Episode 261: How the Sporting World Is Responding to the Queen's Death
In this episode, Shireen Ahmed and Amira Rose Davis discuss who the sporting world has responded to the death of Queen Elizabeth II. But first, they talk about their favorite recent concerts, including Bad Bunny and a candlelight Vivaldi quartet. Then, they dive into the ways athletes and sporting institutions have reacted to the Queen's death, including messages of reverence and resistance. The also discuss the ways sports like football and cricket have been used by the British monarchy as a tool of colonialism and cultural power, and how former and current common wealth countries have used sport as a way to decolonize themselves from the British throne.
Following this discussion, they preview a special Patreon segment about Welcome to Wrexham, a documentary about how actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney became heads of the Welsh football club Wrexham.
Then, you'll here a preview of this week's interview with Daniel Sailofksy, a sociologist who recently ended his NFL fandom because of the violence in the league.
Next, they burn some of the worst in sports this summer on the Burn Pile. Then, they celebrate those shining light, including Torchbearer of the Week, Carlos Alcaraz, who made history with his men’s singles US Open win, and becoming the youngest world number 1 ranking in men's tennis at the age of 19. They wrap up the show with What's Good and What We're 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
Queen Elizabeth II and her legacy in sports: https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2022/09/08/631a409e22601d68528b45af.html
Sport Pays Its Respects To Queen Elizabeth II As Nation Enters Period Of National Mourning: https://www.eurosport.com/all-sports/sport-pays-its-respects-to-queen-elizabeth-ii-with-premier-league-set-to-make-decision-on-matches-la_sto9135152/story.shtml
‘The Revenge of Plassey’: Football in the British Raj https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2020/07/20/the-revenge-of-plassey-football-in-the-british-raj
Cricket and the anti-colonial effort: https://thelinknewspaper.ca/article/cricket-and-the-anti-colonial-effort
Why Do We Show Such Loyalty To Royalty? https://mediadiversified.org/2015/07/31/why-do-we-show-such-loyalty-to-royalty
Transcript
Shireen: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast that you need. Today on the show, it's me and Dr. Amira Rose Davis. Today on the show, we will be reexamining the intersections of sport and monarchy. We also have a lot of great content on Patreon. And if you wanna hear us speak Welsh, you want don't wanna miss it. Before we begin, let's catch up a little bit, because we took a bit of a hiatus in the summer, and there were some concerts. Amira, what did you see?
Amira: I can't remember what I did this summer. I'm sure I did something. But this past week, me and Samari went to see Bad Bunny. We saw him about a week after Brenda and Luna saw him, which was really fun. And we drove to San Antonio over to the Alamo Dome. It was wonderful. Brenda had told me, like, she got a ridiculous number of steps because she didn't sit down for three hours. He does like 36 songs. And I thought I was prepared for that, and I was not prepared for that, because it was just like three straight hours. It wasn't just that you were standing, is was that you're jumping, you know what I mean? And dancing and it was definitely a workout. It was fun. It was energetic. We had a great time. And then we just walked along the river in San Antonio to walk back. And, you know, times with Samari are always my favorite times. So it was great to see such a high energy concert, of one of my favorite artists with her.
Shireen: So, how long has she been into Bad Bunny?
Amira: Well, I would not say she is. She definitely was just being very nice to me going. She’s very eclectic with her music tastes. You know, she listens to everything. She just like emerged from her 90s hip hop phase.
Shireen: That's where I am currently. So we need to get together.
Amira: No, yeah, I know that was her all summer. But she likes a few songs. And so she was definitely more like, when he would get into a set of like some of his older songs, she was just like, okay, don't know this one. [laughs] Like but she was still vibing. It was still vibes.
Shireen: It's actually really wonderful to go to concerts where you don't necessarily know all the discography because it’s the vibe, it's the energy in the room that keeps you going. I've been to a couple concerts where I didn't know all the music from the artist. And like, you know, I mean, mine is a bit on the flip. I actually attended one of those candlelight concerts by a quartet who were doing Vivaldi. So we're flipping from Bad Bunny, we're pivoting to classical. And they were wonderful. And it was actually at the all inclusive church in the east end of Toronto, where over 20 years ago was the first gay marriage in the country. So it's like a very historic, very important church, but it's beautiful for concerts. It was a little warm because it's not air conditioned because the church itself is quite old.
