Episode 131: The Demise of Deadspin, and an interview with Tammi Gaw on the NCAA

This week Jessica, Brenda, Shireen and Lindsay talk about the Washington Nationals winning the World Series (2:11). Then the crews speaks candidly about Deadspin, the sports journalism industry and their reactions to staffers leaving en masse (6:23), Shireen interviews the brilliant Tammi Gaw about the NCAA, amateur athletes and structural racism in sports. (29:50)
As always, we will throw some stuff on the Burn Pile (52:33) and shout out some Bad Ass Women (1:04:11) and close with our What's Good. (1:07:08)

Links

After Deadspin: https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/155565/deadspin

The Mavening of Sportswriting: https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/31/20942249/deadspin-g-o-media-fired-quit-sports-illustrated-maven-sports-media

I checked the math of the media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports.’ It doesn’t add up: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2019-11-01/deadspin-stick-to-sports-bad-math

Transcript

Shireen: Welcome to this week's episode of Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Shireen Ahmed, freelance writer and sports activist in Toronto, and I'm leading the toxic femininity charge this week.

On this week's panel, we have the amazing Jessica Luther, weight-lifter extraordinaire, my favorite PhD candidate slash croissant maker, and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape. She's in Austin. Dr. Brenda Elsey, president for the Feminists for Leo Messi Fan Club, undeniable genius, and associate professor of history at Hofstra University in New York. And the indomitable and brilliant Lindsay Gibbs with the most beautiful laugh, mightiest pen, who is my best cuddling companion, freelance sports reporter and Power Plays' newsletter boss in DC.

Before we start, I would like to thank our patrons for their generous support and to remind our new flamethrowers about our Patreon campaign. You pledge a certain amount monthly, as low as $2 and as high as you want, to become an official patron of the podcast. In exchange for your monthly contribution, you get access to special rewards. And with the price of a latte a month, you can get access to extra segments of the podcast, an opportunity to record on the Burn Pile, and other special things only available to those in our Patreon community. So far we've been able to solidify funding for proper editing and transcripts and our social media guru, Shelby, but we were hoping to reach our dream of hiring a producer to help us with this show. Burn It All Down is a labor of love and we all believe in this podcast, and having a producer to help us as we grow would be amazing. We are so, so grateful for your support and happy that our flame-throwing family is growing.

We have a kick-ass show for you this week. We will be talking about Deadspin, what's happening in sport journalism and what we see going forward, and we will also have an interview with the amazing Tammi Gaw about the NCAA and amateurism in sports. But before we get started, let's talk about them Nationals and that baseball. Linds, start us off.

Lindsay: That baseball. The Nats won! DC has another championship. It's pretty cool.

Shireen: Yay.

Lindsay: I've got to say, it is-

Jessica: That is pretty cool.

Lindsay: It has been pretty cool to be here. It's a really fun team. This is a really, you know. DC doesn't have much of a reputation as a sports city, but I think that's all false. I don't know. My thoughts are not composed because it's been a crazy week, but I just want to say it's been great. I mean, go Nats, and thank God the Astros didn't win.

Jessica: Yeah, I mean, seriously. As a Texan, I have a lot of friends who are real sad about the Astros, but they did win not that long ago and the management did not deserve this win. My understanding, I didn't get to watch it, but that Osuna was bad in game seven.

Lindsay: He was horrible! It was great.

Jessica: And so that's karma and all those things. I do want to give a shout-out to Nationals closing pitcher Sean Doolittle-

Lindsay: Yeah!

Jessica: ... who is great in lots of ways. He has been very vocal since they won that he will not be going to the White House, that he does not, he's very good with his words, but basically he doesn't respect Donald Trump and doesn't want to spend time with him. And so, yay. Thank you, Sean Doolittle.

Brenda: I just want to say second Puerto Rican coach winning the World Series in a row, David Martinez!

Jessica: Oh, wow.

Brenda: It's about time, given the Caribbean contribution to baseball, that we finally have these managers that are of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent and are kicking ass and I'll be really curious if he, I haven't heard anything, if he's going to the White House or not, but his whole flip-out on the ump, did you guys see that?

Jessica: Oh, yeah, with the-

Lindsay: It was epic and they-

Jessica: That had to do with the bad calls, right?

Lindsay: It was a terrible call.

Brenda: Yeah, that technical thing about the base path line running the, yeah.

Lindsay: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah.

Brenda: And he had just had that heart condition and then he just sort of lost his mind with the ump and got ejected and then they rallied. I love it!

Jessica: Love a good ejection.

Brenda: I shouldn't, but I just dig it. There's something about that, he was so fired up over a technical call that I really appreciated it.

Lindsay: And then afterwards in the press he goes, "Oh, I would never disrespect the umps."

Jessica: He knows the right thing to say. Also, I feel like we should also shout-out the Nationals' fans, because when Trump showed up-

Shireen: Oh, yeah.

Lindsay: Boo.

Shireen: Boo.

Brenda: Boo.

Jessica: ... to the games, there's beautiful video. If you have not seen the videos, go watch the videos. You'll feel better about everything. They just booed the hell out of Trump.

Brenda: In last week's-

Shireen: I actually really enjoyed Lindsay's tweet. You tweeted about your president, which was a drunken Nationals fan who literally said, "F the president," on live television. I don't do the baseball, but this was very, very enjoyable for me. I just feel so good.

Lindsay: That's so funny. I did the mini-burn last week about how this is not “bringing DC together.” Stop saying that. DC is the most anti-Trump place. 4% of DC residents voted for Trump. 4%.

