planes, but I have to fly all the time. And so I have a process that I do that gives me comfort, but I know it's because when I first kind of did it, the plane stayed up, and I wasn't willing to ever see what happens if I don't do it, right? [laughs] And so it has developed into a thing that I do every time I fly, because it is a mechanism of calming, right? And confidence in the fact that this will go fine. And so I wonder when, in your own playing, if you have any rituals, any superstitions that you see popping up?
Jessica: It's so interesting because I do have the…Like, I played basketball in middle school, and you talking about like, where'd you learn this? I had…I could do it now, if you asked me to just step up to the foul line. I would dribble the ball a certain amount of times, I would position my feet, and then I would shoot. I would have the exact ritual. And it's like, how did I learn that? Like, how did I learn that that was the thing I was going to do? But even you talking about now, when I deadlift at the gym, I have to do literally the exact same thing every single time – even after I hurt my back, right? Which would have been like, oh no, this isn't working. I still have to chalk my hands every time, even if there's chalk on them still from the last lift. Like, I have to go through that mental thing every single time. And it has to be in the same exact order every time. And yeah, I didn't even think of that as like superstition in the way that we're talking about it, but there is some kind of comfort. Like, “I'll be able to lift this this time because I've done the things in the right order.”
Amira: Right. It’s so funny about how those cadences stay with you. Like, I still know my foul shot cadence, you know? I dribbled it twice, stepped into the line, backspinned it twice, prepped it to shoot, took a breath, and then I would shoot. And I still do that.
Jessica: Yeah. I spin it. I would dribble twice and spin it in my hand. Get it right.
Amira: Yeah.
Jessica: I can feel it. Yeah.
Amira: Yeah. I can feel it. And they remember when I was drilling my cadence, I was like, this is my cadence. Like, “This is what I do.” You know what I mean?
Shireen: I'm just thinking about what you two are talking about. Jihad played a lot of basketball, and she would step in place and then get ready. And I also think in terms of comforting, it's also re-centering of herself and her focus. For me, after I get my equipment on, I always put my right boot on first. A hundred percent. I've got to put my right boot on first. And to this day, I have specific sports hijabs, and it's frenzied – and I'm not going to lie, if one week it wasn't washed from the week before, I’m gonna wear it again. I'm not going to lie about that. It has to be the specific sports hijab I wear, Asiya Sport or Capsters. I can't wear anything else, even though I have other ones. Don't like wearing the Nike one; makes me look like a Navy SEAL about to dive. Like, I just don't like it. Also, I knock on my shin guards. I will knock on my right one then I knock on my left one. And initially…I know where that came from. It came from having to show the ref that you were actually properly outfitted.
Amira: Right.
Shireen: But then I just kept doing it. And it's very subtle. Like, I knock before I get on the pitch. And I also say Bismillah, and this is kind of an interesting turn, because Bismillah just means “in the name of God,” but it's also something I have to do. I remember running onto the pitch, forgetting to say it, and then being like, I have to run off again. And my teammates were like, what's wrong with you? So it's almost like a parallel of it, when you see players stepping onto the pitch that are doing the cross. And then when I'm watching others, like when I'm watching my children, or I'm watching a team that I love, I'll say prayers on them, because it centers me as a fan as well.
Amira: Right. Well, the fan part, Shireen, is exactly where I wanted to go next, because everything we've been saying is ritual – that you can say is calming or, you know, you need to do when you're getting in the game – makes a lot of sense, even for people who don't have rituals or things like that. I feel like you can see and understand the logic in that. The next step is, when we're watching, people still have superstitions that are trying to achieve the same thing, right? Control, whatever. But like, you're much further removed from like the actual ability to have any impact over this. And I know this, because I have many of these. And I just realized the other day I was watching Manchester United…I have a TV in my room, and there is one out in the living room. And I started the game, and it was going fine in the living room, but I got tired so I went into my room–
Jessica: Oh no, what did you do?