But I went with my buddy, Jenny, who was here from Barbados visiting, and Leanne and her friend. So the three of us went and it was like, it was a beautiful summer night and it was actually perfect. And I haven't been to a classical concert in a very, very, very long time. Like, even before COVID. Like, no one in my family particularly likes classical music, and I played the cello for a really long time. So like, I still have a penchant, and Vivald is by far my favorite composer. And the whole experience was really, really cool. Like, my daughter wants to go to one. Jihad wants to go, but she wants to go to like the Taylor Swift version. I could be swayed to do that, but just, this was particularly beautiful. And Jenny played the cello as well. So the two of us completely nerded out over strings.
But you know, more recently, when I was in Prince Edward Island, I went to the cèilidh – for those that don't know what that is, it's just a roundup of like, you know, sort of Celtic, Gaelic tunes with a Maritime flavor. And it's an old community. My husband did not go because he's like, “This entire trip is challenging my Blackness. So I'm gonna stop at the cèilidh or hootenanny.” [Amira laughs] He was like a bit like…Hootenanny? That's a word that people use. And I like that word. It's like one of my favorite words. And I brought in the use of hootenanny to be more than just like a get together around the kitchen with spoons. I do it whenever there's just like a family get together. Let's kind of use the word.
Shireen: The queen died. Queen Elizabeth II was 25 when she took over the throne. She died last week at 96. She was the queen of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime, and 15 at the time of her death. Her reign was 70 years, 214 days. And it's the longest of any British monarch, and the longest recorded of any female head of state in history. Today, we're going to examine the relationship of the monarchy with sport historically. Games have been a part of that family tradition for a long time, be it Commonwealth Games, Invictus Games, horse racing. The queen was fond of Ascot, polo. So, Queen Elizabeth didn't have a strong tie to football, but in 1966, she presented the World Cup trophy to Bobby Moore at Wembley after their 4-2 win against Germany. And following that, much, much later, Arsenal was the only team ever invited to have tea at Buckingham Palace.
Now, to start, let's look at some of the reactions of the sports world. According to an ESPN article, a few hours after she died, a document titled, “The demise of her majesty Queen Elizabeth II, national mourning guidance.” And in it, issues of sport were addressed, and it stated that there was no obligation to cancel or postpone events or sporting fixtures or close entertainment venues during the national mourning period. But this is at the discretion of individual organizations. Now, we've seen the canceling of matches. The English Premier League did postpone matches over the weekend. And we saw, you know, the news of that through certain other leagues that wore arm bands. But Amira, what else did we see happen?
Amira: Well, we saw a number of remembrances and platitudes given in certain sports, like for instance, in Formula 1, which is an international sport. And therefore they decided not to cancel the Grand Prix at Monza in Italy. However, you know, there's a moment of silence before the Grand Prix this past weekend and stuff like that. And that's because Formula 1 is heavily influenced by the UK. They have a number of constructors, not only the British constructors, like Aston Martin of course, or Williams, but a number of teams’ headquarters are also in England as well. So, Alpine, formerly Renault, of course, is a French company, but their headquarters are in England. That is also the case for Haas, which is an American company, but it is based in run out of England.
This is true for Red Bull as well, which is Austrian. Oh, and Mercedes as well. When you add in McLaren and Williams and Aston Martin, which all are teams, you end up having a grid of 10 constructors, only three of them aren't based in England. And so that really speaks to the influence and the impact there. Of course, drivers like George Russell, Lewis Hamilton offered their personal condolences as British citizens. And so that's why you see it showing up in sports that aren't necessarily formally and singularly British.
Shireen: Yeah, it's really interesting. I didn't know that about Formula 1. But the language used by so many presenters – and we'll get into that a bit as well later – but the language used for mourning. And some people refer to themselves as subjects and some refer to themselves as citizens, all sports people. And there's some EPL matches that won't go on next week.
Amira: Absolutely. So they announced, of course this coming week, that most – seven – would go on, with the exception of three matches: the Brighton and Hove match versus Crystal Palace, Chelsea and Liverpool, which is a big one. And of course, United versus Leeds United. And one of the things is like Chelsea and Liverpool for instance was due to be played in London, which is considered a high category game. And then with Manchester United and Leeds, one of the things they cited is that the Manchester police force are supporting the funeral professional and other kind of locations across the UK. And so they cited actually a dearth of police to be able to staff these matches. And in addition to that, some football stadiums are being used as national mourning sites. But I just think it's interesting. A lot of people are very mad about this. They were mad last week when the games are canceled, they're mad that some of these games won't go on, as well as Europa league game as well.