Shireen: Wow. I did not know that.

Lindsay: And look, let's end on this note. DC statehood please. Because Tim Kaine, who is the Virginia senator, represented the Nationals in this bet with Ted Cruz for, and of course, Tim Kaine over Ted Cruz every single day. But how ridiculous. These people and their booing deserve representation.

Shireen: Jessica, can you take us through our first discussion, please?

Jessica: Sure. I'm not sure exactly where to being chronicling the end of Deadspin, but I think it makes the most sense to go back to the end of Gawker. Deadspin was, of course, part of Gawker, which was sold off after it went bankrupt following the successful lawsuit brought against it by Hulk Hogan. The lawsuit was bankrolled by tech billionaire and all-around asshole Peter Thiel. I'm not going to go into detail on the lawsuit here, there's tons of information out there in the world, but it financially destroyed Gawker and all the sites under its umbrella and there were a ton of them. Jezebel, Gizmodo, and Deadspin. Univision then bought Gawker Media in 2016 and in April of this year, Univision sold all its former Gawker sites to Great Hill Partners, which is a private equity firm. Boo. We're seeing a lot of media get bought up by private equity firms.

Great Hill put all its media sites under the name G/O Media, so that's what we'll be calling it, and then set out to ruin anyone who didn't fall in line with whatever their bad ideas that they were coming up with. The Deadspin staff didn't fall in line. In August, under the direction of then-editor in chief, Megan Greenwell, staff writer Laura Wagner published a long piece titled This Is How Things Work Now At G/O Media which chronicled a lot of the bad choices G/O was making, especially highlighting Jim Spanfeller, the company's CEO. Wagner wrote, quote, "As Spanfeller began to implement his vision, that hope that he was going to turn the thing around was replaced by employee frustration and skepticism over his hiring practices and interference with the company's journalism." She then spends thousands of words explaining exactly how he demolished the morale of the staffs of the sites under his supervision.

G/O Media and Spanfeller were very unhappy, publicly so, about the piece and three weeks after that, Greenwell resigned. She wrote a scathing piece on her way out about how these private equity firms and the men who run them are destroying journalism. Okay. But then, everything came to a head this week when G/O Media editorial director Paul Maidment sent a memo to the Deadspin staff telling them to “stick to sports,” which is just, all of this is so laughable. It's like they don't know anything or care anything about Deadspin. This went over like a lead balloon. Barry Petchesky, the interim editor in chief, directly went against the directive and was just publishing non-sports stories as a big eff you. After 10 years at the company, he was fired on Tuesday. On Wednesday, another eight staff members quit in protest, and then slowly over the next two days, everyone else quit, too. In less than four days the entire staff, which numbered over 20, were gone. Diana Moskovitz, a hero of mine, was the last one with the keys because she had tendered her resignation two weeks prior, not knowing all of this happen in the meantime.

Okay, so there's so much to say here. Deadspin isn't actually gone. It's still there. You can go look at it right now. G/O Media is surely scrambling to find people to fill it with content and they will find people to do that, but it's never going to be the same. We've talked a lot about this on the show, about the changes in sports media and worrying over the future of the business as different sites fall under new management, but I feel like one thing I'd like to talk about is this feels different to me, more significant. I was sad as hell this week. And I think this is because Deadspin was actually doing really well. It was still being read by millions. It was making a profit. So none of what was happening had anything to do with making the site more popular or making it more financially good. Whatever the right word there. I think the other thing about it is it was so different than almost any place on the internet that covers sports.

And so I think the best frame for thinking about what it means that Deadspin as we know it is gone is in the way writer Luke O'Neil put it on Twitter. And referring to other sports blogs and sites, he wrote, quote, "Those guys dream about being the boss while Deadspin's general ethos was fuck the bosses." And I think it's safe to say that here at a sports podcast called Burn It All Down that we embrace the fuck the bosses attitude, and the idea that we have lost that kind of voice with such a huge platform…Deadspin had so many people reading it. I just worry about what that means as far as holding people in sports accountable and the voices that do that. So, I don't know, where are you guys on this at this point?

Shireen: Linds?

Lindsay: Whew. As some of you might imagine, this week was a little triggering for me. Even though I went through a different situation at ThinkProgress, there were a lot of parallels, one being kind of the people in charge of the site not…when editorial independence is kind of the best thing about the site and the reason the site has trust and you try and squash that and what that does to a readership. Another thing is a site thinking it can just relaunch and just keep going without the people who made it.

I don't know if everyone remembers after ThinkProgress died, or was killed, sorry. ThinkProgress didn't die, once again. Sorry, if you're new here, I worked for a site called ThinkProgress. I was their sports reporter for four years. It was a progressive news site. The nonprofit where it was housed, the Center for American Progress, shut it down. This all just happened six weeks ago, so it's still pretty fresh for me. And right after they fired everyone on staff at ThinkProgress and said they were closing the site, they announced that they were going to keep the site alive and just use other people at the nonprofit to write for it, so people who weren't journalists to write on it, and thankfully we called that what it was, which was union busting, and they ended up stopping, but it was a very public battle and it was really stressful.

This week when Jim Spanfeller was saying, "Well, we don't expect this to impact ad revenue. We're just going to find new writers." That ethos of just not respecting what writers and journalists and bloggers and whatever you want to call it do is just, it's staggering. And I think we see it from people who own, just the absolute lack of respect, they really do think it's just easy. And I'm not saying we have the hardest job in world by far. Please don't tweet me saying that I don't understand how blessed I am to be doing what I'm doing. But to think that it takes no talent and no skill is just, it's really depressing.

