Episode 263: Favre's Welfare Fraud and Other Sports Criminals Ripping Us Off
In this episode, Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther dissect Brett Favre's welfare fraud.
But first, they talk about what occupation they would have if they weren't an historian and journalists. Then, they discuss how sports have defrauded the public, dissecting the most recent headline about former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre stealing millions from the Mississippi's welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium. They talk about how this story broken by a local investigative reporter, Anna Wolfe, on the poverty beat and how sports media often glosses over corrupt, fraudulent behavior of sports stars. They also discuss similar cases, including the construction of the Buffalo Bills Stadium being paid for largely by New York State taxpayers despite the Bills' owners being billionaires, and they ways Donald Trump used golf courses to facilitate his fraudulent acts.
Following this discussion, they preview a special Patreon segment about the current 15 players for the National Spanish Women's Football Team who are on strike to try and oust their toxic coach.
Then, you'll here a preview of this week's interview with Andrew Maraniss about his latest book Inaugural Ballers, which tells the story of the 1976 Women’s Olympic Basketball team.
Next, they burn some of the worst in sports this week on the Burn Pile. Then, they celebrate those shining light, including Torchbearers of the Week, all those who in Iran protesting the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody for allegedly violating hijab protocols. Several prominent athletes have joined university professors, government officials and other state employees in resigning, including taekwondo practitioner Mahsa Sadeghi, Olympic fencer Mojtaba Abedin and Sajjad Esteki, the captain of Iran's national handball team.
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.
Transcript
Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. Today on the show, I am joined by my co-hosts Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther. How are you?
Jessica: Good. How are you?
Brenda: Fine. How are you, Linz?
Lindsay: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm dealing with construction in the condo above me, which is, you know, really good timing for recording. So, you know, I'll try and keep it to a minimum, but if you hear hammering, you know, it's just life. [laughter]
Brenda: That's the way it goes. I'm excited though to talk about what we're gonna talk about on today's show: Brett Favre, the Buffalo Bills, and Donald Trump and his golf courses. That's right. The theme this week is “use sports to swindle from public money.” Woo! One of my very favorite topics, near and dear to my heart. Also, this week we're going to have content on Patreon regarding the Spanish women's national team and their protest, so check that out. We've been trying to add as much as possible, and we hope it's great content for the patrons. We appreciate you. Before all that…I love my job, but my commute kind of sucks, and so I've had fantasies about what would I do, what would I do that's entirely different than being a history professor? And I wanted to see if my co-hosts had anything under their sleeve. Jessica, I don't think any of us will be surprised by what you pick.
Jessica: [laughs] I would be a baker. Aaron and I joke about this all the time, that that'll be our retirement. And I'm like, it's actually an exhausting job, and you don't do that when you retire. The other thing I will say, I was talking to Amira this week, and as she is wont to do, she brought up F1, and she was telling me about how there are people whose entire jobs are the logistics of moving the teams around the world and like keeping track of where all the stuff is and where all the people are. And I was like, I would be a phenomenal logistics person. Like, I got excited even thinking about doing that. So those would be my two things. I would be really good at either one, I think.
Brenda: I think the tough thing is the question of what would you be good at and what do you wanna do? For example, I would want to go into construction. [laughs] The likelihood that I would be good at that is very low. Almost nothing.
Jessica: You'd be like a little construction elf.
Brenda: That is so funny. That's exactly the way I picture myself. Almost like in Santa's workshop, but in Lindsay's kitchen.
Jessica: There you go!
Brenda: I mean, can you imagine? Yay! Lindsay, what about you?
Lindsay: Oh, I have no idea. I just think it's fitting that we're all picking things that do not involve sitting at a computer all day. [laughs]
Jessica: Yes.
Brenda: True story.
Lindsay: Because basically I'm like, a job that prevents me from checking the internet for like eight hours at a time is now my dream job. No, I mean, look, I grew up in the arts world and went to film school and I think one thing I really miss is like coming together and making art, like that teamwork. And so, you know, one thing I would love to do and be really good at is being a theater director or something like that. Like, I would just love…You know, I need to be a leader of some sort. I need to be around people. And I need to not be checking the internet.
Brenda: Jessica Luther, I don't think that Lindsay Gibbs thinks our podcast is our podcast is art. [laughter] That's the impression that I'm getting right now. I don't know if you also felt that slight, but… [laughs]
Lindsay: Fiction. Fiction. I wanted to work in fiction. [laughs]
Brenda: No, I know.
Lindsay: Made up pretend stories. [laughs]
Jessica: I will say, as we're making this, it doesn't feel like art.
Lindsay: No, it does not. No.