Amira: This is when I texted you, it all fell apart. And so then I text Jess, like, should I go back and watch it on my other TV? [laughs] Like, is that…And Jess is like, “If it makes you feel better, but I'm not sure it will really matter either way.”
Jessica: Is that the tone of the text? [laughs]
Amira: And I was like, Jessica, that is not true! Like, what do you mean!? I am directly impacting this. But I think about that a lot. And I know that it's from the same place of control and anxiety and all of that stuff, and yet it’s from something that seems so much bigger than me. Of course the go-to story here is around the Patriots’ 18 and 1 season. For those of you who don't know, I was pregnant during most of that campaign. And by most, I mean all but one game. Yes, that game. [Jessica laughs] And I would have a ritual. I would have my socks on and I would have my maternity Patriot gear on and I would rub my belly, and we won every game. We won all of the regular season games – even the ones that looked like we weren't going to win. I gave it an extra rub. Yep, we got that yellow flag in the Ravens game, you know? Beat the Giants; that didn't look like it was going to happen to the end of the season.
There were some miraculous comebacks right there, down the stretch. And we kept it going through a perfect regular season, and hadn't seen that happen before. Through these improbable playoffs. Hadn't seen that happen before. I just kept rubbing the belly. Then five days before the Super Bowl, I had my first child, one Samari Angelique Davis – she's the light of my life and all those things. And also, that Sunday, had a bringing home baby party. Everybody came into my little Philly apartment to see her for the first time and watch the Super Bowl, because of course my team was playing in it. And I was flittering around and looked up at the TV and we were not playing very well. Our O-line had decided that they did not know how to play the game of football anymore.
And I freaked out, and then I was like, you know what? I was so distracted by all these people, I didn't do my ritual. And I don't care if people are here, I still need to do it. And then I did everything up until where I rubbed my belly. And I went to do it, and look to my left or right, and saw Samari was not in my stomach. She had been born into the world, and she was wearing a Patriots jersey. And I knew right then the imbalance of things had been all off kilter. There was no way to finish the ritual, and we lost. We lost the Super Bowl, it was 18 and 1. I'm still very upset about this.
Jessica: The cursed child.
Amira: For real. For real! I mean, it was helpful because she was good for the Celtics. We won later that year, right? Good for the Bruins. Won, right? Red Sox had won earlier when she was in utero. And I think that holds up because she doesn't mind those teams, but she still likes to troll me about the Patriots, just cuz.
Shireen: So, I have a question. Have the Pats ever won the Super Bowl since smart has been born?
Amira: Yeah. Because my other children were born, [Shireen laughs] and they have knack for this for me. Yes, yes.
Shireen: I mean, I believe all of that and I think it's very true. It's very apt. And I can see you in that moment.
Amira: See, you understand. Now, I want to go back to you, Jessica Luther. So when you sent me the text [Jessica laughs] saying I did not have an impact or it wouldn't matter, could you just explain what that means? That it wouldn't matter where I was watching the game? Because I feel like it really does.
Jessica: It’s so amazing because even listening to you talk about that and you saying “we” when you're talking about the Patriots – which I think we all do when we talk about our teams as if we are somehow a part of it and have anything to do with the outcome. This is so fascinating. This particular superstition in sports from fans is one of the ways where sports and religion just are traveling very similar paths. Like, this is all about faith. You have faith that these rituals that you are going to practice are going to affect this team and have a positive outcome. And there's so much in there that is so reflective or mirror image of the way that religion functions in a lot of people's lives. Like, you believe it. You truly believe it. And I make fun of it at the same time I was telling you all that when Austin FC did really well this last week – they have not done well most of the season – and I was wearing a different jersey. I was wearing the Los Verdes supporters jersey. I was like, oh, well, maybe it's because I wore this all day long. So, even when I'm being–
Amira: See! See!
Jessica: Even when I’m here being skeptical of it, I absolutely participate in it too.