I think one of the things that is the biggest loss for Deadspin was how they had evolved throughout the years and throughout the times and how, I mean, look. No site is perfect, so you're literally never going to get anything that's perfect, so having perfection as a model or as a goal is silly. But a few years ago, maybe just a couple years ago, Drew Magary, who is one of their columnists, their biggest names, wrote a piece really examining the homophobia and the sexism that used to be rampant in his writing and really kind of talking about his evolution. And that meant a lot to me. Like Shireen says, you don't want to give him any cookies just for kind of doing the bare minimum, but I think for me, that's what Deadspin was. Deadspin was willing to evolve, willing to listen and willing to continue to hold the powerful accountable as opposed to doing what so many journalists do, which is sucking up to those in power to keep their access.

Shireen: Yeah. I just wanted to add, and thank you for talking about that, Linds, I'll just piggyback off what you were saying. There's no site in sports that hasn't erred in some capacity and I only really started paying attention to Deadspin when it was at Gawker in probably about 2014 or so just because of the nature of what they were writing about. And my journey, this whole stick to sports thing is so interesting for me because I specifically came to sports writing because I was political and because I am political and with the understanding that sports is political.

So Deadspin was one of the very few sites. One of my, like, other than, obviously, Diana Moskovitz, who's a legend in writing about sexualized violence in a very detailed and thorough way that she has, Luis Paez-Pumar is probably one of my favorite sports writers. I think he's funny. I was saddened because his tweets were sad this week and I was sad for him because he was very honest and sincere about having the best job and loving the team he worked with and I am someone that can tell you that, as Lindsay alluded to, it's not the most difficult in the world, but it takes a lot out of you. There's a lot of emotional labor, there's a lot of physical labor, there's a lot of psychological labor that goes into this type of work and if I didn't have a team like the Burn It All Down crew, it would be impossible for me in some moments. And so I respect and appreciate having a team and a family like that. It's so important, particularly the nature of the stuff that they do write about or they did write about.

I just wanted to bring into another interesting convo, go off in another direction that people are talking about. There's this tweet I saw online and Kirsten Whelan, who's a really cool writer and hockey writer in Montreal, she had said, quote, "Tweeted this one person that said, 'Are we really going to get mad at the freelancers who will now get the opportunity to work there?'" And Kirsten's comment was just literally, "When are we going to acknowledge at a society, this is problematic if we don't hold people accountable?" I'm paraphrasing her. I was thinking about that and I'm one of those people that when I was starting out my career, I would have maybe jumped at the chance. I mean, honest, you know? Or maybe I wouldn't have. But the industry is so difficult. It's so hard as it is for freelancers. What do we do? Do we all uniformly boycott that site? My instinct, visceral reaction is yes, but I come from a place with a platform and established sort of career now. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's like what do we do?

And first of all, my thoughts are with these writers. I hope they find stuff. So many of them are so talented. Where do they go now and what do we do about the people that are up-and-coming and want, because I felt this way after Vice finished its sports vertical. I was devastated because a lot of my initial writing was at Vice and they let me say what the fuck I wanted to, which is not often what you get. So I'm just sort of wondering what your thoughts are about that. Bren?

Brenda: Well, yeah. I mean, I'm the one person here that's not really a journalist, even though I've written journalistically, and I guess I just had a couple of thoughts from the outside. I'm also really sad. There's lots of pieces at Deadspin that I appreciated, especially on the Copa Libertadores in 2018 when I found the New York Times and the Guardian's coverage to be absolutely off the wall frustrating. But I guess just a few things. One, I think we don't want to romanticize that sports journalism has ever been a great place to work in. You know what I mean? It's historically, as someone who studies it from its inception, it's really the inequality between the people that write for major outlets and then people that write for emerging outlets is so big and so difficult to bridge, but it does feel like there's a window kind of closing with some of these more independent and self-starter sites. So I find that pretty depressing, but I also am not surprised by seeing the precarity of journalism. It's like the Uber-fication of writing and the freelance world and we see it everywhere.

David Harvey and other analysts have a really, really great global take on this and the only answer, according to them, is solidarity and unionization. So when Lindsay talks about union-busting and what this is, it's exactly so that people aren't in the position that you're talking about, Shireen, where they have to make that choice between solidarity or not solidarity. And that unionization has to go across companies because they will break you down. One way or another, they know how to break you down. That is what neoliberalism is, is intervention in labor solidarity. And so I don't know what that means for journalists. I know that in academia, that's what we're fighting right now, is we unionized our adjuncts, which are the most precarious labor groups. You have to go to the most vulnerable, the undocumented immigrants, the ones that are going to have to make that choice to work at Deadspin or not and those are the people that have to be included in those conversations for it to work. I don't know.

And then just one last thing to say. Not only is it stick politics, er, stick to sports. Yeah. I would love if it was stick to politics! Not only is stick to sports stupid, but the match report is dead. We cannot look at highlights of everything all the time. So what they were doing was important. So it's just infuriating. Anyway.

Shireen: Jess?

Jessica: Yeah. I think the question of writing at Deadspin again, I'm with you, Shireen, in that I'm trying to imagine it from my position now versus what I would have done six years ago. I've been at this for about seven years. It's hard, though. I do feel like I will judge people who choose at this point to write for Deadspin even as I understand all the constraints and all the reasons you would. But this was a collective labor action and I think Kirsten really got at this in her, there's a thread of tweets where she goes back and forth with a guy who wrote that piece about how we shouldn't criticize the freelancers who choose to write at Deadspin.