Brenda: But it is so fantastical. So, buckle up, because we're gonna talk about some things that are stranger than fiction, or at least as devious. This week we're gonna tackle white collar, green jersey criminals and how sports rips us off. So let's get on with it. Of course, sports aren't worse than any other sphere of influence, right? Anyone who wants to defraud the public can find one. But it is a messy, powerful, and poorly regulated place. And I'm gonna put on my broken record this week and ask my co-hosts to think through sports and corruption, which all too often makes sports a space without accountability, prone to sexual harassment, assault, and other gendered violence. I'd like to think about how, from the player side, the owner side, and the government side, how this all works, and how people get away with it. So, I wanna start with the most recent example. It's been in the news a lot. Former Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre. Jessica, can you bring us up to date on the corruption scandal he's enmeshed in?
Jessica: Yeah, I'm gonna do my best, y’all, stick with me on this. I will say, it's pretty simple on its face. Stole money from welfare and used it to build volleyball facilities. But so essentially, Hall of Fame quarterback and sender of inappropriate text messages to a female reporter Brett Favre fleeced the state of Mississippi for millions of dollars with the help of multiple state officials. So, the best reporting on all of this is from Mississippi Today's Anna Wolfe, a reporter on the poverty beat in Mississippi. Okay, here are the main players. Former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, Brett Favre, a woman named Nancy New, who ran a nonprofit called the Mississippi Community Education Center that was in charge of spending tens of millions of flexible federal welfare dollars. The Mississippi Department of Human Services' former welfare agency director John Davis and others “worked together to channel at least $5 million of the state's welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, where Favre’s daughter played the sport. Favre received most of the credit for raising funds to construct the facility.”
That's a big one, but additionally, Favre was paid $1.1 million that was supposed to go to welfare, but instead went to this volleyball facility, and it was masked as payment for speaking gigs that Favre never did. If all this sounds familiar here on the show, Amira burned this, twice – a couple weeks ago in 261, but also back on episode 158. So like, this isn't new necessarily. So they took money that was supposed to go to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF, and they used it on brick and mortar construction, something that is literally specifically prohibited by federal regulations. Now, according to Nancy New's son, who is also wrapped up in all of this, the Southern Miss construction project was disguised as a lease to get around the federal regulations.
Okay, so here's more from Anna Wolfe: “Because of the strict prohibition on using TANF funds to pay for construction, the parties had to craft an agreement that would look to satisfy federal law and give the illusion they were helping needy families. With the help of legal advice from MDHS,” – that’s the Mississippi Department of Human Services – “with help of legal advice from their attorneys, they came up with the idea for Nancy New's nonprofit to enter a $5 million upfront lease of the university's athletic facilities, which the nonprofit would purportedly use for programming. And, in exchange, the foundation would include offices for the nonprofit inside the volleyball facility, which they would call a wellness center.”
So basically, they just came up with a way to lie to the federal government about where this welfare money was going to go in order to build fucking athletic facilities. But this is only a piece of the biggest public fraud case in Mississippi's history, which is what this is part of. Nonprofit leaders misspent at least $77 million in funds that were supposed to help the needy in the poorest state in this country, a state that has a large Black population. Favre's volleyball facility is the single largest known fraudulent purchase within the scheme, but it's so much bigger than Favre. So like, for example, John Davis, the former head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, his brother-in-law got $600,000 for a job that doesn't exist. So, there was kind of like run of the mill of fraudulent stuff. Davis has pleaded guilty to federal and local charges recently. Nancy New pleaded guilty to 13 charges back in April.
Sports are a large part of this. According to an explainer on Vox, illegal diversions of TANF funds to enrich sports celebrities needed his own subheading in a civil suit that the state has filed against 38 defendants. And I just wanna mention a couple more of the sports people. A college linebacker who is a “longtime personal trainer and buddy” of the current governor, Tate Reeves – the linebacker received more than $1 million in TANF money to host three fitness boot camps! $1 million for three fitness boot camps. It also includes professional wrestlers Ted Jr. and Brett DiBiases. Their father, a former WWE wrestler, Ted Sr., who went by the name The Million Dollar Man, he received $1.7 million in TANF money to support of his, yes, wrestling ministry. It is a fucking mess in Mississippi, and Favre has become the face, especially in sports media, of all of this.
Brenda: Thank you for that rundown. I often feel like things can sound boring as you're rattling off all of these intricate details, but really that's where the devil is, in these cases, and that's partly why they're so hard, I think, to catch attention, is because you have to unravel these pieces and it feels like, okay, you need to know this thing, and then this thing, and then this thing. Let's hear from our co-host, Amira Rose Davis, in episode 261 on those most affected by these scams.
Amira: 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.
Brenda: So, let's talk a little more about the part where Brett Favre didn't want the media catching wind. I mean, the media, its treatment has been kind of central to this and it’s right off the bat something that Favre is concerned about. Lindsay?