But I think it's really interesting to note, this is not necessarily down to mourning, but rather the need of the expansive police state, the fact that because it's the highest category of match – Manchester United and Leeds, for instance – it requires over 900 police officers to adequately staff it for a match to go on. And so we've talked about a police presence at these matches, but I guess I never realized what the bar was, which is like 900 police officers have to be available to staff this match. And of course they're being pulled into other security details. It just, I know for me, I was like, oh, wow. The way that it's completely intertwined with policing, and especially at a time where we've seen reports out, police forces policing mourners, policing people who aren't mourners, who are holding signs that say, “Abolish the monarchy.”
Shireen: Yeah.
Amira: Who are holding signs that say, “Not my king.” We see them seized. We see them pulled out of the crowd. It's really actually quite concerning. So, thinking about the fact that these games were postponed because they had to dispatch the police officers to these other areas to, like, police signs that people are saying…It really is icky.
Shireen: And that makes me think about the dissent of athletes and how that does and doesn't happen. We've seen tributes from everyone, from the president of Arsenal, Ken Friar. We've seen tributes from athletes all over the place. In addition to that, I was interested in examining Irish and Scottish teams with ties to nationalism. And for example, the defending Scottish champions, Celtic FC, they have very deep ties to nationalism and left wing republican political movements. And I just wanna remind our listeners that what republican means in Scotland and Ireland is very different than what it means in the United States, and it's very left wing in the UK. So, Celtic FC acknowledged the Queen's passing with a one sentence statement. They didn't make any aesthetic changes on social media, while a lot of the major clubs actually took the Queen's profile and made it their own.
You know, there was a couple other teams in Northern Ireland – Cliftonville FC only acknowledged with the brief tweet saying the league had postponed Friday night match due the Queen's passing. That's all they said. And Aberdeen, the Scottish Premier side didn't change social media avatars either, but did tweet a statement of condolence. And I think this is really interesting to look at, like, how those teams are navigating and how they're doing it. There's other examples of that. I mean, after Elizabeth died, it was shared widely that Irish soccer fans were actually celebrating the Queen’s death with a chant, “Lizzy's in a box.”
So, Queen Elizabeth died last Thursday, but international cricket matches continued on Saturday. On the men's side, England played South Africa at the Oval, and the first rendition of God Save the King was actually sung. Later that day, the English women's national cricket team played Team India, and they paused for a moment of silence to honor and remember the queen. The optics of that actual photo are something I keep thinking about. What were the actual players on Team India thinking? Were they allowed to express? Are they allowed to express? Particularly honoring someone who's complicit in the colonization of their country. And just, what if those athletes wanted to say something? I thought about what if those people who had been completely impacted…So yes, the death of the queen does impact people, but not in the same way. It's something that I've been ruminating on. And, you know, I wanted to sort of hone in, Amira, and tap into your brilliant historian mind. Let's look at the British monarchy specifically, this family, and their role in sport.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that it's really interesting to think about sport and the British empire, because it was a key way that Imperial rule was disseminated throughout places that they were colonizing. It's what we term “soft power.” So it's not bringing a tank in, but it's actually really more subversive. It's like, through cultural means. And one of the reasons why we look at cultural things like sports and soft power is because you see how tangled up things like cricket, rugby get into promoting empire and continuing, you know, colonial rule. And so, using sports, like I said, cricket, because it's a huge example, in these colonial areas was a way of bringing Victorian ideals through their games. And so a lot of what we think about even like lawn tennis, ideas of prim and proper playing. Thinking about ideas of like how you should dress or carry yourself during the game of play, how the game is played – not just the game itself – was an exportation of these colonial ideas.
And then when you get into it, like setting up cricket clubs in the British West Indies is one of the main ways you can see this example, of course, has been documented in Beyond a Boundary by CLR James. He said, “Cricket has plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it. When I did turn to politics, I did not have much to learn.” And he talks about cricket being the thing that could examine national culture and society in the West Indies. Understandings of education and class and race and colonialism, presenting this kind of very British idea of hierarchy, social hierarchy. Because if you look at the history of how these cricket clubs were established, cricket clubs start popping up very early. You have an Imperial outpost having a cricket club in 1792 in India. You have these cricket clubs coming, posting up in the early 1800s in Australia. 1868, you have a cricket team forming. They're established along racial lines at first, you have them for the British elites.
Then you have this kind of gradual entry of Black West Indians especially into these clubs. But how it happens, you can almost watch the colonial order assert itself. And so at first, well they can't play at all. They're not admitted to the clubs. And then it's like, well, you can play, but you can't captain, right? You only…This is when I don't know cricket. [Shireen laughs] You only can play certain positions. It was like, the sweep or the board or the bowl–
Shireen: The bowler?