I mean, they quit, right, so it's not a union-busting move in that same way, but this was clearly a collective labor movement, or moment, for the Deadspin staff and they gave up severance or whatever else. They gave up a lot of security in this moment, too, in order to make this stand and I do feel like we owe it to them, but again, I understand also that it's easy for me to say that. It's easy for me to make the choice to stand in solidarity with them and never write for Deadspin again, and it's really hard in this media landscape to figure out how to make those choices. I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to feel moving forward, seeing content under the Deadspin label.

The other thing I just want us to mention is it's interesting to think about audience for Deadspin and where that audience now goes and Luke O'Neil, the guy I talked about before, he mentioned this about audience, that this was for the fans who don't feel great about sports all the time, but also want a site that loves sports and recognizes that. And Katelyn Burns, she's been tweeting about this and writing about this, that this is for the everyday sports fan, Deadspin was there for them. And I keep thinking about where that audience is going to find this now, that space and that community and that kind of analysis.

And I also think about it as a writer. Where do I go with the fuck the bosses stories if other places won't take them? I knew that Diana would always give me time to pitch stuff to her and she would take it seriously and try her best to support me. I only ever wrote the Baylor piece with Dan at Deadspin, but that was years that we spent with Diana, working on that thing before it got published and she and Megan were so patient with us and helped us so much and never…I just felt so encouraged and supported by them. I don't know. I'm getting really sad thinking about the fact that that space doesn't exist any more.

Shireen: Yeah. I've never published with Deadspin and it was one of my bucket list things to do, but it's okay. Grantland either. Those were my two things and now they no longer exist, which also stresses me out a little bit because it's dwindling the possibilities of where can publish, I don't know. Linds?

Lindsay: Whew. Yeah. I think I typically am of the mindset don't attack the worker for the decision they're making as far as freelancers and where to publish, but this Deadspin feels very different and I would urge freelancers, if you are having trouble, if you're listening to this and you want to get into sports writing and there's a piece that you think you could publish to Deadspin, reach out to me, reach out to editors at other places and let's see if we can find you another home, because these people gave up severance.

And on one hand, let's admit to even be able to do this, these workers at Deadspin were probably in a more privileged position than most because I cannot even fathom having given up severance at ThinkProgress. I mean, one of the things when it was getting bad over the summer, I was like, "I have to stick it out for severance, for the union mandated severance." And because they ended up having to lay us all off, I did get that. So to give up that is, I mean, that is bold. So yes, I've seen a lot of people calling out the privilege that is necessary to do that and I agree, but also, I don't care who you are. That's giving up a lot. That is giving up a lot, and for the amount that they gave up and for what they risked this week, I feel like for the future of this industry that we all want to continue, it's important not to enable the behavior of management in that way.

Now, G/O Media owns tons of others sites as well. Gizmodo, The Onion, I think, now, A.V. Club, Lifehacker, Jezebel. Now, those sites continuing to go, I feel differently about. They are employing so many writers and their management levels are still intact and they're still fighting the good fight and I don't have a problem with anyone continuing to work at those sites or pitching those sites, which might seem a little hypocritical, but everyone within Deadspin has said the same thing: continue to support these writers that do exist at these other G/O Media publications that are trying to hold on and trying to fight the good fight. But going to Deadspin, there's got to be another way than publishing there.

I did get to publish two things at Deadspin over the past couple years. One was a piece on Jonquel Jones two years ago when it was just her second year and she ended up being a superstar, so that was great that they let me publish that so early on. The other was this oral history of the biggest brawl in WNBA history and I didn't even consider going anywhere else with that pitch. When I had that idea last summer, I thought, "This is a Deadspin story. I think they will take this. Let me reach out to them." I can't even, I mean, but that's what they were. When you were like, "Oh, I want to go back 10 years and write about this brawl that involved Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker punching people." Uh, duh, Deadspin!

And we need more places like that that kind of encourage that type of creativity and courage, a type of fuck you mentality. I loved, because I like to hope that this is what we do here well, which is both not take ourselves too seriously while talking about sports and understand the funny and the lighthearted, but also understand the power that sports possess and constantly be balancing those two things, and that's something I think Deadspin did so, so well. They could have a piece completely laughing at a player's ridiculous dive for a catch or statement or something that's just literally ha ha ha, isn't this funny right next to the piece that is Diana revealing the extent of Greg Hardy's abuse.

Shireen: Yeah. I mean, just to say, the one thing it made me realize was the importance of independent media and how we're turning to a place where, it's so funny, I also frame things, "Oh, this is a Deadspin story," if I had pitches that I was thinking about and had some on the top of my head that I was going to know send and Diana was amazing, just sort of encouraging me through ideas and stuff. But just very focused in a journalistic practice way that's really important and very legitimate and I really appreciate that.

The last thing I'm going to say is just that I used a thread to really amplify, in a Twitter thread that I did about the importance of supporting independent media and I've seen it grow and a lot of it is run by women or huge contributions from nonbinary folks as well and it's really important to me. And so again, I say I appreciate all the listeners that we have at Burn It All Down because we really believe in this and the way that we want these sports to be told. That being said, the eff you bosses mentality, we're a collaboration. Linds?

Lindsay: Yeah. I agree. Obviously, I am going independent right now. I am doing Power Plays. Please sign up. Please sign up so I can prove I can do this.

Jessica: Where do they sign up, Linds?

Lindsay: Powerplays.news, powerplays.news, powerplays.news.

Brenda: Okay.