Lindsay: You know, Favre is of course trying to say he did not know that this is where the funds were coming from for this volleyball court. Of course, there's now reports that in 2019, two years after the volleyball court stuff, he came back and tried to get more public funds for a football stadium at his alma mater, and he was specifically told by the governor, that time, he was specifically told no. And we also have text messages that have come out that Favre is talking to Nancy New, saying, “Is there any way the media can find out where this money came from and how much it was?” And of course she says no. And Favre has every right to believe that the media will not look into his improprieties. And if they do look into them, that they won't give a shit.
And this is part of the problem, because sports stars like Brett Favre, you know, wealthy men in general, but sports takes it to this other level of idolization, they’ve just been allowed to pretty much do whatever they want. And you know, Favre is…All of his sins have been cast aside because he was sometimes good at throwing the football and refused to retire and was a gun slinger. You probably remember a little bit about this time when he sent these inappropriate dick pics, let's call them what they were, and voicemails to a game day host for the Jets back in 2008. And it's kind of stunning how easily it just got like pushed aside, like joked about, you know? So, Jenn Sterger, who was the game day host for the Jets in 2008, he was alleged to have sent her suggestive text messages and voicemails asking her to come back to his hotel room, and then also sent explicit photos of himself to her. He was the quarterback. She was a sideline reporter for the team. Power dynamics definitely in play.
So the league went to investigate this and said its sole focus was on whether Favre violated workplace conduct policy, and it wasn't about making judgments about appropriateness of personal relationships. So, Favre admitted to sending the voicemails, but said he didn't send the images to Sterger. He did not really cooperate with the investigation and he was fined $50,000. But I bet that $50,000 was worth it because the NFL stated it could not conclude that he had violated the personal conduct policy. So, all that happened to him was $50,000 and some jokes on the internet, and it's of course followed around Jenn Sterger much more than it has Brett Favre. So of course he doesn't think that there's gonna be any accountability for this, because there's never been any accountability for his sins.
Brenda: Well, and in fact, that's what male sports stars are so often promised, the promise of total access to women as they want without any repercussion. So, it’s not surprising that he would assume that. Jessica, what else stood out to you about the media coverage of the Brett Favre case?
Jessica: Well, as I mentioned, the person who has done the most in depth reporting is a woman named Anna Wolfe at Mississippi Today, and she is of poverty beat reporter. And I mean, I think sports media has come around since she broke her latest big story a couple weeks ago. Like, she's been on all the podcasts. But I do think it's an interesting moment to consider what stories are lost when we are looking to the sports media in particular to cover these men. And what's gained when it's people outside of that sphere doing this kind of investigative work. Anna's work has been incredibly impressive for an outlet that I understand…Like, we should all go donate to Mississippi Today right now. Like, they don't have a ton of money to do this kind of work.
And so, yeah, I keep thinking about how important…You know, we've gone from Sarver, talking about him last week, to this week, the importance of investigative journalism. And in this case, just how important it was that she actually didn’t...Like, she was on ESPN Daily and talked about how she didn't know what a volleyball facility looked like, and she went to try to see it and was confused by what she was looking at. Like, she's not a sports person. That wasn't how she came at this story.
Brenda: Yeah, that's interesting. And there's so many cases that feel like they're being covered by local investigative journalists, like, all the freshest stories would feel like, whether it's the Lansing State Journal, or this Mississippi paper. And you wonder, like, also, it's about access, right? Like, if you're not a sports person, you don't even know what you're losing, right?
Jessica: Right. You’re not worried. That’s not a concern at all. I also just think it's interesting, Bren, and I wanted to get your take on this. I was telling Aaron about this last night. He's like, why? Like, why would Brett Favre steal $6 million from welfare? Like, doesn't Brett Favre have $6 million? And I was like, I bet he does, but he can steal. Like, is that the answer here? They can just steal, so they do it?
Brenda: You know, that's a really good question. And when we talk in a minute about the Buffalo Bills, of course that's the very same question. Or Donald Trump. Like, don't these people have…? And again, I think there's an ethos that is really particularly strong in sports. And I'm not in high corporate business, but I assume the same thing, where you deserve this, you deserve the public support, you deserve access to women. You know, it looks better that it's not just the Brett Favre volleyball stadium. Some people like that, some people don't. You know what I mean? But maybe for him, the point is he deserves to not have to dip into his own coffers. His very moral support should justify, you know, millions of dollars for the state. Look at what he's done for the state, Jessica Luther! Look at…He put his face on a cleanup the golf campaign. [Jessica laughs] I mean, I feel as though this is the great promise. And of course it's not everyone, but I do think it is a promise to all important male celebrities, particularly sports stars, that when you rise to the top, part of what you're dreaming of is to be able to do this kind of stuff.
