Interview: Shalise Manza Young, Yahoo Sports Columnist, on NFL News and Superbowl LVI
In this episode, Amira Rose Davis talks to Shalise Manza Young, Yahoo Sports columnist and former Patriots beat reporter. They discuss Brian Flores's lawsuit, Tom Brady’s retirement, the rise of Joe Burrow and how she's seen sports media change over the years.
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
Amira: Hey flamethrowers, Amira here, and I am joined today by Shalise Manza Young, who I'm so excited to talk about all things NFL. If you don't know, although you should know, Shalise was the first Black woman to work as a full-time beat reporter on an NFL team, a longtime beat reporter of the Patriots. Also, a great sports writer, currently for Yahoo Sports. And please check out all of her columns, especially the last one. We'll get into some of that today. And so, I originally was like, Shalise, we gotta talk Super Bowl! And then of course five million other NFL storylines dropped in this week, between games where of course nobody has anything else to talk about except for these NFL storylines. [laughs] So now we have an action packed Super Bowl special, NFL-based conversation to have. So, Shalise, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to Burn It All Down.
Shalise: Thank you. I'm so excited.
Amira: First things first, I guess now we will start with Brian Flores, who started Black History Month with a bang when he dropped a lawsuit, alleging – I really am over this word, because we all know what it is, we been known what it is – documenting racist and discriminatory hiring practices. There's a few things in this report that I want to highlight. One, he talked about Stephen Ross paying him to tank games, $100,000 to lose games in an effort of getting a better draft position. So, tanking is there. Especially annoying when you think about that Black coaches don't get second chances, that their losses amount to loss of jobs. We're coming off a year where both Flores and coach Kelly at the Texans lost their jobs. Mike Tomlin's the only Black coach. And we also have now seen three hires of–
Shalise: Five.
Amira: Five hires, not a Black coach in sight in those hires. And it continues to be a conversation that we have every year. So, what was your first reaction to this lawsuit, and what should we be watching for as it proceeds?
Shalise: Can I curse?
Amira: Yes, please! [laughter] This is Burn It All Down!
Shalise: So, a hundred percent, honestly, I was at my daughter's weekly swimming lesson, and, you know, I pay attention mostly, but I'm behind glass. And I looked at my phone, and I start seeing all these things, and my very first reaction out loud was, “Holy shit.”
Amira: Right. [laughs]
Shalise: And thankfully, none of the little children were around. They were all behind the glass doing their swim lesson. I'm in awe. I am in awe that he took this step. It was a hundred percent necessary. I don't know and I'm not optimistic that it's necessarily going to lead to major change or the major change we need to see, but we were never going to see any change until somebody took this step. And again, for him to have taken this step, especially...He is 40 years old, and on the day he filed the lawsuit, he did an interview with the New Orleans Saints! So, it just underscores to me, he was done.
Amira: Yeah.
Shalise: He was angry. He was fed up. He has lived through this from the time I think he was like 24 or 25 years old. You know, the very first job he has was at the low, low level of the scouting department with the Patriots, worked his way up. You know, we'll put it this way: Bill Belichick's sons did not take the same long ass path to be de facto defensive coordinator that Brian Flores had to take with Bill Belichick. But I digress. But I just think it underscores, you know, I've had these conversations. Maybe you've had these conversations. If you speak to any Black man who has been around the NFL for any length of time, who's tried to work up the ladder as a coach, who’s tried to work up the ladder as a scout and to become general manager, they all have the same stories. They all, “Well, maybe it's going to be this year. Maybe it's going to be this year…”
I talked to an older Black man a couple of days ago when this happened, and I've spoken with him before. He was part of a front office that was incredibly successful. He said that he has done 12 interviews with teams, and when he walked into 10 of those 12, he knew he had absolutely no chance and that they were only interviewing him because they had to. And I saw people ask Brian Flores, and this man brought up the same thing. You know, if you don't do it, they label you more for that. That, “How dare you say, no, I'm not going to take this interview?” Because you see the writing on the wall. You're not stupid, right? But if you don't take one…He said there was one that he said he wasn't going to take, and he got more shit for that than he did for anything else.
Amira: Right. Right.
Shalise: I don't know the circumstances around that one, but it's the same, well, if Brian Flores knew the Giants weren't gonna hire him, Brian, bless him said, you know, maybe it's the audacity of hope and I thought I could change their mind. But at the same time, he didn't have a choice. This is the game. They all know the game, and they all hope beyond hope that somehow they'll be one of the lucky ones that gets to win the game. And then if they win, they get successful like Brian was. If you pay attention to the NFL, he had an awful roster [laughs] and somehow they got two winning seasons over the last two years.