Amira: Yeah, there you go. You could only do certain things in cricket. And then as it went on, and part of that idea about looking for decolonization was how these local spaces made that game their own. A distinct style of West Indian cricket emerges and becomes still a sport of mass importance there, and yet changed by how West Indians actually transform the game. And I think that these sporting sites, whether you see it in the British West Indies, colonial Africa, whether you see it in Australia, you see soccer, football, operating like this too, especially in places like Ireland and Wales. I mean, even the fact that Welsh teams play in the English football system tells you about how that territory has been subsumed by empire. And I think the British empire really extended and imported these ideas about physical culture and the body, about masculinity tied to that, about race, and what a dominant sporting body looks like. Those Victorian ideals about muscular Christianity and who you are as an upper class person, or as a physically fit person, were directly imported by this empirical order.
Moreover, and probably more insidious, was this idea that this was a way of literally colonizing. And what I mean by that is the basic idea of colonialism. There's a savage mass of people that needs our benevolent help. They have resources they don't know what to do with, they have a society they don't have organized, and we're gonna come in and ship shape that up. And one of the ways they did that was through this idea of physical education, physical culture. Whipping their bodies quite literally into shape, making them wear what was seen as “civilized” clothing, making them obviously speak English, civilized language, quote unquote. And so sport was at once promoting these values, but it was also in the eyes of the British empire, civilizing these savage colonial spaces. So when they set up a cricket club, have an organized rugby match, or when they have polo or horse racing, right? It’s this idea like, oh, yes. Now they are coming into the right way. Now we know that they're learning how to participate in a civilized society.
So it became a marker, a thermometer. It was a way to look and say these colonized spaces are coming along. And so I think that understanding that it was also about how the bodies of colonial subjects were read is really important. And I do wanna say, as we've covered on this show, it's certainly not only the British empire, but in many ways, they're the blueprint. Look at something like the Commonwealth Games, right? This idea that we still have in operation, that it's bringing together the Commonwealth – former colonial spaces and current colonial spaces, presided over by the crown. It's a relic of the dominant nature of British empire and a way that we can see it continuing. So I do think there's a lot to consider about the way sport has helped facilitate and maintain the role of the British empire across the world.
Shireen: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I think it's really important to keep that in mind. And there's a couple of examples that I wanna bring up, how sports have been resistant. I saw this blog written on the LSE server, and I love their writing. And I saw this story about ‘The Revenge of Plassey’: Football in the British Raj’ and how there were Indigenous Indian teams in the early 20th century that actually played, and Mohun Bagan was a sportsman, he was a footballer who played against the IFA, it's called. So, Mohun Bagan was part of the Maharaj area that was controlled by the British empire. And this was all happening in Bengal, in west Bengal. it's really interesting because you have names of these clubs, like Howrah United Club, the Calcutta Rangers. So they're all imported names from the British. And essentially what ended up happening was, you know, Bagan and his team won and they defeated the colonizers. And with the stage of the IFA shield, you know, finally. That’s what it was called. That stage was pivoted because it was expected that the white people would win, but they didn't win.
So this was just an example that's actually a part of history. And you know, you can look at nationalism through political phenomenon. You can look at, before Brenda and I had Dr. Jean Williams on, we talked about how football came to be, and it was used to control classes and masses. That's essentially what it was for. It was also a means of opposition and resistance. And another example – and this is from Shane Thomas, friend of the show. He wrote for Media Diversified in July 2015 about why do we show such loyalty to the royalty as such? And it was really interesting, because he wrote about a match that was being played, and West Brom United is a team in the Premier League. And they were playing Charleston Battery as just, you know, a test match. And when the British national anthem was played, James McClean, an Irish player, turned away from the flag and bowed his head. And he was ripped apart in media. He was told that you should leave if the flag offends you.
I think the idea of nothing but respect and reverence – and Shane talks about this in this piece – nothing was accepted other than that reverence, an uncritical position of love and deference, because the idea... And the excuse used is, “Well it's sport, don't make it political.” And for a very long time, those who would defy and sort of deny the brutal effects of colonialism that were intertwined and entangled into sports. It was like the original sportwashing was done through the monarchy, through sport. So Amira, when we talk about sportwashing, we've often heard the argument that colonization actually made sport better. Because look, I've had actually somebody say to me with a straight face, well, England gave South Asia, they gave India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, they gave them cricket. So isn't that a good thing?