Jessica: That's interesting. Because I did wonder why it's not just the Brett Favre volleyball facility. You could just not do something illegal. [laughter] You could just not steal from welfare recipients, and then your name will be there. I don't know. It is interesting to think about, like, why not just pay this money that you have?
Brenda: If you think you deserve $7 billion, then you probably feel that those welfare recipients deserve their lot too. And that's part of the toxic thinking that goes into that, and that's why sports can normalize these class relationships and these have and have nots, because it just sort of looks like, yes, you're striving, you're working, you deserve everything you have – which isn't to say that you don’t. [laughs] But anyway, to say these promises maybe get wrapped up together. So, Linz, you had kind of half giggled, half bemoaned, half been sad – I don't know, whatever, that's many halves – about what is it that Brett Favre felt that he really needed?
Lindsay: I mean, I'm not sure this is exactly what you're asking Brenda, [laughs] but I just need to say it, because I just need to explode. But just like, there's something so fucking literally paternalistic and gross about this all being because his daughter plays for the volleyball team, right? And he just wants his daughter to have the best stadium, right? So it has nothing to do with women's sports or caring about anything. It's all so his daughter has the shiniest toy. And he did the exact same thing in high school except I don't think he took public money for that – that we know of – but he built her high school a new volleyball stadium. And I guess there's nothing like on the face wrong with that, but there's just something gross about it to me. It’s just like, it's literally the rich getting richer, right? Like, it's just like literally rigging the system in the favor of you're offspring, right? And stealing money from other families in order to do that. And so I think it just, once again, it just feeds into his ego, right? Like, it's for his daughter, it’s for his alma mater, it's for his legacy. It's all fucking about him.
Jessica: Right. As you said, it's not some kind of systemic change around the lack of resources for women's sports that he's like trying to intervene in on. Now here he's like, he just wants his daughter to play on a nice court. [laughs]
Lindsay: And there's this big AP article from 2020 that is about literally just like Brett Favre sees some of his own traits in Mahomes, but buried in the middle of this is all about Brett Favre's foundation work. “Southern Miss remains close to Favre’s heart. He and wife Deanna have the Favre4Hope Foundation.” That's Favre and then the number 4 Hope, because he's number four, get it? “Recently raised funds to build a volleyball center at the school. Favre’s daughter, Breleigh, has played the sport there.” And so he says, “We wanted to do something for a high school and (Southern Miss). We built one at Oak Grove. And for Southern Miss, that was difficult — it’s hard to get people to donate for volleyball. But we’ll be opening an $8 million facility that will be as good as any in the country at Southern Mississippi.” And then he goes on to just brag all the good stuff his foundation is doing. So do not let any of this bullshit now fool you, because this is how he's spinning it in 2020, as a good deed from him, as building his family's legacy. And yet behind scenes he's being like, are you sure this won't get out?
One thing that this all reminds me of is like when people talk about welfare fraud, right? They're so often talking about needy people scheming the government, about poor people abusing the system. When in reality, this is the welfare fraud that we should be worried about. And I think about the whole reason this fraud is possible. I was listening to the Hang Up and Listen podcast with Josh Levin, who has done a lot of reporting on welfare fraud, and you know, he brought up that it's because of Bill Clinton's welfare reforms in the 90s that funds were able to be used like this, right? That funds are able to not just be given directly to poor people, but that there's ways to manipulate them for programs that are “for the public good” as opposed to direct assistance. Because directly assisting poor people, they might not do the right thing with them.
Brenda: Right. But the Republicans would've cut it all together if it wasn't for that, especially George W. Bush.
Lindsay: Oh yeah, no.
Brenda: So we should just keep their feet to the fire. Like, that was the compromise Clinton came up with, and it's resulted in this, and it's bad. But it was under threat of absolutely no more. Like, they wanted to cut WIC. Like, children, infants. You know, so, it's really generally awful. I did wanna at least cover a couple other cases. And one, I was struck…I really like the outlet The Conversation, and I was struck by reading this article that described the Buffalo Bills deal as the worst that this professor who studied the financing of stadiums for years has ever seen. His name's Victor Matheson at College of Holy Cross, and he wrote this and it was very good. Jessica, what do you think about this stadium deal? Pretty sweet, huh? Pretty sweet for Bills owners, the Pegulas.
Jessica: Yeah, I mean, New York state's gonna pay $1.1 billion for the new Buffalo Bills stadium, once you factor in long term maintenance costs. So, the actual build of the stadium is $1.4 billion. New York, including Brenda Elsey right there, is gonna pay $850 million of that, which will be the largest direct public subsidy for an NFL stadium in history. In total, the entire state of New York will be putting up roughly $600 million, with more than $418 million of that coming from a delayed casino related payment from the Seneca Nation. The billionaire owners of the team, the Pegulas, Kim and Terry, they're worth over $5 billion. And the team itself is valued at $2.2 billion. But in the end, the Pegulas and the NFL will only pay $550 million for the new stadium.