Amira: I really liked this point about how it's a place where we can see where religion and sports mirror each other. And Shireen, you had kind of said this earlier, about people crossing themselves on the pitch or the various ways that we see that show up when people are expressing their faith or their religiosity. Do you have more to say on that?
Shireen: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, this is a journey that I was on very publicly with my mom, and I will start with that. When the Montreal Canadiens were in the playoffs, I had a hot take with my mom about that, and she talked about praying for them. And she also very, very much uses the word “we” when she talks about Carey Price specifically, or Cole Caufield. She'll say “us.” [laughter] Because she believes that. But very much a “we.” Now, one of the things that I was thinking about that may not be superstitious, or traditional, rather, but goal celebrations. Whether it is the players going on and, you know, making a cross, or even after Muslim footballers, when they score, like Mo Salah, for example, will prostrate. And before they go on, like we've seen Demba Ba, we've seen Mesut Özil pray. So they'll do a supplication, which is called dua in Arabic. You know, they're praying for goals, they’re praying not to be offside. I mean, I do that. I literally pray not to be offside. So like, I totally get that.
And even very famously Kaká, Brazilian footballer, was very, very religious and would drop to his knees after. And he used to wear a t-shirt underneath that said, “Jesus loves you” or “Jesus saves you,” and would show it. And he's been fined for that before. But it also made me think about something else, where I've watched a lot of women's football too. And for example, I watched Nadia Nadim, who's one of the greatest, or Asisat Oshoala, and I watch them play. They're also identifiably Muslim, but they don't celebrate in the same way. And I'm wondering why that is. And there's a difference in the way that gender and celebrations are performed or traditions are performed. Is it because they don't want to draw attention to another thing? But it's also very much in the way that tradition and religion are intertwined here. And we see it a lot, particularly in football.
Amira: Yeah, and it's interesting to me as a mostly somewhat…Well, I'm not exactly a believer. But I think sports can also serve for many people as their kind of religious expression. I remember when Yankee stadium was being torn down, and the pilgrimage that people were making to New York to get a canister of dirt, right? To get a piece of that stadium before it was gone. I think about how the communal ritual of observing these traditions or superstitions also become this really tightly-wound religious practice, right? Even for people from multiple faiths or non-faiths coming together around this “we,” as you said. And Jessica you talked about how these communal rituals then also can create an insider group, right? What happens with this process?
Jessica: Yeah. I think there is such a communal aspect to this as well, right? Like, you're not doing it alone. The entire point is for this community that you are a part of, that you strongly identify with it, you care about. It is a shared faith. Like, you might be doing individualized practices – which TV you're watching, what shirt you're wearing, whatever – but at the same time, you're doing that because you are participating in this community. And I think there's a lot in sport fandom that creates insider/outsider groups. And we could talk about tradition doing that, whether or not you're willing to participate in traditions in certain ways. And I think that's true as well with superstitions, especially as we were talking about before, like, you get into the playoffs and there's ways that, like, people don't cut their hair or they wear certain clothes all the time. And like, are you willing to do what it takes to help your team get to the end? Are you willing to do your part? And I think there is a way that this is one of the mechanisms in which sports fandom creates an insider group and an outsider group. “Who's the real fan here?”
Amira: But also with that, you can see how they're maintained or policed, as to see like how welcoming those fan communities are. I'm thinking…Me and Jessica of course are here and supporters of Austin FC in their first year. And if you go to an Austin FC game, there are already traditions being enacted. But what's so interesting to me is when I brought Samari to her first game, for instance, she used a QR code to download the chants, right? And by the end of the game, she knew what chants to sing at what time. She could pick them up and all of that. But at the beginning of the game where they were doing the heartbeat portion, you know, and you're supposed to do it in a certain cadence, you have this moment of like, what am I supposed to be doing? Right? It marks you as an outsider. And yet there's pathways in.
And there's other places where those pathways in are closed off, particularly…And we can read power into this, right? There's ways that men accept that you have to take steps into a group, which then turn around and police when women…Like, there was a tweet going viral about like, oh, I like sports – and I think Sarah tweeted it, Sarah Spain – that's like, “name the blood type of the coach two seasons ago” or whatever, right?