Amira: Yeah, Shireen, I think this is a really great point, because people are not naive, right? And I talked about before what the mindset was from the British empire about how sports was being used, but also people in these spaces were not naive about, you know, what the intention was. And using sport to push back, namely by winning. One of the first ways we see this in the West Indies of course is one of the first test between the West Indies and England in cricket in 1930. By 1934, 35, the West Indian cricket team won. And it really kind of changed a view of like, oh, we're always stronger, we’re always mightier. And one of the things that you see is when sporting spaces also include the ability for these colonized nations to win and to notch a victory, it is a resounding victory because it pushes back on the idea that Britain can never be toppled, right? That they are the strongest and the mightiest.
And I think that a lot of people have infused decolonization into sport because, like we talk about segregation, right? Like when Jesse Owens goes to Berlin in ’36 and wins all those gold medals at like Hitler's, you know, Berlin Games, it's refuting the racism of the day. And so colonial sporting spaces also have that potential to them, which is why you see, you know, the joke now about the Commonwealth Games. John Oliver made a joke…
Announcer: This week, the Commonwealth Games. The historic display of a once mighty nation, gathering together the countries it lost and finding a way to lose to them once more.
Amira: It’s also a site in which people have infused, like Shireen said, their own notion of how that game should be played. And so West Indian cricket starts to look very distinct from British cricket.
Shireen: In addition to that, I was interested in and wanted to touch on cricket as this anti-colonial effort, because cricket, again, was transplanted from Britain to South Asia. And, you know, just literally took off there, and now was very much beloved and probably the most played sport in the world. There's this great article about reexamining cricket, and as Amira already said, Beyond the Boundary is like the seminal work on this. But just how it's interesting that people are reclaiming that sport for themselves. And now newer generations actually don't associate cricket with England. I have cousins and their children who associate cricket with Pakistan. They associate it with rivalries between India and Pakistan and upcoming. And so it's really interesting to see how we move along. Like, we need to know the history, but so how the present is being absorbed this way.
Amira: Yeah. I mean, I think there's an idea of sporting nationalism that arises, especially in these former colonized spaces that gained independence, because one of the first things a lot of independent nation states do is apply to the Olympics to be recognized on their own. And so you look at places like say Jamaica, right? Who form their own identity around track and field. And I think that those are the ways that we've seen resistance occur in sport, and wrestle with these ideas of like how they first came to the sport in general. I think to finish, the problem and the persistence of colonization, which is, would all of these places be playing cricket if not for the British empire? We can never live in a fantasy world in which that is not the case.
And part of what colonization does is remove those possibilities, remove that imagination even from us. And so all we have is the way people have infused their own way into sports, or in the way that they've adapted it to their own, or in the way that they've dominated, right? But part of the ugly, insidious nature of colonization means it's always reifying it. Every time people play cricket, every time, they're always reifying the seed that was planted by colonial power. And this is why empire is not so easily disentangled. The British empire, the sun has set on it long ago, but through these things, you see how it persists.
Shireen: Yeah. That's so powerful. I've felt, you know, a certain way. I'm very clear about my position. I want that fucking diamond back. I want the Koh-i-Noor back. It was one of the first things I thought of. In her crown, the Koh-i-Noor diamond was stolen from India, pre-Partition India. And, you know, permit me to do my little rant here, because between late 18th century and 1947, when the Partition of India and Pakistan happened, and then after that came Bangladesh and east Pakistan. But after that was the looting of a place where there was no increase per capita in India, because everything was taken. And loot is actually a word that's used in Urdu to explain theft. So it's taken from English looting and it's actually used in vernacular. And I think about that a lot. And I think about how, you know, racialized sports presenters and athletes from those colonial histories have been mourning the queen.
And I mean, Amira, and you and I have talked about this a lot. You know, I feel some of some kind of way when I see particularly presenters from South Asia mourning, when I see people posting things like, well, it's, you know, someone died, and you should feel this way. I'm like, you don't get to tell me how to feel about this. Like, that's not how this works. I get to feel certain things. We’ve seen in real life how systems of colonialism are still brutalizing places. There's systems of classism that have been so deeply embedded and, you know, whether it's shadeism or anything else, like, it's hard to not feel irritated. And then I thought about, you know, they caught my ire, those from those histories that are mourning publicly. But Amira, you pointed something out to me, you know, you're my sage in that it's a little more complicated than that.