Amira: And they haven't done that since I was a freshman in high school! [laughs]
Shalise: Exactly! And still not good enough, you know? You mentioned David Culley; there were reports before the ink was even dry on David Culley's contracts with the Houston Texans last year that he was just holding the seat warm because the Texans really wanted to hire Josh McCown–
Amira: Who has never coached by the way, at any level, by the way.
Shalise: I think he was like a volunteer offensive coach for one of his son's high school teams.
Amira: [laughs] Qualifications!
Shalise: And you know, white, Black, Hispanic, whatever you are, as an NFL coach, you are told from day one, gotta pay your dues, gotta pay your dues. Josh McCown – and I’m telling you, mark it down, this is an educated opinion – he's going to get hired anyway.
Amira: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Shalise: The Texans are just worried about the blowback and the criticism that they're going to get, but he's their guy.
Amira: Absolutely. And they wanted him last year, you know? And I think the thing that's so frustrating about all of this is like, you know you have to play the game, and that also requires you to play the game in areas that feed into allowing it to continue. So we know one of the things with Brian Flores when he first got in there, like, he had a whole thing with Kenny Stills, or like, what does it mean if you're going to be in that position, you have to maintain it, which usually means falling in line with other kind of ways of coaching, with the owners, with the kind of powers that be, because of the precarity of your position. And so to me, it's significant that in a few years Flores has been so kind of jaded by that cyclical discrimination that he was willing to take a step, knowing that the league has a history of pushing people out who break that code and who speak up.
But I think it's supremely frustrating when you think about these pipelines and you think about these sham interviews, and I even saw people responding to the comments about…You know, they were joking about Bill Belichick not being able to work the phone, of course, because he had these revealing text messages about the Giants’ position, or Elway coming in disheveled and drunk to the Broncos interview. And I think that one of the things I saw is like, unless you've been the person in a sham interview, unless you have been in that position where you know and you can feel it in your bones that you're being discriminated against, or you just know that what's happening to you would not happen to a white guy, to a white dude who’s sons or cousins of somebody else who’s in the coaching pipeline.
And everybody wants data and evidence, and it's like, well, we know the numbers, but that doesn't seem to amount to enough because there's an idea of like, oh, it's just natural that all these white guys would be coaching. It's like, no, it actually takes a lot of work to maintain this level of exclusion. And I think that we don't really have the language to really convey how harmful it is to be in that game, to be in that cycle, where you know where the ceiling is, and it's an issue that it seems like nobody else cares about because we have it every year and then nothing yields, right?
Shalise: Right.
Amira: And it's like, so where do we go from here? Briefly, we saw Hue Jackson say, yeah, like, here are my things too. And it felt like one of those moments where it's like, oh my gosh, if all the Black coaches stood up and talked about this, that would absolutely shake the table. But then also, people are still trying to play the game.
Shalise: Because even if you raise to the coordinator level, even if you are the Black unicorn that gets to be a coordinator – they’re a little more common on the defensive side of the ball, but clearly to be a Black man who's an offensive coordinator, you must be a unicorn, because there's only four for the season that we just completed, or the season that is completing. But even if you raise to that level, you're still making a good amount of money, right? So, you're in this position where you're still in it. You're still close to what you want to do. Maybe in your heart of hearts you know, or maybe you're like Brian, because you've made this little deal with yourself where you keep telling yourself, well, someday somebody will see it. Someday, somebody will see how awesome I am.
You know, Eric Bieniemy…Andy Reid has said a thousand times from Sunday how amazing Eric Bieniemy is, and yet still here we are. So I think for younger coaches, you will probably be hard pressed to get them to join the class with Brian Flores. But you know, I think Hue Jackson will. My colleague, Charles Robinson at Yahoo, he had Hue Jackson saying he’s strongly considering it. I believe that's what he said. David Culley, they have to pay you your money because head coaching money's guaranteed. So, join the class, you know?
Amira: Yeah.
Shalise: The problem obviously is that younger coaches are more likely to have the receipts than older coaches, because of text messaging and electronic media and all that kind of stuff. But I think the second person who steps up and says I'm going to do it, then I think other people will follow. And I hope beyond hope that Flo does not end up on an island by himself for this, because then it becomes easier and easier to just paint him as one angry, bitter Black man, which is what they did the minute they fired him, is that the Dolphins ownership or brain trust got the media down there to go along with, “Oh, he was just an angry Black man, and that's why he doesn't work as a head coach,” or whatever.