And I’d be remiss not to mention that the governor, Kathy Hochul, who's a Bills fan from Buffalo, her husband is a key executive with a company called Delaware North. It's a Buffalo company that holds the concession rights to the current stadium. It's not clear that they will own the new rights, when the stadium is built, to those concessions. But certainly the family is invested in the stadium. Hochul has said this was necessary to do because otherwise they'll leave. That's always a threat, right? That the Bills will leave and go somewhere else to a state with that will pay all of this. In the echoes of Mississippi, a few days before the governor announced the stadium deal, she put out her proposed budget, which had a $800 million cut in funding to the Office of Children and Family Services. A few days later, she announced that the state was gonna put $850 million into a private professional football team stadium.
Brenda: You don't say.
Jessica: Yeah, how about that?
Brenda: Wow. That's such a coinkydink.
Jessica: It's so much money. It's so much.
Brenda: It's ridiculous.
Jessica: It’s like the kind of money where you can't really imagine it.
Brenda: And western New York is not…I understand New York City and the Westchester area is a very rich place, but western New York is not. And so basically Erie County, which used to fit part of the bill, is bankrupt. And yet the Pegulas for years have claimed that they've revitalized all of western New York. How did the Pegulas earn their fortune, you ask? Or maybe you didn't ask, but you should have. Fracking. Fracking in the midwest and western New York. And once again, universities are front and center at these people's attempts to become these benevolent, you know, patriarchs. Whether it's him giving to Penn State over a hundred million dollars. They're giving as much to Penn State as they're putting into this stadium.
Jessica: Oh man.
Brenda: So like, fuck you. Like, all of you.
Jessica: It's just, it's wild because they could just pay for the stadium and still be worth billions of dollars.
Brenda: Exactly. Exactly!
Jessica: Like, they could still have billions of dollars after they pay for billions of dollars in a stadium.
Brenda: They paid cash for the Buffalo Bills. $1.5 billion in cash, the biggest cash buyout of a professional team, ever. What even is that? How do you have that in cash? Is that safe? Is that in Zurich? Where is a billion dollars in cash? I have no concept.
Jessica: And it's not like the state actually paying all this money means that this private team will suddenly have some kind of public accountability. It just means they get all this money.
Lindsay: Well, and it's just gonna keep…I mean, valuations for these teams just keep skyrocketing, right?
Jessica: Oh yeah. Up and up and up.
Lindsay: As new TV deals come, like, they're just gonna keep skyrocketing. So it's just building their own personal wealth at the end of the day.
Brenda: I'll be interested to see how it all kind of unravels as local Buffalo reporters are really on this as well. Theme of the day. And then finally, I just wanted to say, you know, one of the problems is that yes, you've got these vulnerable states, these vulnerable places, very socioeconomically depressed places that make it easier to take advantage of them, like western New York. And this starts at the very top. This past week, we saw New York Attorney General Letitia James filing a lengthy lawsuit against former President Donald Trump. And if you have the chance, the charges are totally open, you can find them. You can control-F through the, I don't know, 220 something page document for the word “golf.” And if you do that, you will see that the word golf appears many, many, many times. In fact, the golf course, the National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, appears 11 times.
And just to say that, over the last 10 years, Trump has used the valuations – and this goes kind of to what Lindsay was saying – as up and down, up and down, up and down. Sometimes making the value of a certain course increase over 1100% over a two year period because his name is on it, when that works out for getting better loans. Or he devalues it to be worth nothing so that he doesn't have to pay taxes. So these things are very fungible. [laughs] And I just wanna say, it starts at the very top, when that's your example. And the fact that New York Attorney General is going after him, you know, I think is indicative of where we can find accountability in these sites. The fact that they also were the same ones that went after FIFA is sort of saying like, look, we know what's going on. We know these deals.
Brenda: Check out our interview this week. Lindsay talks with Andrew Maraniss about his latest book, Inaugural Ballers, which tells the story of the 1976 women's Olympic basketball team who laid the foundation for the rise of women's sports in the US.
Andrew Maraniss: Nancy Lieberman, who is one of the players on the '76 team, her mom really disapproved of her playing sports, wanted her to wear dresses, play with dolls, was upset when she'd see Nancy out playing football or baseball. And when Nancy would bring basketballs home, her mom punctured them with screwdrivers to keep her from dribbling, you know? So many obstacles that they had to overcome. Not just the opponents on the court, but you know, society and very specific individuals trying to prevent them from playing.