Lindsay: So obviously I believe in the future, in the power of independent media, but it's not overall, I don't know if it's overall the answer because you still need places with lots of resources for travel and for staffing and-

Jessica: And lawyers to protect you.

Lindsay: Lawyers and editors. I still want places that have typical infrastructures. It terrifies me that now everyone's like, "Well, the only answer is for everyone to do their own independent thing," and I feel like that should be the supplemental coverage, do you know what I mean? We still need these infrastructures and maybe there's a way we can create those more independently, hopefully. There's got to be a way that we can recreate those without venture capitalists and private equity firms, but it takes a lot of resources and stuff like, we'll criticize The Washington Post and New York Times a lot and some of their decisions, but those infrastructures are crucial to where we are as a nation. So I don't know. I also get scared when people lean too far in that direction.

Shireen: Next up is my interview with Tammi Gaw about athlete amateurism, the NCAA, and we talk about black kids with Ferraris.

Hello, flamethrowers. This is Shireen. I am so excited to have our next guest on. Tammi Gaw is an absolute expert on all things NCAA reform. She's been a part of the sports landscape for over 25 years and she began her career as an athletic trainer at the University of Oklahoma and worked in sports medicine at both the high school and Division 1 levels. In 2004, Tammi went to law school and brought her knowledge of sports to the other side of the locker room door and is one of the only professionals licensed as both an attorney and an athletic trainer. Tammi's career has included in-house counsel positions, nonprofit management and board participation, plus integrated planning for large and medium scale sporting events. She's a speaker and a guest lecturer on issues around sports business, law, medicine, and social justice. Currently her work focuses primarily on NCAA reform and the rights of amateur athletes and this former clarinet player is an absolute joy, so I'm so happy you're on this show with us today, Tammi.

Tammi: Thank you!

Shireen: For those of us who don't know about this NCAA discussion, debacle, I don't know how you want to phrase it, could you give us a little bit of a background for those of our listeners that might not be familiar with NCAA policies about not playing, paying, rather, their athletes and where we are now?

Tammi: Oh, where we are now. Doesn't it change day to day? So the NCAA has been around for over 100 years. They were actually started in response to head injuries and player safety back in the early 1900s, so to see where they are now, still not advocating for safety is entirely different discussion. But they are a, quote, amateur organization made up of member institutions which are all of the schools that we watch and cheer for. And one of the ways that they maintain their, quote, amateurism, which is whatever the NCAA says it is on any given day, is to restrict the ability for their college athletes to make money in a variety of different ways. They can't be paid to play. And what's come up in the last few weeks that everyone's talking about is the ability for athletes to make money on what's known as their name, image, and likeness. So when we say NIL, that's basically name, image, and likeness.

Shireen: Name, image, and likeness. Okay.

Tammi: Yeah. Between law and medicine, I tend to talk in acronyms, so it's helpful when sometimes they're easier to pay attention to.

Shireen: Yeah.

Tammi: But you can think of it in terms of if you go to see your team play in an arena, there could be a picture of the basketball player next to a Honda advertisement because the school or maybe the conference has a deal with a specific vendor or commercial entity and they have this deal and they make money on it. But the kids-

Shireen: Oh, so they meaning the school.

Tammi: The schools do, yeah. So the kids doing the actual work and putting their bodies on the line don't see any of it, and so that's ingrained in the NCAA's institutional bylaws, is that in order to maintain this façade of amateurism, college athletes are not allowed to make any money on these deals. Then on top of that, they're restricted from being able to make money outside of the school. So some people, and I know you guys have talked about this, my amazing listening Burn It All Down crew with the NCAA on the perpetual Burn Pile. But it's not just a matter of somebody being able to get paid by Nike for wearing shoes, but they're not allowed to have jobs outside of school. So they're not allowed to use their name to go coach at a clinic. They're not allowed to make money on a YouTube channel. They're not allowed to make money on Instagram ads. These kind of things that every other student demographic at that school is allowed to do, including people on full scholarships. Full academic scholarships are not restricted in any way from doing the things that the NCAA says college athletes can't do. So the unpaid labor off the backs of whom they make millions, sometimes billions, are restricted from making any money and capitalizing in any way on their popularity or their name during the only window that most of them have to do so.

Shireen: I have a question about this. Wouldn't it make more sense, and I realize the NCAA is a nonsensical, that if nobody made money off their name, image, and likeness, if we're going to talk about amateurs, then wouldn't it make sense for nobody to make money? Why should the schools make money? Just for someone like me who's not as familiar with this, that would just make sense. Nobody do it, then. It's so inherently unjust that the schools…and we're talking millions, aren't we? This industry is, what, billions?

Tammi: Oh, March Madness alone, the TV deals are in the billions.

Shireen: Okay. Yeah.

Tammi: Yeah. No. I mean, you're not wrong. That's the problem, is when you try and impart logic on this, there is no logic to be made. I mean, the favorite people jumping around in the cesspool that can be Twitter sometimes, the ones that are mad that they didn't get their video games, well, that's not the fault of the athletes. That's the fault of the NCAA. EA Sports said they would come to some agreement and figure it out. We're fine with paying any athletes whatever. And the NCAA said no.

Shireen: Wow.

Tammi: So if anybody is mad that they're not getting their college football video game, direct that to Indianapolis, because they're the ones that say they wouldn't do it because they would turn down money in their own pockets to make sure that none of it trickled down.

Shireen: Wow.

Tammi: To the athletes.

Shireen: Wow. They want to die on this hill, don't they?