So, I hope beyond hope that there is somebody, multiple people who step up, and who have strong receipts, and who say, no, he is not alone, and it's not just feeling that I was…Because you can't prove that part, right? Immediately, we saw the Giants say, well, you know, we just felt that this was a better fit to hire Brian Daboll or whatever. But so, I think we need to have that. It's just…Something has to happen. Like I said, I don't know that anything will necessarily change, because what you're asking is for people who, for 102 years or whatever it is, have been able to be so exclusionary, to change their hearts and minds.
Amira: Yeah. And their very definitions of what they think leadership and strategic thinking, et cetera, look like, you know? This idea of who's knowledgeable and who’s not.
Shalise: The thing that gets me is the Patriots. I covered them for almost 10 years. They almost exclusively would draft team captains. So why is that you want somebody who has the leadership qualities – clearly they are leaders, because there’s, what, four or five captains on a college team of a hundred players? So, you value that in players, but then that doesn't translate. In the time that Bill Belichick has now been head coach of the New England Patriots since 2000, Romeo Crennel is the only actual Black coordinator he has ever had. And Romeo Crennel was already like 50 something years old and had a vast wealth of career in the NFL when Bill brought him in as his coordinator.
Amira: Right.
Shalise: Brian Flores was never actually the main defensive coordinator of the New England Patriots when he got hired. He was the play caller, so he was like de facto, but he never had that title. I could go on forever, because I've written a lot about it in the last couple of years, obviously. I've seen all this data and all these numbers, and then I know some of these guys, so it's heartbreaking. I have a source that I speak to fairly often who's with an AFC west team right now, and they actually just hired a new GM. And he's texted me, he’s like, “I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful!” He didn't even get an interview! And he's high up the ladder there, and he couldn't even get an interview.
Amira: Yeah. And it's so frustrating too…My best friend's husband played for so many wonderful coaches and some awful ones, you know? And so then when you're also watching and you're like, this coach, like, Todd has done this for me, or this, you know? And watching them kind of being in the cycle also makes people turn away and say, well, there's no room in football for me on the sideline. And so then where do you go? And so, I mean, we'll continue to watch it and monitor it, or if anything else, of course, we'll be talking about it next year, as we always do, because it's an ongoing issue. But here's hoping that this is at least a step towards a shift in the conversation and in the practice.
So of course, this happens after a kind of 48 hours of will-he-won’t-he with Tom Brady's retirement, that was eventually confirmed when he said he's not ready to maintain his wild commitment to, you know, not eating strawberries and whatnot, and ending an absolutely storied career. I'd be lying to say I didn't have like some sort of emotion, but I think a lot of it is tied up with the fact that it was like literally my childhood, [laughs] like, it's so much of your life, you know what I mean? Like, that's how long his career was. And so like, when I think of the early Super Bowls, I'm thinking of like middle school, I'm thinking of high school, I'm thinking of this, I'm thinking of the later games you're wrapped up in it. And that's because of how sports is so ingrained in these memories.
But of course he made his post. He thanked all of his Bucs players and coaches and Tampa Bay. Oh, Boston media was so mad. It was a little delicious, I'm not going to lie, [Shalise laughs] I was kind of laughing about it. What were your thoughts on Brady's retirement? Are you surprised that he's not giving another year to 45, which seems like a nice round number? And also, you know, he's still good. [laughs]
Shalise: I was actually really surprised when the initial report came out on Saturday, I guess it was. I was pushing back hard, you know? I was looking for any little clue. “Oh, see, the Tampa Bay reporters said Bruce Arians doesn't know anything! I know Tom! He's way too kind to just blindside them and not tell them!” And you know, I really truly thought he said for years he will play until he's 45. This is how it all was in my head, right? He said he's going to play until he's 45. He still played at a very high level. You know, I don't remember…He has to be second team All Pro, I think. He definitely was in the conversation for MVP. So, when the AP vote comes out, he'll have gotten votes for MVP, I'm sure. He led the league in passing yards.
And so I just assumed, like, he's still playing at a high level. Clearly he and Gisele have had the discussion – “Babe I'll play until I'm 45 and then I promise I'm done.” In my mind, that's how it was going to play out. So on Saturday, I was pushing back hard, and I just kept saying to myself, I'll believe it when I see it, I will believe it when I see it. I just didn't think he would. And I still don't know that he's necessarily doing it willingly,
Amira: Yeah.