Brenda: And now it's time for everyone's favorite segment where we pile up all the stuff that has sucked in sports for this week and we light it on an allegorical burn pile. I'm gonna start, because I feel like it's almost just a continuation of what we've been doing, but it's still worth mentioning. I think it needs mentioning. The Guardian broke an article last week, Matthew Hall wrote it, on Brad Evans, the case of Brad Evans, the former University of Toledo women's head coach. And, as it turns out, at least one player and one assistant coach had filed a Title IX, more than one Title IX complaint, against Brad Evans. They had filed this with University of Toledo, and then they also alerted SafeSport. Neither of these organizations for three years have completed an investigation of Brad Evans. This allowed him to continue to coach at the highest levels, including the Olympic development program and the National Association in Ohio. The United States Soccer Federation has said it has nothing to do with this. This is a high school and university coach, and thus it doesn't fall under federations or FIFA. And as an expert in this area, I can tell you that that is very funny, LOL. To coach in those institutions, you still need the backing of a USSF license. So it's not true that they couldn't have done anything.
I mean, it's fine to say this belonged within the Title IX office. It certainly did. No one knows why they sat on it three years, why he was allowed to resign without explaining himself, or facing any negative consequences, whether publicly, financially, or otherwise. SafeSport…I mean, we've done a lot of episodes between everyone talking in different ways and in different cases, but it is not useful. It has not been useful, in this case. So, I don't know what to say about that. I don't know the alternative. This isn’t, you know, exactly my area of expertise, but it's not working. And why the university would sit on this for three years and just be happier to let it go away, we know why that is. And so I wanna burn it. I wanna burn their complacency with just letting him resign without consequences. That allowed him to continue to create unsafe environment for youth players and for women players in the state of Ohio. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Okay, Jessica, you're up.
Jessica: Last week, the Washington Post published a big report on Black coaches in the NFL titled Blackout: How the NFL Blocks Black Coaches. They spoke to 16 of the 24 living, current and former Black NFL head coaches, dozens of other people in the league, and analyzed three decades worth of data – because it's only been three decades that Black men have been head coaches in the league. Let me quote straight from the report some of their findings. “Black coaches tend to perform about as well as white coaches, but while white candidates are offered a vast and diverse set of routes to the league's top coaching jobs, Black coaches face a much narrower set of paths. They have had to serve significantly longer as mid-level assistants, are more likely to be given interim jobs and full-time ones, and are held to a higher standard when it comes to keeping their jobs.”
There's plenty that can be pulled out of this reporting and burned, including racist remarks directed at coaching candidates, how the words “boy genius” only applies to white men, how winning doesn't actually matter when the coach is Black. I really, really, really encourage listeners to spend time with this project. But I feel like this is as good an indicator of the seriousness with which the NFL takes responsibility for these racial disparities as anything: “As part of this project, the Post contacted all 32 teams seeking interviews with its owner, or in the case of the publicly owned Green Bay Packers, its top executive. Only one, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Art Rooney II, for whose father Dan the Rooney Rule is named, agreed to be interviewed for this story before it was published.” One of the 32.
Roger Goodell also refused to be interviewed, and the NFL was not very forthcoming with the data they were willing to share with the Post. The people with the most power and money in the league won't even talk about this. We've discussed this problem a lot on Burn It All Down throughout the entire tenure of the show – the history of this problem, the current form of this problem. If you wanna hear us dig in, search our site for the Rooney Rule, it'll pop up a lot. So this isn't me talking about anything we don't know, but there's always utility in seeing everything laid out in one place like this. It's a visually stunning piece of reporting. And also from hearing from the Black men who have experienced and continue to experience this racism in the league. So I wanna thank the Washington Post for doing this work, and as for everything that they have reported, burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. I've got a double whammy here. Last Wednesday night, very late, we heard from ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski that a suspension was coming for Ime Udoka, the head coach of the Boston Celtics, who made the NBA finals last year. Within a couple of hours over at The Athletic, Shams Charania added that Udoka had an improper and consensual relationship with a female member of the team staff. This was all very sudden news to drop in the middle of the night without many details, and the rumor mill went into overdrive. Everyone had 1:00am takes, everyone had access to Google. Pretty much nobody acted with any array of class or restraint or responsibility. Of course, there's still a lot we don't know, but it is notable that in Shams’s official report on The Athletic published five days ago, the word “consensual” was removed from his report. He said that the punishment is for “an intimate relationship with a female member of the organization,” and that the Celtics organization first became aware of the relationship in July. They were led to believe by both parties that it was consensual, but the woman recently accused Udoka of making unwanted comments towards her, leading the team to launch an investigation, which started in July.
I wanna burn pretty much everything about this. Of course, as Jess just talked about in her burn, racism exists in coaching. Black coaches are held to a different standard than their white peers, and I don't want to diminish this or say that doesn't exist. But the rush to vilify the women in the Celtics organization and to defend Ime Udoka was one of the grossest things I've seen in sports media lately, and that is saying a lot. Every single female staffer on the Celtics organization – which, you know, it's not that many! They had their pictures circulated around social media, everyone focusing on whether they were hot enough to make the affair justifiable in their mind. And much more support was given to Nia Long than to any of the women involved in the organization. And of course Nia Long is Ime Udoka's longtime partner and fiancée, and we wish her all the support. But there was just very, very little respect given to the women at the center of this report, almost as if people were acting as if the Celtics were excited and looking for an excuse to can their finals coach like a week before the regular season training camp started. It was absolutely bizarre.