Tammi: Yeah. Oh, they would love to die on this hill. And they will. It's going to be the hill of Mount Hubris. Watch it happen.

Shireen: So very recently - I think it was about a month ago - California passed a law that said that schools in California, and it's state-mandated, their law, could make money, those athletes. Because Katelyn Ohashi, the famous gymnast, the college D1 gymnast, tweeted about this. Or she spoke out on social media, rather, that now it's coming out and I had an opportunity, like you mentioned. She had an opportunity during that window of all the success she's had and UCLA being champions and her being a champion. She didn't make a dime. So what was the rule about California and how did that impact or push the NCAA and how did the NCAA react?

Tammi: Well, here's what I would hope that we can kind of flip the conversation to be. As people say that California said they allowed the athletes to make money on their name, image, and likeness. If we're going to get really persnickety about it, what they did is they said the NCAA can no longer prevent athletes from making money on their name, image, and likeness. And I think that's something that gets lost in the discussion, is that they keep talking about allowing someone to make money off of their face. Everyone has a right to make money off of their face. It's not anyone's right to allow you to do that.

So the idea that somebody is saying, "Oh, well, now we're going to grant you that right," it's the same kind of paternalism that we would expect to hear in this discussion. But what California said is that the NCAA cannot punish an athlete or member institutions if that athlete exercises a basic right that they have. And Katelyn is absolutely right. And while everybody likes to speak about how this will affect men's basketball and football, because everybody seems to think this only has anything to do with being able to sell cars or wear certain shoe deals, but as a former gymnast, this affects all sorts of Olympic athletes.

So when you talk about your Missy Franklins and your Katie Ledeckys and Simone Biles and Morgan Hurds that want to be able to accept sponsorship money while they're international competitive gymnasts, but also still might want to go to school and compete in college, they're the ones that, they've been screwed out of this, being able to do that the entire time as well. So Katelyn is a perfect example of someone who has a window and a following and is amazing and should be able to capitalize on that, but what California said is that the NCAA no longer can say that these kids cannot do that.

Shireen: Wow. Okay. And that leads us to the announcement, or rather the report, of the NCAA, the announcement that they made. The wording is very interesting here. Semantics are a huge part of this. As someone who writes and works with words, I found it really fascinating, the way that they said, they threw in things like the benefit, to the benefit of, and what does that mean? It's so wide-open, where they want it to be, for interpretation. And for those who are familiar with reading these type of legal documents or understand…someone as yourself would be able to pick that out immediately and say well, this just doesn't make sense in that way. Just, you know what sort of that means. Could you let us know what this big announcement was and what it really means?

Tammi: The big announcement was to announce the plans to have a meeting to have a meeting to consider something to possibly do it. I mean, it's literally what it was. There are some things that you can definitely pick out even of their announcement that says they can do this as long as there's a compelling reason that exists to differentiate these things or that it's tied to the collegiate model.

Shireen: Right.

Tammi: What does that even mean?!

Shireen: Right.

Tammi: What the NCAA did is they saw the writing on the wall, and I said this quite loudly to anyone who would listen and some people who didn't want to, that as soon as California did this, and people started talking about, "Well, we're not going to play California schools." Really? You're not going to do that? The College Football Playoff is going to say, "That's okay. We don't need the Rose Bowl."? Really? That's how we're going to play this game? So I think the NCAA underestimated how many states, and to be fair, I was kind of surprised at how many states have jumped right on the coattails of California.

Shireen: Really?

Tammi: States that I would not expect. North Carolina! A Tea Party Republican is introducing a similar bill in North Carolina.

Shireen: Wow.

Tammi: I didn't have that on my bingo punch-card.

Shireen: I mean, that's the other thing I was going to say, that the reaction to this announcement, which, I mean, I was one of those people that is not familiar with the history and I was like, "Yes, as long as we're getting closer to paying the kids, I'm all there for that." And particularly in a time where students are so debt-ridden that not being able to work outside or have any means of income when they're doing this work. Quite often, Black bodies are on the front lines of all this work. It's just part of the system that I see of-

Tammi: Absolutely.

Shireen: ... of oppression, of these people, these young kids. But what were some of the responses that you expected and some of the ones that made you laugh? Because at some point, Tammi, you just laugh, right?

Tammi: Oh, you absolutely have to. Not least of which people who could not be bothered to care about women's sports in any other scenario or in any other capacity are all of a sudden trying to tell me about Title IX. Which doesn't apply here, by the way, because this is not an issue where the institution is paying the schools. This is a third party outside of the school paying an individual athlete.

Shireen: Wow.

Tammi: So don't come into my mentions and talk to me about Title IX implications when that's not even what we're talking about. You’ve obviously never given two flips about any women's sports before.

Shireen: Right.

Tammi: So the Title IX pushback was fun. The singular downfall of all of college sports and the whole thing will die a bloody death, that was an extreme response that ventured in quite a bit. The fact is this the low-hanging fruit. I expected other states to go after this because this is the low-hanging fruit. It doesn't involve the schools paying the athletes, so that discussion doesn't need to be gotten into. Every other student demographic on campus, and I say this all the time because there are people that like to say that college athletes get so much more than anyone else on campus. Sure, they get grueling bus schedules and 5:00 AM mandatory weight-lifting sessions. They get all of those things. Fine. But it's, again, back to just the way that we talk about it. This is an easy thing, to be able to say the rights to your face and your name belong to you. You should be able to make money on it.