Shalise: [laughs] But you know, at the end of the day, you're a parent, you're a spouse. I'm a parent, I'm a spouse. Sometimes we have to, you know? And we've seen video of Gisele looking at him and being like, what more do you have to prove?
Amira: [laughs] Gisele is over it, okay?
Shalise: Yeah, I think she's just like, look, buddy, I knew what I signed up for when I entered this relationship. The other thing: what a blessing for him that all of his children are old enough that they will have the memories, you know?
Amira: Absolutely.
Shalise: Because so many of these guys retire when they're 32 or 33, especially position players. You're lucky if you get to play that long. And your kids might be six or seven, you know, sometimes I'm sure there are guys who their kids are older than that, but you know, Jack, his oldest son is 14. I think he'll be 50 in the summer.
Amira: Wild.
Shalise: And then Benny and Vivi are maybe like 10 and 8. So, you know, they'll have memories of certainly this last one with Tampa Bay, you know, Ben and Vivi being there and watching their father do that and all that kind of stuff. It's pretty amazing. You know, I still, for as much as people talk about him…And I get it, you know, he was associated with Belichick. Belichick can be an asshole. You know, they had some scandals. But I don't know that people can fully grasp the totality of what he did and how he did it.
Amira: Absolutely.
Shalise: This kid did not play a snap on an undefeated freshman team in high school. But nowadays…You know, his contemporary Peyton Manning – from the minute Peyton Manning was born, his entire life was geared toward him being an NFL quarterback and the number one pick in the draft and all that other kind of stuff. Tom Brady couldn’t even play on his freshmen football team in high school, and then eight years later or whatever it is, he's sitting there with his hands on his head in New Orleans because they won the Super Bowl and even he can't believe it, you know? 199th pick in the draft. I know that's been said a hundred times–
Amira: But like, his career has been so long that you get to see all the narratives, right? You got to see Tom the underdog. You got to see that story, especially that first Super Bowl. And then when he is set against Peyton and you can see that, like, the Mannings are this dynasty and he’s coming up in this very different way. And then after you win too much, [laughs] you know, it shifts. And I've talked about this a lot, especially around his like association, when he had the MAGA hat, like, all this stuff. They became such figureheads. Like, that Atlanta Super Bowl, the entire narrative was like, this is like white supremacy versus like the Blackest team – which is so reductive! And I’ve talked about it. I was like, first of all, it dismisses all of the Black players on that team.
Second of all, it really lets these people off the hook from other teams who are, like, “progressives.” No! Their front office is just as…Like, you know, that's not how it works. But that was very much the narrative. And then it was like, the last two years at Tampa Bay, I saw so many people say, like, oh, now that he's at Tampa Bay, he's likable. [Shalise laughs] And it was like, you're watching all these kinds of narratives form like this. And it's kind of wild to see it. I mean, the only thing that made me think he was going to retire is because he put out Man in the Arena, which kind of felt like a final statement, right? And so it would be interesting because I was kind of like, I wouldn't be surprised if he just comes back just to spite people for like one more year.
Shalise: Right, right, right.
Amira: But it's interesting to see the arc of his career, and like really appreciate it, because I think what happens with all the deluge, we don't actually talk about and appreciate it. And my husband, who doesn't really follow football, he was saying, oh, who's like the next closest to him? Or like, is he's the only one with that many rings? And I was like, yeah! And he was like, oh, who's close? Like, Peyton? And I was like, no! [laughs]
Shalise: No. Terry Bradshaw. [laughs]
Amira: And I was like, there's a gap.
Shalise: Yeah.
Amira: Like, there's a real gap. And I think actually being able to pull back and appreciate that…And like, for me, again, I just returned to the memories. There are so many familial memories wrapped up in these moments that he's an integral part of, you know? My moms got married in the living room before the kickoff of a Pats game, right? [Shalise laughs] After it was legalized in Massachusetts. There's all these ways, that the same way like Willie McGinest, that Junior Seau, you know, all of these people are the backdrop for so many memories and stories. That’s how they get ingrained. And so I think Brady's a part of that, and has been for like, [laughs] literally, I was graduating sixth grade in 2000, right? And I was just old enough to remember the terrible Patriots years.