Where those things become the very mechanisms to exclude. Where, oh, if you don't know that, it's not because you haven't had a chance to learn this chant yet, but it's because you're a woman and women don't know sports, right? That's how the maintenance of them can continue to…
Shireen: Gatekeep.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen, do you have one more example of these fan communities in a kind of global way?
Shireen: One of the things, when you think about global football, you think about European football, and you think about Liverpool. You think about “you'll never walk alone.” Do you even Liverpool if you don't know the words to that anthem? Like, do you even? One of the first things that players are taught, if they're transferred or if they're in development camp, is you’ll never walk alone. And I think about that, but West Ham United, they have a song, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles. And this is part of what the community does. They have a bubble machine at every West Ham United home game, and they sing it together as a stadium. I think one of the other things too is mascots. And we didn't necessarily dive into that, but there's a couple. Benfica of Portugal, they have eagles. There’s dogs at Botafogo. And then there's a goat at FC Köln in Germany, and these mascots are necessary and the community wants them. One day, Hennes the goat of FC Köln wasn't feeling well. But the stadium insisted the goat had to be there.
And I mean, there's something else. There’s traditions that happen, and not just that us as a community, but at admin levels and ownership levels. The Rangers in Aberdeen actually toast with something called the Loving Cup. It's like a cup, a tea cup. And they toast the British monarchy, which is gross for many reasons, but it was a gift from Stoke City and that's something they continue to do. Deportivo de La Coruña in Spain, they spread garlic cloves to ward off bad spirits in Abanca-Riazor, the stadium in Spain. And Atlanta United FC, because of their history of a railroad town, they have a spike that's gold that is nailed into a platform before every game, and fans and athletes actually sign it. And this is done, and I'll use this word, religiously before every home game.
Jessica: I have been, I’ve watched them.
Shireen: Have you seen the gold spike?
Jessica: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Amira: Absolutely. I really appreciate you all having this conversation with me about superstitions and traditions and all the ways that we see it manifest. This week, I talked to Frankie de la Cretaz and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo about their new book, Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League. We talk about what it took to write this book and bring this history to light, and what it can tell us about a couple of contemporary issues that we talk about today.
For many of them, it was another way to hang out with their friends, but also one of the things I write about is the football teams as community spaces that were similar to the gay bars at the time, where it's not okay in most places to be openly gay, except in a lesbian bar or, you know, a gay bar. And the teams were another one of those places. You know, I think marginalized folks are experts at creating safe spaces for themselves, for ourselves, in a world that's hostile to their existence. And this is like a very good example of that.
Amira: It’s now time for everyone's favorite segment, the burn pile. It’s particularly fiery this week. I will start, actually. So, this week Michele Tafoya went on The View to do the most, as people do on The View. It was like a bingo card of things that were particularly annoying to me. I won’t even get into her stuff on Kaepernick, and I'm not going to talk about her COVID-ness, which was a mess of course. But the thing that particularly irritated me was when the conversation turned towards the supposed teaching of critical race theory in schools – which, newsflash, is not happening. It's a legal paradigm. It's a legal scholarship. It's happening in law schools. And also, calm down, everybody. Thanks. But what's happening is this straw man of an argument, this boogeyman, if you will, is causing school districts across the country to ban books.
So, Michele Tafoya took this platform to talk about how her son, who’s white, lost out on his best friends because by the time they got to middle school, they started hanging out with their quote-unquote “affinity groups.” And why are we teaching them the color of the skins matters, et cetera. And when pushed back and said you live in the United States, because of course your skin color matters – which, colorblind rhetoric is ridiculous. She said, “It doesn't matter. White people have been stepping up. They’ve been doing their part since the Civil War.”
Jessica: Wow.