Amira: I think it's really hard when you live marginalized in these spaces. We live in a world that prizes civility over justice, that rewards kind of going with the narratives than kind of speaking in your truth. We've seen this week, the way that mourning has been policed. We’ve seen my former colleague, Uju Anya, went viral for her statements rooted in history, rooted in her own family's history with the British empire – their rape, their pillaging, their death and destruction at quite literally the hands of this monarchy. And yet it was deemed uncivil and unsavory, right? And not being able to hold those truths, even from people who are justice oriented, right? It's hard to disrupt the pageantry. And I think it's the same when we're looking at racialized people in these sporting spaces that you're referring to. I think sometimes we can underestimate how much bravery is required, you know, how much it requires to go out and stand there and say something other than putting out a statement, right?
And I was dreading…I knew Lewis Hamilton was gonna make a statement. He's literally Sir Lewis Hamilton. He's been quite literally knighted by this monarchy. So obviously he was gonna say something. He also spent his summer break in Namibia and in Kenya. And I think about how everything he says is scrutinized, how he could exhale wrong and there would be articles screaming about how terrible he is, right? We know what that racism looks like. And I think, what does it mean to be in that position? So, Lewis put out a statement that was very grounded in his personal experience with the monarchy. And then he posted about Chris Kaba, who was an unarmed Black man murdered by British police last week, for the rest of the day. You know what I mean? And so I think that this is part of the trapdoor of colonization.
We saw it with the French national team after they won the World Cup, where some on the team were pointing out, like, even though everybody was posting the African flags that they were from, they were saying, oh, we're all French. And being in that space between worlds, where you're always made to feel marginal, those moments of collective mourning or collective winning or collective anything that feels like you're moving from the margins to the core can be very seductive. And not only that, can feel easier than insisting that you shouldn't be marginalized in the first place, insisting that your entire relationship with the space you're in was borne out of domination and imperialism.
And I think that it's so hard to have expectations of how people operate in those spaces. And so I, like you, those things hurt, and they can hurt. And also, I understand watching how Uju has been treated, makes it scary to even talk about the subject, to even say these truths. Like, those are what happens. You get those examples. And so I mostly just send a lot of grace to those who have been speaking truth to power, who have been harmed by empire and want to talk about that harm, who don't feel part of a national mourning moment and who have a lot of fire, right, burning in them to say this hasn't been right. It's still not right. And I won't stop talking about that. And I wish you well in raising your voice.
Shireen: Now, for all you flamethrowers on Patreon, we are discussing Welcome to Wrexham.
Amira: Well, American Canadian lens.
Shireen: True. So it's sort of like, do I love this? Do I?
Amira: I think, well, first of all, I'm still very irritated that you haven't watched Ted Lasso, [Shireen laughs] which won some Emmys again, because you should, but also…
Shireen: So for our interview, I talked with Daniel Sailofsky, a sociologist of sport and law, about his recent article in the Guardian called NFL season is here, but I won't be following anymore. I can't unsee the harm it causes.
Daniel Sailofsky: The way that there's this profit above all ethos in the NFL and in professional sports at large, where players can be kept on teams or they're still acquired as long as they continue to perform, no matter really what the allegation of violence is against them.
Shireen: It dropped Tuesday. Check it out.
Shireen: Onto everyone's favorite segment, the burn pile. I'm gonna go first. So, Anthony Edwards is a basketball player with the Timberwolves – not to confuse him with Anthony Edwards of ER, who played the doctor for…Like, don't do that. Because that's what I did. Anyways. Anthony Edwards made some terrible homophobic comments. And the video of this – we're not gonna play the audio, because it's unnecessary – has gone everywhere. Because remember folks, when you say dumb shit, it stays on the internet forever. And comments were posted on his Instagram. He was driving by and decided to zoom in on a group of men and made absolutely like terrible, unnecessary comments about them and the way they present and the way they exist and live their lives.
So, Malika Andrews reported yesterday that the Timberwolves issued a statement saying that it was unacceptable. And, you know, Tim Connelly, the Wolves president said that, “We are disappointed in the language and action Anthony Edward displayed on social media. The Timberwolves are committed to be an inclusive and welcoming organization for all.” And I think that was necessary. I actually don't hate the fact that they stood up and they issued a statement. I do wanna add that Anthony Edwards did apologize. And this is important, because like, you know, we can talk about language all day. And even Athlete Ally had enough grace to issue their own tweet to say that they appreciate that he did apologize, and that language is harmful and people should understand why, which I thought was very classy.
So, Anthony Edwards on Twitter: “What I said was immature, hurtful and disrespectful. I'm incredibly sorry. It's unacceptable for me or anyone to use that language in such a hurtful way. There's no excuse for it at all. I was raised better than that.” So, he is...We understand how Black athletes are judged differently and how the bar is different, but at the end of the day, he apologized and took ownership for what he said. And, you know, hopefully will do better next time. But I do wanna burn this specifically because of that use of language. And I think, you know, when we talk about harm, a lot of people tend to think that harm is only violence. These kind of words are violence. That's exactly what they are. Words turn into policies that turn into attacks on people's lives. It's violence. And I wanna take that violence and I wanna throw it on the burn pile, burn.