Shalise: I'm older than you. So, like…
Amira: You're like, I remember that very well! [laughs]
Shalise: I was, and I keep saying on Twitter, like, I am all in on Joe Burrow, and I feel bad putting him in the same sentence with Tom Brady, because it is only his second year, but Tom won in his second year. But I see in Joe Burrow and the situation of the Bengals, like, specific to the Bengals. You know, I was born and raised in New England, and so I was eight years old, we went to my uncle's house for this big Super Bowl party for Super Bowl XXV when they played the Bears. They were destroyed! Like, it was this massive deal. They had never beaten the Dolphins before, they beat the Dolphins to get to the Super Bowl. And it was like the high water mark.
They had never even been on people's lips before. As a kid, it was Red Sox and Celtics, and the Patriots were like, okay, like, they played in this crappy stadium, middle of nowhere. And here it is. Like, when I was eight years old, they went to the Super Bowl. And so the parallel that I see with Burrow is that Tom came in and by sheer force of personality and talent and swagger, really, like, unrelenting belief in not just himself but what his team can do, that he changed the stars for this franchise. Like, nobody cared! [Amira laughs] Nobody cared about the New England Patriots! Even New Englanders did not care about the Patriots or Tom Brady.
Amira: At all. Half of them were Giants fans. [laughs]
Shalise: Exactly! Exactly. And so, you know, Joe Burrow…And different situation, because one was drafted #199 and had no expectations, and one’s drafted first overall. And of course there's an expectation that you are going to lead your team to success. But how many number one picks have we seen who don't do squat, right? But the parallel to me is just that this franchise, that everybody…Like, for weeks, people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop on the Bengals. “Well, yeah, they won this game, but they're still the Bengals.” “Well, yeah, they won a playoff game, but they're still the Bengals.” And it's like, I don't know if they're going to win or not in the Super Bowl. You know, Yahoo, of course, has us make picks. I did pick the Bengals to win, and I am picking Joe Burrow to be MVP. So it's on the record. I've been a Joe Burrow fan for a month now. [Amira laughs] But I just think franchises can change, you know? And the fate of the New England Patriots changed. Like you said, there are children who are like 25, 28 years old–
Amira: Who only know the glory. [laughs]
Shalise: Who only know the glory!
Amira: It’s wild.
Shalise: And that's what Tom Brady did for the region. And it's funny how you mentioned memories. You know, I became the full-time beat writer in ’06, but I went to…I was helping our beat writer, I was at the Providence newspaper at the time, so I was helping our primary beat writer and I got to go to the Super Bowl in Jacksonville the first time they played the Eagles, and they won. And so that began my association with the team. So, I would think…I was counting on the day he retired, I think like all but 15 of the NFL games that I've covered as a reporter he was the quarterback for.
Amira: That's so funny, because you said the first time they played the Eagles…I must have completely excised from my mind that they lost to the Eagles in the Super Bowl. [laughter] I think it was so traumatic to me–
Shalise: That happened, Amira! We can’t erase it. [laughter]
Amira: No, see, I think it was so traumatic because all my Philly friends were so happy and I was like, okay, I guess I'm happy for you. Whatever. My daughter was born in Philly, my husband's a Philadelphian. But I completely have erased it from my mind. [Shalise laughs] That's how many Super Bowls they've played in, right? Like I was just like, I'm going to ignore… [laughs]
Well, I'm glad you brought up Burrow. I want to talk about the randomness of the Super Bowl. It feels random, because I think that you're right, we get used to these narratives about franchises, and for so long the Bengals have been one of disarray. And to see them in the Super Bowl is like…It almost feels like oxymoronic ascendance. But here they are, the Cincinnati Bengals are in the Super Bowl, and they're joined by the LA Rams, which is also weird because they're in LA. And it's happening of course in LA, in Inglewood. They're going to be there and have the halftime show, yada yada, celebration of west coast hip hop – which is a whole narrative about, you know, Jay Z’s taking it to the NFL and doing this platform and yada yada.
But like, I also want to talk about the game itself. So, you're picking Joe, you're behind Joe and the Bengals. A lot of people are saying this is a matchup that, you know, it's the fear, always. Like, where's the big market match up? Now, obviously the Rams are bringing LA, but like, a lot of those fans are Googling where to buy Rams gear right now, you know? [Shalise laughs] What do you think about the game itself? And as we head into this Super Bowl, the second pandemic Super Bowl, is there a kind of excitement? Do you see it kind of playing second fiddle to these other big conversations? Are there things you're looking for, you're excited about the game itself that we should be watching out for?
Shalise: I think there are other things around it. I think we care about that, and there are a small segment of people who care about that. But the average doesn't really care. At the end of the day, they don't care. We've heard that when Colin Kaepernick started kneeling, we heard people say, “I don't care, I just want to see you play football.”