Amira: Which is just so ahistorical! It’s so frustrating. Because, yes, of course white people fought for the Union in the Civil War, but to act like Jim Crow was not a thing, right? To act like Tuesday was not a thing. And I'm just saying any Tuesday. Any day that ends in Y still has racism in it. And it's just laughable to me that you’re peddling this idea that talking about race is what's perpetuating this, when we know that it's quite literally the opposite. And it was on the heels of terrible headlines circling this discussion, saying, “How young is too young to learn about race?” To which many people pointed out this is so clearly centered on white kids, because if you are a child of color you know about race before you're even born because maternal health outcomes vary by what race your mother is. You know this very early on, because when…If you go on Twitter right now, I think Jemele retweeted this. If you ask somebody when their first experience with racism is, please look at those responses. Please look at them.
I know for me, the first time I was called a hard-r nigger was on the playground at five. So, no, it's not too early, ever, right? And it was just disappointing to see this bingo card of greatest hits of right-wing talking points coming out of Michele Tafoya’s mouth, in this way, on this platform. And it just reminded me, like, these are who are framing the conversations about sports. This is who's on the sideline framing the reporting, framing football that's happening, and can't even understand racial dynamics in her own house, apparently, in her own region, in her own city, let alone this country that she works in and tries to give us these media narratives through. And it's just disappointing, more than anything else. And I would like to, you know, casually burn it down.
All: Burn.
Amira: Alright, Shireen, what do you have for us this week?
Shireen: Hockey continues to be a flaming dumpster fire. And I just wanted to say trigger warning for misogynist abuse, which is actually pretty much every time we talk about hockey on the show. This is happened close to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and this is actually involving high school. And what sucks about this is that it hurts the most when it's younger. And we're talking, just going off of what Amira was talking about, it's not ever too early to talk about anti-racism work. It's never too early. So you basically got Armstrong High School facing Mars Hockey Club. Now, what ended up happening is the goalie for the Mars Hockey Club is a young woman. They've had many women, according to the Mars Hockey Club coach. They've had a lot of women. This particular goalie plays varsity and junior varsity for them.
So while she's in net, she was brought to tears because the Armstrong high school students in the crowd – which also includes parents who did not intervene – were chanting, sexist, misogynist, and violent, in my opinion, stuff to her. And stuff like “suck my (bleep)” like, while she's playing. And she was actually left in tears about this. And what is so angering is that there's parents there. Nobody thought to shut these kids up? Nobody thought to say like, literally, shut up? And it's so distressing. She's on the ice, she's playing…And, as I said the Mars coach has said before, they've never had something like this. All of their students have training coaches that have SafeSport and sportsmanship, it should just simply not happen. And that gets us to talk about deeper the training and the education pieces.
Is there follow up for that, or is it just like one session of EDI and then you're good? What are you doing to implement this in your school? What are you doing about the culture in your dressing room? What are you doing to make sure that this shit doesn't happen? And when stuff like this happens, racism, homophobia, transphobia, are very nearby. I mean, they're all related. If this is coming out of the mouths of these people, I don't know what else is coming out. And this is stuff that was recorded. There was tweets and videos circulating. I didn't watch them. I don't think it's necessary. We're not attaching the audio here. But I think it's important to understand how shitty this is, and it's awful for multiple reasons. This is where toxic culture and violent patriarchy festers in hockey. And I want to burn it all down. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: All right, Jessica, bringing us home.
Jessica: It's been a hell of a week for burns and sports. Like, I felt like it was a real difficult thing to narrow this down. And there was a part of me that didn't want to give any air at all to this topic, but there's no denying the popularity of Barstool Sports, or the fact that lots of athletes and other sports entities continue to do business with them. So, here it goes. We first talked about Barstool on this show in episode 25. This is episode 226. Episode 25 was almost exactly four years ago. We have burned them repeatedly, just over and over and over again. It is a site and an entertainment group whose popularity is because it traffics in bro-centric, racist, sexist, antisemitic bullshit. Not despite it. So I'm burning Barstool et al again, because once again there is new, damning reporting about the company.