There are some people, honestly, if I have to give them credit, there are some people that I'm kind of surprised have been on this bandwagon so quickly. The Tea Party Republican, for instance. There's some bipartisan support in various state legislatures. I think that people who thought they understood the business of college sports are now going, "Oh. Okay. So maybe this isn't," It's not either they're completely indentured or they're professional athletes. There are a lot of steps between that and this is just the first one.

But one thing that I don't think is getting talked about, and that doesn't surprise me, is, like I said, they talk about the men's basketball and football and that's the only thing. Women's sports are going to be incredibly…women’s athletes are going to be incredibly benefited by this because if you even talk about things like getting women in the coaching ranks, well, one of the things that you can't do under the current NCAA regulations is do coaching clinics where your might be linked to it, because that's considered an impermissible benefit. The best way to get women in the coaching ranks in order to get higher into the coaching system is to give them the chance to coach at earlier times.

I was the athletic trainer for UC Riverside's softball team and it would have been great if some of those girls, some of whom who were not on full scholarship, by the way. Not all athletes are on full scholarship.

Shireen: Right, partial. No. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Oh, God.

Tammi: And the same rules apply. The same rules of not being able to make money apply to a walk-on who is not getting any money as they do a full scholarship athlete, so don't come to me and talk about fairness on campus.

Shireen: No. No, exactly, and I think that's something, I have a daughter that's a senior in high school and we're looking options of her going, either NCAA or NAIA and to be quite honest, NAIA is starting to look a lot better because of our financial situation. I mean, it's very expensive and if you don't have a full ride, which many do not-

Tammi: Right!

Shireen: ... it's really overwhelming in terms of that. It puts kids at a huge disadvantage and they either resort to, I've heard murmurings of students having to do under the table writing or copywriting or just under the table jobs just because they need to make ends meet and not everybody gets that full ride with that souped-up locker room experience. It's a lot.

So some of the responses, I know we talked before we started recording about Dabo Swinney at Clemson just saying that he would, what, did he say he would quit is this actually...

Tammi: Yeah, because players are too “entitled,” so if players started being paid, then he'd retire. And as soon as the NCAA said this, I tweeted out, I was like, "Where's the Dabo retirement party and does it have an open bar? Can anybody go?" Because the guy who makes 93 million over 10 years-

Shireen: Oh my God…

Tammi: ... talking about entitlement of kids off of whose back he makes his money? No. No.

Shireen: So it's basically-

Tammi: No, sir.

Shireen: ... a lot of angry white men here that are upset about-

Tammi: Yeah!

Shireen: I can't remember. I think it was Professor Lou Moore that tweeted out about somebody saying that kids will drive around in Ferraris. Somebody did that. I saw that tweet and it made me laugh.

Tammi: Yeah. Well, it was Mitt Romney.

Shireen: Mitt Romney.

Tammi: Another one.

Shireen: That's right.

Tammi: Mitt Romney came in and said that some kids, you know, it would cause a divergence because you can't have some kids driving around in Ferraris and some kids not. I drove an '85 Ford Mustang when I was at the University of Oklahoma with rear wheel drive and there were people that drove much nicer cars than me and somehow I lived to tell about it, and so I think we're going to be okay.

Shireen: We're going to be okay, yeah. And if that's the biggest issue that they see, it's just not the lack of possibility or opportunity for these kids to earn what they deserve, it's that his concern is that a bunch of Black kids will be driving Ferraris? Is that really-

Tammi: Nope, that's exactly what it is. And that's the baseline of this entire thing. The NCAA is created on a system of racial paternalism and you just look at the way you said it, with the old white guys being the ones that are really pushing back against this. They represent the ruling administrative class of this and the unpaid labor. Because sure, you can call a scholarship compensation. That's absolutely fair. But it's artificially capped compensation because they're not allowed to have any more. So these largely white administrators are making money off the back of largely people of color, men and women, young kids. I think the last stat, I believe something like 53% of, it's in the 50s, of men's basketball and football players come from families that are eligible for Pell grants.

Shireen: Wow. That's a lot.

Tammi: The only two things that I believe it was, I believe it was Wendell Carter Jr.'s mother. I believe it was Kylia Carter who said it in my commission meeting and I don't know, they should have known what they were getting. She's a brilliant woman. She said that the only two systems that operate like this in the United States are the prison-industrial complex and the NCAA.

Shireen: Wow…

Tammi: And she's not wrong!

Shireen: No. Wow. Wow. That's really profound and so, so on point. Just wow. Wow. Just take a minute to absorb that. That's just incredible. So where do we go from here, Tammi? What can our listeners do, other than email, write and all those things? What should we be reading, other than following you, of course, and your brilliance? What can we do?

Tammi: Yes. Writing and getting in touch with not just your US Congresspeople, but your state legislators. The California bill did not happen in the US Congress. The California bill happened in the state legislature, with Nancy Skinner leading the charge on it. There are, I think, 16 bills being talked about in different states that are similar to this. Get with your state legislators and talk to them and tell them you support doing this.

Those of us that work on it are being very, I wouldn't say cynical, but we're watching with a cautious eye about some of the things that are working their way into these bills. Florida, for instance, has a clause in there about how it almost ingrains into the law that there will be no compensation for athletes, so they're trying to work their way into saying legislatively that they can't be paid. In New York, I believe one of the aspects that are in their draft is almost a injured athletes fund to pay for long-term-

Shireen: Care. Yeah.

Tammi: ... long-term healthcare, which is actually how I got into doing this in the mid-90s. Because I was seeing former athletes come back in seven or eight or nine years out with normal progression of symptoms. Your swimmers are going to have sore shoulders. But back in the '90s, they were considered pre-existing conditions. And so they would come back into the athletic training room trying to see our doctors because they were literally being denied coverage-

Shireen: Oh my God.