Amira: Right.
Shalise: When the pandemic started, we saw people say, “I don't care, I'm bored, I need you to put your health and safety and the health and safety of your loved ones on the line so I can be entertained.” And now more and more states are adding gambling. So, at the end of the day, like, I don't think the matchup even matters anymore.
Amira: It’s just the spectacle.
Shalise: Right. Ever since red zone and fantasy came into play, there are no more regional games anymore. You know, like when I was a kid, if I turned the TV on and the Patriots were playing at one o'clock, then the four o'clock game, if I was lucky, it was like the Lions and I got to see Barry Sanders. But anybody can watch any game at any time on any device. Everybody is watching highlights because of fantasy. And now, again, because of gambling, then people are betting money on anything. Like, you could place a bet on how long is the star-spangled banner going to last, the person that's singing the anthem, is it going to be over two minutes and 30 seconds or under, or whatever it is. And this has to tie to our earlier part of the conversation. I think that's why the Black coaching thing doesn't change much, is because the vast majority of fans don't give a shit.
Amira: They don’t care. Yeah.
Shalise: It sucks to say that. The people who say, "Why can't we just have the most qualified person?” Well, you're automatically assuming that that could not possibly be a Black person!
Amira: Exactly.
Shalise: Let's think about that. So I think, at the end of the day, people are going to watch.
Amira: Well, we know it's the biggest unofficial holiday.
Shalise: Right! It is. It's like a national holiday for people. Everybody has parties. So, I don't think that viewership numbers are going to be affected by Brian Flores or by the Washington Football Team which is on Capitol Hill right now, going on the record in front of the world to tell the disgusting things that they endured, unfortunately. But yeah, look, I got a small number of Rams fans upset with me because I want to say in like week 15 or something like that I wrote about Matthew Stafford and how this is not the quarterback the Rams wanted, you know? He was throwing picks and pick sixes and he's been good through the playoffs. But you know, I think that’s going to be the story of the game, is Matthew Stafford.
And everybody wants to say, well, it was just because it was Detroit, you know? It's not that he's playing with literal Hall of Famers at like eight other spots on the field, right? [Amira laughs] Aaron Donald is one of those guys that when he’s done, you could waive the waiting process for him. Jalen Ramsey, Odell Beckham, possibly a Hall of Famer. You know, Cooper Kupp is the most prolific single season receiver ever, the first triple crown winner in however many years as a receiver. Like, he’s playing with basically a team of pro bowlers, right? So, let's go easy on the pooping on the poor Detroit Lions. [Amira laughs] They’re still in purgatory for me because of what they did to Jim Caldwell. But let's not pretend that moving him out of Detroit was the only thing that he needed.
So, I just have always loved underdog stories. And so to me, it's the Bengals and Joe Burrow, and can this kid…Like, again, by sheer force of personality, basically, bring this franchise to the mountaintop? And it just would seem to be like the perfect bookend that Tom Brady retires and what he did for the Patriots, a week later, Joe Burrow is going to do for the Bengals, you know?
Amira: Yeah. Well, it's exciting to see these narratives be written in front of our eyes. The last thing I want to ask you…We can sidestep over Snyder and the Washington Football Team, which is now the Washington Commanders, which….Cool, cool, cool. [laughter]
Shalise: Buy your gear now, fans!
Amira: I know. It’s awful. But I did want to leave off by asking you, you know, you've been in this game for so long, and obviously it comes with so many trolls and haters and bullshit along the way – both from randoms, but also from people in the industry, you know, with their doubts and their biases as well. Obviously earlier this week, there was a whole kind of kerfuffle with Mina, you know, with Jeff Garcia and this like, you know, “What do you know, woman?” [laughs] “You’ve never played football!” Like, okay, let me tell you about the coaches, you know, who are so beloved. [laughs]
Shalise: Right, right.
Amira: But I wanted to ask you now, like, at this point in your career, what are you kind of still looking for, for the industry, for sports media, to give Black women in the game? To create spaces for diverse voices covering sports? And as you reflect on your own kind of titanic journey here, you know, what are you looking forward to in the sports world as you move forward? Are there things that are exciting you, or you kind of also exhausted by certain cycles that feel like they continue?