This time it's an investigative piece by Julia Black at Insider about the site's founder, Dave Portnoy, a 44 year old asshole using his popularity to prey on teenage girls and have violent sex with them, which includes filming them without their consent during sex. I know that everyone was saying that this piece was unsurprising and, yes, intellectually it was. We knew a whole lot about this company that was terrible before this. But still, it was deeply upsetting. There was stuff in here that I did not know, including shit like, “A 2020 Barstool-produced documentary by the media company features Portnoy forcefully digitally penetrating a sex doll while donning a tuxedo, later declaring himself ‘the finger king.’” This is their own documentary from 2020.
It doesn't matter that their CEO is a woman. It doesn't matter that they donate money to people who need it. It doesn't matter that people will defend – or at the least not criticize – Portnoy or the company. None of that excuses any of this away. It doesn't somehow cancel all the terrible stuff out. The Arizona Bowl, a college football bowl, will take place on New Year's Eve this year. It's the Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. Mike Murphy, @DigDeepBSB on Twitter, reminded us all this week that “the Barstool Hockey Cup, a women's hockey tournament, is scheduled to take place in April. It promises to be the largest annual event of its kind, with players from the US, Canada, and Europe. Team USA's Brianna Decker was in the promo video.” And I agree with Mike that this latest shit probably won't change people's participation in this event.
Defector had a good roundup of how Barstool employees responded to the latest piece, and it was basically a lot of them saying that Portnoy doesn't ever lie. So if he says this is inaccurate, then that must be true, which, like…What even? But my favorite response was some Barstool employee tweeting, “Do you think we'd all work for a guy if this was true?” And, yes! Please hear me. Yes! I absolutely believe you would work for this guy if this was true, because you already work there, smarty pants! If you've already made that choice, then your judgment is, at the very, very best, questionable, sir.
Amira: That part.
Jessica: I have been thinking a lot about the women Julia Black spoke to, and Julia herself, because the harassment that Julie's unleashed is famous for how horrific and unrelenting it is. And I just really hope that they all have a good support system in place. And for the rest of the shit I will, once again, burn it. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: After all that continued, familiar, and all too frequent burning, it is time to mention some torchbearers of the week. So first, our honorable mentions. Shireen, who is our coach of the week?
Shireen: Kelsey Koelzer debuts as the first Black woman to coach an NCAA hockey team. She is a coach of Arcadia University's new NCAA Division III women's hockey team.
Amira: Awesome. Jessica who's our GM of the week?
Jessica: Karina LeBlanc is the new Portland Thorns GM after all of the upheaval following everything around Paul Riley. And so it's exciting to see Karina in this new job.
Amira: I will go next, with our volleyball set of the week, which is Penn State's volleyball team, which once again did a Silent Set. This set asked fans to stay quiet – no cheering, no yelling. They can use sign language. It's an effort to raise awareness for deaf and hard of hearing people, and it lasts for the first nine points, because the number nine on Penn State, Jonni Parker, suffers from hearing loss. And Parker also got the game winning final kill in a fifth match set defeat over Michigan State. It was her 1034th kill over her career at Penn State, securing them the win. Shireen, who are our officials of the week?
Shireen: So, the first all women's team officiated the Jordan Pro League final between Sahab SC and Al-Baqa'a Club. So, the first official was Israa Mobaideen, who was assisted by Islam al-Abadi, Sabreen al-Abadi and Haneen Murad – all FIFA qualified. And Sahab won 4-1 in the final.
Amira: Awesome. And I will tell you about the curling champs of the week. That honor goes to China, who defeated Sweden 5-3 after nine ends of play to clinch gold in the Kuntai World Wheelchair Curling Championship 2021 at the Ice Cube in Beijing. And can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Jessica, who is our torchbearer of the week?