Amira: Burn.
Shireen: Amira, what are you burning?
Amira: Two years ago, back in episode 158, I burned a report that came out detailing a welfare embezzlement scheme that happened in Mississippi. It accused six people of working together to embezzle millions of dollars of public money, specifically from a temporary assistance for needy families, and using the department of human services in the state of Mississippi to funnel this money into various terrible selfish things. In particular, when I burned it two years ago, I focused in on Brett Favre. Yes, the quarterback, Brett Favre, who got $1.1 million for speaking engagements that he never attended. Now, if you remember at the time, Farve denied, denied, denied everybody involved, like, “We didn't do this.” Not like we believed them then.
But now, thanks to an investigative report by Mississippi Today, we have text messages from 2017 to 2019 that demonstrate that Brett Favre, along with Nancy New and then-governor Phil Bryant, were discussing how to divert at least $5 million in those welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi. Southern Mississippi, the school Favre played football at, and of course at the time it was also the school that Brett Favre's daughter was playing volleyball at. I am running out of words for how disgusting all of this is. We have known Brett Favre has been a racist, misogynistic creep, but to see these text messages where Favre is saying, “If you were to pay me, is there any way the media can find out where it came from and how much?” Try to deny that! Where it came from? You know you were taking from families who need it. You know you were taking millions of dollars from families who need it to build a volleyball stadium that your daughter could play volleyball in. In Mississippi!
I said this two years ago, and I saying again. Mississippi, one of the poorest states in this country, a very Black state where almost half of Mississippi’s Black children live in poverty. That program you diverted funds for is already gutted. It's already receiving less than the national average. It already is raising the bar so much and who can even qualify in Mississippi that only 8% of Mississippi families in poverty are even accessing these fund. You're stripping it from Mississippians, hardworking Mississippians who need support, whose government constantly turns their back of them. I mean, just two weeks ago, I was telling you that Jackson doesn't have water, and here you go diverting funds and hoping the public doesn't catch wind of it. Well, guess what? We caught wind of it. We know what you did. We see you for who you are.
Hell, even Jeff Pearlman who wrote the biography on Brett Favre telling you to burn that book, because he is scum. Honestly, fuck Brett Favre. Fuck Nancy New. Fuck Phil Bryant. Fuck Tate Reeves, because this legacy is continuing. It is sickening. It is disturbing. I wish it was surprising. The people of Mississippi deserve so much better than what they have gotten. Black Mississippians deserve so much better than what they have gotten. It shouldn't have taken this long. It shouldn't have taken a text message for him to get this kind of public reckoning, because the writing has been on the wall. But for now, burn it all down.
Shireen: Burn.
Shireen: Moving on to some incredible, incredible accomplishments. Amira, can you get us started?
Amira: Yes, absolutely. Wanna shout out US Open champions. Alfie Hewett took the men's wheelchair singles final, and Diede de Groot won the women's wheelchair singles final. It marks her fifth straight US Open singles title. And Iga Swiatek took the women's single final, which was her second grand slam of the season. Special shoutout to Ons Jabeur of course, who became the first woman of African descent to appear in a final. She had a tremendous run at the Open. And shoutout to Frances Tiafoe as well. It was a wonderful Open and everybody just showed the hell out. It was great tennis.
Shireen: Congratulations to Nick Suzuki, named captain of the Montreal Canadiens at 23, and only the second hockey player of Asian descent to be named as a full captain.
Amira: I just also wanna shout out the Sun Belt conference. If you're not familiar, big time Power Five conferences often pay less resourced teams to come play them in hopes of getting an embarrassing momentum-building first win. Well, the Sun Belt conference had other ideas. This past weekend, Georgia Southern took down Nebraska, beat them so bad they got their coach fired. Marshall shocked Notre Dame. And Appalachian State, not the first time to be in this role of the Cinderella team, upset the Aggies down at Texas A&M. The Sun Belt conference, much slept on, always overlooked, absolutely had a statement weekend.
Shireen: I just wanna shout out Team Pakistan, the women's national football team, who, after eight years of hiatus, finally got to play in the South Asian Football Federation tournament. They won their last match of the tournament against the Maldives 7-0. A huge congratulations to those women who never gave up, particularly Hajra Khan, friend of the show. It was a wonderful moment.