Shalise: You know what's amazing? And I realize I sound really naive when I say this. When I first started as a sportswriter, I was literally 19 years old. The Providence Journal was part of this program, the Emma Bowen Foundation – I need to shout them out whenever I can – that the whole point of the Emma Bowen Foundation was to get more minority faces in newsrooms, mostly television newsrooms, but the ProJo was part of it. And I literally never thought at 19 years old when I walked in there and said, “I want to be a sportswriter,” it never occurred to me that I had never seen anyone that looked like me, other than Robin Roberts.
But again, amazing example, right? This was back when SportsCenter was still SportsCenter, and you kids out there, you would never know that you could only see highlights of other games if you watched SportsCenter! So I used to watch SportsCenter and I would see this amazing Black woman on SportsCenter, and I guess that filed somewhere in my brain. But I didn't realize literally until I think I was like four or five years into my time covering the Patriots that I started asking other reporters that were older than me, like, have you ever seen another Black woman do this before? The answer came back, like, no. You know, I've Googled, I've tried as best I could to make sure I'm not running around and lying about it.
But, you know, I've asked other people older than me and people who are in NABJ and would have this kind of historical information. And I guess, you know, like a lot of people, I didn't set out to be the first. I just, like I said, I got to go to the Super Bowl…Which one was that? XXXIX? I lose track. [laughs] I got to go to Super Bowl XXXIX. I helped out on the Patriots for that 2005 season, the ’04 and ’05 seasons. And then in 2006, during training camp, the man who was the beat writer at the Providence Journal for the Patriots, he took a different job. And they couldn't hire from outside because, you know, journalism and money and all that kind of stuff. And they said, okay, why don't you do it? You know, you're the only person on the staff who's been around them for any length of time.
I had no idea what I was doing. [Amira laughs] I had none. You know, of course it was a white man who was the beat reporter who left. We didn't have a great relationship. I had never thought to ask him, hey, If I ever want to be a beat writer, what am I supposed to be doing, right? Things like calling agents, getting access to the NFL Players Association records, finding contacts, all that kind of stuff. Like, I had no idea how to do that. And so I just saw it as the next rung up the ladder and was like, okay, if I do this, I want to do it because it's the next thing on the ladder. And so, again, did not think, like, "I want to be the first Black woman to do this.”
So, it was such a learning process. It took me a while to figure out that I had absolutely no allies, even within my own – because, fun addendum to this story, that first year they made me a co-beat writer with a younger white guy who had never been a writer at all. Like, I was 27 and had already covered the Boston Celtics for a while, had covered WNBA, had covered college sports. You know, I had been a sports writer for a while, and they take this guy who really had no experience at all, like, “You guys are going to be co-beat writers.” Like, to the point where we split the road games that year. You know, somewhere along the line, I guess I showed them that I wasn't going to fall flat on my face and he kind of just disappeared. [Amira laughs]
And then of course, you know, when you're a beat writer, it's weird, right? Because in 2006, they had already won three Super Bowls. So, every newspaper, every media outlet had somebody there all the time. So, it's this weird thing, because you want to be friendly with them because you're around them all the time, but you're with technically competitors, right? And so it took me too long to realize that none of those people had my back, you know, that I really could not be myself around them, because it would end up on like this little blog of this guy who was following New England sports media and stuff like that. So, “Oh, you'll never guess what she said this time…”
Amira: Oh my gosh.
Shalise: Or, you know, that kind of stuff. To answer your question, I want to see more Black women do this. And I do see them more on camera, and I get it, because you see that, right? You see that in front of you. You see like, oh, here's Kimberley Martin, here’s Lisa Salters, here's Pam Oliver. You know, I want to do what they do. But I've been a writer for pretty much my whole career. I've done some TV stuff. And I want to see more Black women do this. And to be honest with you, I think we have an advantage. When you walk into, at least for most teams, if you walk into a locker room or a press conference, and you're the only Black face there, it's kind of an advantage.
Amira: Yeah.
Shalise: We should be using that to our advantage. I think women are better reporters anyway, because I think, you know, we're empaths, generally. So I think we get better feature stories and we get them to tell us stuff. And then I think as Black women covering primarily Black…You know, most of the athletes we cover, depending on the sport we choose, are also Black. You know, the best sources I've had, the people who were best to me in the NFL, were always the Black men, the Black scouts, the Black agents. Because I think there was like a kinship there, and it was never spoken, but I think they knew, like, well, shit, if I've had it hard, she must have it hard too. Like, she's literally the only person that looks like her in almost every room she walks into.
Amira: Yeah.