Jessica: This past weekend, shortly before halftime of the game at Northwestern against Iowa, nine protesters stormed the field and held up banners that read, “Abolish NUPD, Invest In Black Lives,” “Divest From Death,” “Stop Funding The War On Palestine,” and “Board Of Trustees, Meet With Us Now.” A Northwestern University Community Not Cops organizer told The Daily Northwestern that the protestors were members of multiple student activist groups. On Twitter, NUCNC tweeted that their demands are open meetings between students and the board of trustees at least two times a year, concrete deadlines for their demands as well as Fossil Free NU, NU dissenters and other campus orgs; and systems that center and protect survivors of sexual violence. Here on Burn It All Down, we love to see protestors using the space of sport to get across what they want and what they need. And we’re in awe of what they did on Saturday night.
Amira: Now I want to hear what's good in your worlds. Shireen, can you kick us off?
Shireen: Okay. So, I can't believe I'm putting Drake, but there is a specific reason why Drake is in my what's good. It made big news up here. Drake decided to use his platform to say that he wanted a WNBA team up in Toronto. I only care about this because I would love a W team up in here. Speaking of W, I actually…My Spinsters episode dropped this week, and I love it.
Jessica: It's very, very good.
Shireen: Thank you. And I was really excited by it. It was on motherhood and professional basketball. I had an incredible time doing it, and it was fun because it was a Blue Wire crossover. Also, Colin in Black & White. I saw first couple episodes with my son Mustafa, and it was fantastic. I loved watching that with him. It was really important. And again, to Amira's point, it's never too late or early to talk about this with kids. And I think it's really important, particularly as a racialized young man, to see these things. I tweeted it out yesterday that I didn't have the language and I didn't have representation when I was young, but I'm so grateful that this next generation doesn't have to grow up like that.
And lastly, I have been posting incessantly about my tree. My tree's name is Renee. It’s actually named after Renee Hess, a very dear friend of mine, founder of Black Girl Hockey Club. And Renee is beautiful. Renee is in full of red bloom right now. She is glorious. [Jessica laughs] She will be naked soon, but that's okay. That's what happens in fall when all the leaves come off the tree,
Amira: Shireen talking about trees will never, ever cease to amaze me.
Shireen: She's magnificent. I love, love, love the fall. Autumn is absolutely my favorite time of year. And it's November, so I feel like I've been blessed with a lot of extra…And Subhanallah, it is. I get to sit here at my desk and look outside, and I can't tell you how much joy it brings me.
Amira: Jessica, does your what's good involve trees?
Jessica: Nope. It doesn’t. [Amira laughs] Last night…So, for the last like 18 months or so, during the pandemic basically, Aaron has been in this band, a rock band with friends of his that he met at the School of Rock. He is a lead guitarist and, at this point, they do covers. And they've been practicing in our garage for a lot of the pandemic because it was outside. So they would sweat through the summer sometimes out there. They have a practice space now that they go to every once in a while, but last night they put on a concert in our garage, and it was so good. I was so proud of him. And I just…I don't know. I'm just so impressed that he decided…I mean, I signed him up for guitar lessons a few years ago, [laughs] but like, [Amira laughs] he really took it on.
And it's expanding. We now have most of a drum set because he's decided that that is his next frontier, but it's just been really fun to watch someone that I've known for so long, right – like, we've known each other for more than half of our lives at this point – just pick up a new thing and run with it and be good at it and have fun. I had so much fun watching him. Credit to one Dr. Amira Rose Davis–
Amira: ME!
Jessica: –for telling Aaron and I about a show called Ghosts.
Amira: Oh my god. That was going to be mine too. I love it!
Jessica: Ha ha! I know. When you said I got to go first, I was like, ha ha! Which is a BBC show that you can get on HBO Max about ghosts in a house, and it's a comedy, and it is lovely. And Kitty is our favorite character, but they are all great. And then the last thing I'll mention is that I am totally taken by CleanTok on TikTok. I could watch these videos forever. It's a problem. And then the worst thing happened last night, which is that I did one of the things in the videos, which is that I used dish soap, baking soda, and vinegar and hot water, boiling hot water, to clear a drain in a bathroom. And it worked.
Amira: Okay. I'm sorry. Are these TikToks just with cleaning hacks?