Amira: So, we are in the middle of WNBA finals, but the awards have been given out. So we wanna shout out of course A’ja Wilson, who got defensive player of the year. Rhyne Howard got rookie of the year for the Atlanta Dream. And Jackie Young from the Aces is the most improved player. Brionna Jones from the Sun got sixth player of the year. The coach of the year is Becky Hammon. James Wade of the Sky got executive of the year. And Sylvia Fowles from the Lynx took home the sportsmanship award. A’ja Wilson also was just named the MVP of the WNBA. This is her second MVP title, making her only the seventh player in league history to take home those honors more than once.
Shireen: Amazing. Can we get a drumroll, please? Amira, gimme your Phil Collins.
[drumroll]
[laughs] Carlos Alcaraz, the young Spanish tennis sensation, made history with his men's singles US Open win, which also gave him the world number one ranking. He is 19 years old and now the youngest world number one in men's tennis history.
Shireen: Amira, tell me what's good.
Amira: What is good? Um… [long pause] What is good?
Shireen: Okay. It is Toronto International Film Festival time. I'm gonna go watch Black on Ice, and I'm very excited about that. Then I'm gonna go watch The Woman King this weekend, which I cannot wait for. Queen Viola Davis is in town, just sprinkling her majesty everywhere. Just love her. I cannot wait to see this film. I just wanted to say that school has begun, and I'm teaching three classes, and I love my classes. I also am extremely excited, and I tweeted this out, that I told my students unequivocally: don't hand me any work in which you've cited Barstool. Don’t bother. And I thought about that, and I thought about it being actually a powerful moment, because when you delegitimize what isn't legitimate in terms of systems of racism, antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, it felt really good to do that. And I've been carrying that and walking with that and feeling really proud about that. I'm also really excited about Law & Order. The original series season six is on Amazon Prime and I found it last night. And I'm very excited about Welcome to Wrexham – thanks, Amira, that’s totally your fault.
Amira: [laughs] TV is making me happy. Zendaya picked up another Emmy for Euphoria. And Abbott Elementary did wonderful. Quinta got an Emmy for writing in her first show, makes me so happy. I got to see her in LA for the ESPYs and tell her how much Abbott meant to all of us. And so it was so great to see her win, and Sheryl Lee Ralph got a much deserved Emmy – only the second Black woman in history to get a Emmy for supporting role, which, again, representation. See what happens? And gave a resounding, singing speech, which led to my favorite thing. If everybody knows my favorite movie, Sister Act 2, and she plays Lauryn Hill's mom, and she has lines like, “Singing will not put food on the table! Singing will not pay the bills!” And then she sung her acceptance speech and everybody said, “And she had the nerve to tell Rita that singing wouldn't pay the bills?” [laughs] So it was funny. I really enjoyed that.
Season two of Reservation Dogs is amazing. I finally caught up. It continues to be one of the best shows on TV. One of my favorite shows. So, I highly recommend it. Other than that, we're just in September, we're rolling along, you know, there's lots of sports sporting. There’s teaching happening. I love my class. Samari is back in rehearsal, which means that I spend a lot of time writing in bars that I'm discovering around Austin with beautiful green flower spaces and indoor and outdoor plants and fun patios. And so it's like by far my favorite way to discover the city. And so that is what I did for most of the weekend. So, that's what's good for me. Just chugging along.
Shireen: What we're watching this week. So, the WNBA finals are on, and they're lit. So we're definitely watching that. And Amira, we’ve alluded to Welcome to Wrexham, which we have talked about on our Patreon. But you are watching other sports related content. Can you give our listeners just an insight into what you're watching in case they're interested?
Amira: Friend of the show Brandi had tweeted that there was this random F1 episode of McDonald & Dodds, which is a British detective series. [laughs] You can find it on BritBox. I got a one week free trial. Anyways, there’s this absolutely fever dream episode that's based on F1, where it’s very clearly a driver who's supposed to be Lewis Hamilton while he was at Williams. And he like gets murdered during a pit stop, but there's more! It's twisted. It's wild. Somebody literally had like multiple shrooms and was like, let me write this detective show episode. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Shireen: Amazing. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by the one and only Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is a part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And if you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, and we cannot do without you, patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn it on, and not out.
Amira: Oh, can I just add one thing? Everybody remember, multiple planets are in retrograde. So if everything in your life is really topsy turvy right now, just hang on beloved. We'll get through it together.
Shireen: I thought you were gonna say something, because Arsenal was the only team invited, and I wasn't spiting you. Just, she didn't care for Man U. And I thought you were gonna say something about that.