I wanna quote Amanda Pflugrad who covers the Celtics for NBC Sports Boston, who talked about what the women employees were subjected to in the aftermath of that. She said, “I think I’d be doing everyone – and every female – in the Celtics organization a disservice if I didn’t step on this. The last few days have been very hard in terms of emotions, ranging from heartbreak, sadness, defeat at some times and anger and humiliation. Social media felt that it was completely fine to take innocent people’s names in our organization, and their personal photos, and put them out there for speculation. That damages careers. That damages reputations. Every woman in our organization has worked extremely hard to get where she is at, and she deserves and earns everything that she has right now. For things in the Celtics, and what we’re doing moving forward, things do need to change. You need to stand up, support us and hear us.”
I wanna burn the witch hunt against these women, and I wanna burn the rampant misogyny that continues in sports media. And I don't know exactly how this could have been avoided, but I think more responsible reporting by Woj and Shams, more clear action by the Celtics could have gone a long way. I also have, I just wanna tack this on, Kim Mulkey, the head coach at LSU who coached Baylor throughout Brittney Griner’s tenure, was asked if she had any comment on Brittney Griner’s detainment in Russia, because a reporter said, I haven't heard you speak on this. And she said, “And you won't hear me speak on this.” So I also wanna burn her silence and seeming contempt for Griner, and her inability to speak up for her former star, the star that really made her. There’s a lot more to say on that, but both of them, onto the fucking burn pile, burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: After all of that righteous burning, we are gonna celebrate those who are trying to change what is all wrong with sports. So, who's inspired us for this week? Jessica.
Jessica: Javier Baez is offering free, hot meals to Puerto Ricans impacted by Hurricane Fiona. All the more important since most still don't have power after one week. The Detroit Tiger Star is directing hungry victims to Taquiza Kitchen outside of his native San Juan. Pay attention to more initiatives in the works from MLB players for Puerto Rican relief.
Brenda: Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah. Jill Gearin has been named the first woman announcer for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Love that!
Brenda: Woohoo. Last week, record tickets were sold for the women’s domestic league match. Corinthians won 4-1 against Internacional in São Paulo. In the end, they had sold 39,000 tickets – that broke the record. But about 41,000 fans showed up. So congratulations to the Brazilian futboleras. Jessica?
Jessica: Eliud Kipchoge broke the men's world record – his own world record – for the marathon at the Berlin Marathon over the weekend. He ran 26.2 miles in just two hours, one minute and nine seconds. That's 30 full seconds faster than the record he set at the Berlin Marathon four years ago. To put this time in perspective, he ran an average of 4 minute, 36 second miles for 26.2 miles. He is incredible.
Brenda: Wow. Okay. Can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumrolll]
Shireen: Throughout Iran, there have been a series of resignations in protest of the death of 22 year old Mahsa Amini last week. Amini died in police custody after being detained in Tehran for allegedly violating hijab protocols. Several prominent athletes have joined university professors, government officials and other state employees in resigning. Taekwondo practitioner Mahsa Sadeghi wrote on Instagram: “Our of respect for the dear women of Iran and in hopes of preserving the dignity and individuality of women’s lives, I’m saying goodbye to the national team.” Olympic Fencer Mojtaba Abedin declared that he “must say goodbye to the Iranian national team forever out of respect for women and my country.” Sajjad Esteki, captain of Iran's national handball team, announced he would also be leaving the team.
These athletes are cutting ties with their home country in order to show solidarity with women who are challenging patriarchal systems by a regime. We support them and these endeavors, and hope that one day women in Iran will be free to wear what they want and go where they want and attend whatever sporting events they want.
Brenda: Okay, in dark times, we like to think a little bit about what's good in our worlds. I look at the document and notice that my co-hosts have left this blank, but I feel that they will come up with something here. Lindsay, what's good in your world?
Lindsay: Well, work has finally begun on my kitchen. It's still probably going to be a full month before it's finished, and even then, it might be longer, but at least it's begun. For those of you who don't know, July 4th, there was a big flood in my kitchen, a pipe burst two units above me, and I have been sans kitchen and sans a lot of flooring since then. That's a long time to go without a kitchen. [laughs]
Jessica: That’s a really, really long time.
Lindsay: Like half of my kitchen, and my closets are all in my living room, everything is gross. I am so ready to be done with this chapter of my life. And at least they patched up the drywall so there's no longer plastic covering a giant hole in my kitchen. Although it will be a few more weeks before cabinets and floor. But anyways, I am happy. I’m focusing on the what's good. What's good is that progress has been made.