Jessica: Yes. Yes! [Amira laughs] And the fact that I have now done one and it worked means, like, talk about superstitions. I'm in, man! [laughter] Whew.
Shireen: See, I thought the emotional support monkey would be my rabbit hole, but I think that this…
Jessica: No, watch out. Well, you saw like on my Instagram story, I posted about the thing where you use a mesh bag when you wash your clothes, you put your socks in it and then your socks don't get lost in the wash. They're just all in a mesh bag the whole time. That is smart. Gotta go get me a mesh bag today. So, CleanTok has been wonderful for me. Yay. That's what happens when you let a 40 year old on TikTok. [Amira laughs]
Shireen: I'm here for that. I love that.
Amira: Oh my goodness gracious. I love you guys so much! Okay. My what's good is that my boys received their first shot.
Shireen: Yay! [clapping]
Amira: Yeah, Pfizer. It is now available for 5 through 11s, meaning Zachary and Jackson are there. And it is like a weight has been lifted. Ghosts is also my what's good. I finished all three seasons.
Jessica: It’s all these ghosts from these different time periods that have died in this one exact space, and so they all are coming at it…
Amira: Right.
Jessica: They have this group of people who died of the plague in the basement, [Amira laughs] and they have a guy come in and he's like sorting through the bones and he's describing one of the women and she's like, “Yes, yes.” Like, it's clearly her. And then he goes, “And it appears that she was ravaged by syphilis!” And the women's like, uh…Hm, sorry, no! [laughter]
Amira: Not me!
Jessica: Oh, god. It is so good.
Amira: Like, it's one of those pieces that’s about the family aspect of it, it’s about knowing these characters and understanding them and how they overlap. And it is a riot.
Shireen: How do you watch it?
Amira: It's on HBO Max.
Jessica: Or BBC, if you have access to that.
Amira: And the last what's good is that my mom and sister Odyssey are in town from Massachusetts this weekend. And this was like, they haven't been back to Texas since they adopted me from here like 30 years ago. So, it was a big thing for them to come to Austin. We're having fun. The boys had a carnival yesterday at their school. People volunteered their driveways all over the area of our neighborhood. And so people biked from house to house and did things like Angry Birds, where they had built this wooden contraption and these blocks where you pull back the ball and then you go…Like, people were very smart.
Shireen: Invested! [laughs]
Amira: It was very good. And there was archery and a duck pond, and there were cotton candy and churros and food trucks, and the teachers…Last thing: shoutout the teachers. They volunteered for pie face, where kids threw whipped cream at them. They don't get paid enough, okay? Let me just tell you. Like, please pay these people more, because they sat there. And kids…They had a little hole for the smaller kids, so they could really get it in there. And the kids just had the best time going through this. Samari got a wristband and also participated, for some reason unbeknownst to me. She stopped when she realized kids from her middle school were helping out at some of the games, like the older siblings. And she was like, oh, okay.
But it was fun because my moms got to go around with the kids and see all their friends and stuff like that. And tonight we'll go down to see Into the Woods at the Zach, which is outside and immersive. They give you swivel chairs, so you turn to see the different scenes instead of being in a theater where it's kind of done around you. And so those are my what's good.
This week, we are watching a few different things. The Premier Hockey Federation, previously the NWHL, kicked off the 2021-2022 season this past weekend. Also, NWSL playoffs are here! By the time the episode airs, the semifinal will be set. Catch them on Sunday, November 14th. The college basketball season for women begins the day this episode drops – that's Tuesday, November 9th. We are waiting. We are so excited to see these folks back in action. So there's a lot that we're watching. Buckle up, it’s going to be a hell of a winter season.
That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon of course is on our webs and socials. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Listen and subscribe, rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. For show links and transcripts, please check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link there to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you to our patrons. You continue to mean the world to us. If you want to become a donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. We have a fireside chat coming up and some winter watch parties. Again, from me, Shireen and Jessica – burn on, but not out. And we'll see you next week, flamethrowers.