Shalise: So, I would love to see more Black women. I offer myself whenever I can, as a sounding board. I'm not, like…I don't know how great of a mentor I could possibly be, but yeah, it's been a ride. I was bored a few years ago when I was at Yahoo. I am eternally grateful to them that when I had my third daughter – I had two very, very close together, and so getting hired by Yahoo to be an NFL blogger allowed me to be at home with them and still make some money. And then a couple of years ago, I started getting really bored of that because I was just aggregating Adam Schefter and Ian Rapoport and that kind of stuff. But the funny thing is we had actually bought a business with the idea that I was going to leave journalism altogether.
Amira: Oh, wow.
Shalise: You know, my husband has a great job here. He loves it. My oldest daughter was a junior in high school at the time, so I couldn't conceive of uprooting her and pulling her out of her school to finish high school somewhere else. And so we bought a small business with the idea that I would stay with Yahoo for one more year to make sure that we were making enough money at the small business. And then I was going to leave journalism entirely. And December 24th, 2019, my boss at Yahoo was like, yeah, we're going to have to let you go, because of that California law around gig workers. And so because I was a full-time freelancer for them, they were either going to have to hire me full-time or let me go. And they were going to take me out.
Amira: So you were at a crossroads.
Shalise: Yes. And so for whatever reason, I decided I didn't want to go out like that. And so I summoned my inner mediocre white man – don't get mad at me, people, but this is exactly how it went down – and I composed this email to the editor in chief of Yahoo Sports. And I was like, look, there are no Black female sports columnists in the country right now. Not for a regular…You know, Jemele of course writes for The Atlantic, but she writes maybe once a month. But in terms of what you would consider a daily, there are none right now. You know, I told him I've done this, I was a former Division I athlete walk-on, I'm a mother, so I understand when Serena Williams talks about the pressures of being a mother–
Amira: Yeah. I’ve got range!
Shalise: Right! I just spelled out all these things. I was like, I want to be a columnist. And he was like, okay. And I was like, oh shit, did he just say okay!? [laughs]
Amira: Did it work!? [laughs]
Shalise: And so that's what it's been. And it's been revitalizing to have this new chapter in my career and to know that my voice is valued and to be told, like, whatever you want to write about, you can write about. So I don't have to just write about NFL. I try to stick…I actually much prefer to write about away from the NFL. I’m kind of over it over it, [laughter] over the league. She says as she's about to board a plane for Los Angeles. [Amira laughs] But, you know, I want to shine a light on issues of race and gender in sports. So, it's been amazing. I want my oldest daughter, who's 19, you know, she understands what I've done. She seen me cry at some of the emails that I've gotten, the hate mail and stuff like that.
My younger ones are just now getting to the age where they understand and will be like, “Mom, do you have to write today?” I'm like, no, I don't have to write today. But for them, like, whenever I think about it, it's first and foremost for them, because I have three daughters, one of whom I know is queer, and I have this platform and I have this voice to be able to try to effect change, you know, to shine a light on this stuff and hopefully make things better for them and other little girls that look like them and, you know, little boys. And just try to make things better.
Amira: Well, I can tell you that your voice in that space of New England sports media was so important to me, because, you know, it's not a secret that Boston sports media is really toxic, and it's so hard when growing up and loving sports and loving these teams and loving these Black athletes on the Celtics and the Bruins and the Patriots and the Red Sox, and not feeling like there’s voices covering the teams, giving you the news you want to know, but also not being ridiculously racist while doing it. And so finding Howard and finding your writing when I was in high school and in college was just like a breath of fresh air. So I am of course grateful for your voice and for your journey, and happy to see you flourishing over at Yahoo now, because it's always great. And I'm so grateful for you to hop on and be able to join Burn it All Down to break down the chaos that is the NFL.
Shalise: Oh, I am ready with a flamethrower anytime, so! [laughs]
Amira: Oh, please! Absolutely love it. Well, I hope you have so much fun in the sunshine over at the Super Bowl. Everybody, please go check out Shalise’s columns. The latest one on Brian Flores is up now over on Yahoo Sports. We are always grateful for your voice in that space and for bringing it to our space and beyond. So, we wish you the best, and thank you, thank you, thank you again for breaking it down. You got the Bengals, you're backing Burrow. And we'll see how it goes down.
Shalise: Thank you!
Amira: That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon, of course, is on our webs and socials. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe, and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. For show links and transcripts, please check out our website, burnitalldown.pod.com. You'll also find the link there to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you to our patrons, you continue to mean the world to us. If you want to become a donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on, but not out, and we'll see you next week, flamethrowers.