Brenda: All right. And there's no surprise that this week there was the release of Bad Bunny’s much anticipated El Apagón. It really isn't his video. He appears in the first few minutes, if that. And then he turns mic over to the independent journalist, Bianca Graulau, who is incredible, and works on the gentrification of Puerto Rico, the lack of infrastructure, the way in which Bitcoin bros and contiguous US state investors have used the law to flood Puerto Rico and raise housing prices during the pandemic because they wanna be next to a beach. It's really sad. It's really infuriating. It's really frustrating. And it's super well done. And so I'm teaching it in its entirety. It's that good. You should go and watch it. It preceded the most recent hurricane, but this is all predictable, and that's what it shows. And Bianca Graulau, I just love that she takes center stage here because she's an incredible reporter. So yeah, the whole theme of investigative journalism, this comes full circle in my what's good. [laughs] Jessica?
Jessica: I love it. The weather has turned, finally. Today was the first day in many, many, many, many, many months that we woke up to it being in the 60s instead of the mid 70s. So we're thrilled that we can like go outside and not sweat immediately. Aaron performed with his School of Rock band on Sunday, and he was great as always. And this time he played the drums on a couple of songs because he's been learning the drums, and he played the bass on one song.
Brenda: Cool!
Jessica: And I'm just so proud of him for learning all this new stuff. I would be remiss not to mention that Austin FC has made the playoffs in their sophomore season. They have two games left, I believe, and if they win either one they lock in basically home field advantage for most of the playoffs, depending on how far LAFC makes it in the playoffs. So that is very exciting. And I wanted to mention, and my other Austin thing is if you are here on October 6th – I'm so excited about this! I am moderating a discussion at BookPeople between author Caryn Rose, who wrote the book Why Patty Smith Matters, and Kathy Valentine, the bassist for The Go-Go's. Like, what? She has a book called All I Ever Wanted, and so I'm reading the two of them to prepare these two books like in tandem, and they're both great, and it's gonna be an amazing discussion. And I can't believe that I get to hang out with a Go-Go.
Brenda: That's super cool actually.
Lindsay: That’s so cool!
Jessica: It's very cool.
Brenda: Can I ask you just really briefly, I know that we don't usually cross talk during our what's good, but how do you feel about Sebastián Driussi?
Jessica: Oh, he's wonderful. I think he's so interesting. I mean, you know, Shireen is always disparaging the MLS and like, you can see the difference in level of play, sure. He's different than everyone else on the pitch. Like, he just sees the field. He’s one of those people where you're like, oh, he's the kind of person who sees things in slow motion, because he also has the uncanny ability to just be where the ball will be. He knows where it's going before anybody else does. It's really fun to watch him.
Brenda: Okay. So you would say my scouting report that predicted his performance is a good one?
Jessica: Yeah, he's great.
Brenda: Okay. Yeah.
Jessica: We're still waiting on the, the newest Argentinian DP, Rigoni, to come into form. You can see the potential there. But Driussi, he probably won't win the MVP just because of how the season like is winding down. Austin has been on the slump a little bit. But I just, my favorite podcast – shoutout to the Moontower Soccer guys. They keep reminding us that we should just be so excited that we got an MVP caliber player all season and we got to watch him. So, I'm trying to remind myself that that is true.
Brenda: Yeah, I mean, they're both former national team for Argentina players. They're trained by River Plate, that’s called La Maquina, The Machine. So congratulations on having a very deft player, I would say, very beautiful to watch that style of play.
Jessica: Yeah, it's very beautiful. He is very smooth in a way that it's just different.
Brenda: That's right. That's right. I love it. So, this week we are watching the Women's World Cup, FIBA, and also pre-World Cup friendlies. I guess, are we still looking for Aaron Judge to break that home run record, or did he do it already?
Lindsay: I think he did it, yeah.
Brenda: Did he do it? I didn't know if he broke it. [laughs] I was trying to look last night…
Lindsay: I think I got a notification about it, but no, wait. Yo, he’s...
Brenda: I think we're still waiting, because he needs 61 to match Roger Maris.
Jessica: [laughs] I love this like giant hole in our sports knowledge.
Lindsay: Oh, he's in a big drought. Of course he'll probably be over it by the time you're listening to this. But apparently he's gone six games [laughs] without a homer. So, you know, he sucks, basically.
Brenda: I guess I'll be looking for that when I see it. I'm like, oh look, you know, in New York, like, there he is. So, you know, I kind of…I’m passively interested in that. He seems like an interesting fellow, I guess. [laughs] Okay, that is it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is 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. If you wanna become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. I'm Brenda Elsey, and on behalf of Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther, burn on and not out.