Tammi: ... years out for injuries that happened while they were-

Shireen: In college. Yeah.

Tammi: ... competing in college. So that's what got me started into that, so I love that part of the New York bill. But go and talk to your state legislature. If they're not introducing it, try and get them to do so. And there are people like me. There's Andy Schwartz out in California. He's a sports economics and I warn you, very wonky stuff that he writes, but he writes in a way that you can kind of absorb it and get a sense of it. That's a great thing to read. Lou Moore, you mentioned. Amazing. So really, following the state legislature work is the best thing that I can say for on the ground people to do.

Shireen: Where can we find you and your work and just to be able to follow you? Because I found your tweets incredibly helpful. So where are you?

Tammi: Well, I'm @tammigaw on Twitter. T-A-M-M-I G-A-W. My consulting firm in DC is Advantage Rule. You'll get a kick out of that. It's based on a soccer rule. So that's my home there. People can email me there or find me on Twitter.

Shireen: Awesome. I want to thank you so much. We could talk about this forever and I would love to hear you talk about it forever because just the conviction in your voice is so important and this is something that affects, because it's a system and a system that's broken and it was created in a way that is unjust.

Tammi: Yeah.

Shireen: And I want to thank you for your work on this because it's incredible and really important. I do actually want to say that I'm also super impressed, and for our listeners that might not know this, Tammi has this incredible ability to conduct 3/4 time with one hand and 4/4 with the other, so for all you musicians out there, to be able to do that is incredible. Tammi, I would love to see that in person because I would just, I would love to see that and I appreciate-

Tammi: Come to DC! You, me, and Linds, and we'll have an orchestral reunion.

Shireen: We totally will. Thank you again so much for being on Burn It All Down. We totally push you, your brilliant work and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Onto our favorite segment of the podcast, the Burn Pile. Jessica, can you go first?

Jessica: Yeah, of course. In Arizona recently, during the playoffs for high school volleyball, a game had to be stopped after a team from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community were racially abused by people in the stands. According to the AZ Central quote, the game was stopped with Caurus, the opposing school, leading 2-1 in the fourth set, however, after crowd members began imitating Native American chants and made racist gestures, according to some people who attended the game. According to The Washington Post, it was mainly a group of boys who, quote, "imitated Native American dances and rituals. They mocked tribal war cries. They yelled out, 'Savages.'" Caurus fans did the tomahawk chop, which is yet another reminder that racist Native mascots and everything that goes along with them are not respectful to Native people or in honor of them. They can be used to taunt them during high school volleyball games.

It was the coach of Salt River who ended the match, fearing for her players' safety. Just think about that. These are high school girls trying to play volleyball. According to The Arizona Republic, the fucking referee even said, "Boys will be boys." Arizona Central, when it tweeted out the story originally, included a video of the girls slapping hands with the opposing team under the net. The Salt River girls are crying, clearly incredibly upset. Maddox Pennington, when they tweeted the story out wrote, quote, "These kids having to endure bullshit performativity of good sportsmanship after blatant racism breaks my heart."

The Canyon Athletic League, which oversees the schools, it ultimately decided not to punish anyone because, and this is the excuse, no one captured a video of it and no administrator witnessed it. All of that's bullshit, clearly. The Canyon Athletic League, the ref, everyone associated with Caurus, that high school, they should be deeply ashamed of what has happened here. The game ultimately was postponed until Friday, when they had to play it under heavy security, and Salt River ultimately lost it. The spokesperson for Salt River said after the Friday loss, quote, "Tuesday's events go beyond one volleyball game and are indicative of systemic discrimination problems that are difficult for many to acknowledge across the education landscape, especially when it's so much easier to claim ignorance or unintentionality. There are more conversations to be had, especially with regard to how discrimination, inclusion, and restorative justice is handled within schools, whether in the classrooms or on the court."

I mean, this is all just so terrible. And the idea that it's going to go unpunished is horrific. I'm just so angry on behalf of the students of Salt River and I want to burn all of this racism. So burn.

Group: Burn.

Brenda: Gr. I'm so mad.

Jessica: Yeah.

Brenda: So this week, an expose came out on the conditions of the Mexican women's football soccer league, ESPN Deportes, and it is appalling. There have been rumblings and suspicions and of course, we all sort of thought here and there that we would know, but I haven't seen, and we'll link the piece through the show notes, I haven't seen such an extensive, exhaustive inventory of what has gone wrong. So just a few things for example, Aguascalientes had their food taken away after they didn't win the match that they played. Players from Veracruz reported a 21-hour trip to Mexico City in a bus in which they were given a small paper bag lunch and then expected to play. Other teams like Pumas UNAM, which is an incredibly powerful club with a lot of resources, complained they've had no medical treatment available when they're hurt. Oh, and speaking of Veracruz, not only the one with the 21-hour bus trip, they've also been accumulating debt. It's been over six weeks since they've been paid or due to be paid by the clubs. Salaries are reported to be variable and changing across the league. Tournaments in which they may be able to earn a little more are frequently canceled or not organized.

I'm so mad. I am so mad. It reminds me of the Colombian women's league which had a lot of excitement and enthusiasm when they were going to go bid for the 2023 World Cup, the site of which we still do not know. I'm just going to put out there because we know where the 2026 World Cup is for men and we have for like two years. So as soon they realized that they weren't necessarily going to get the Cup based on this, they let the Colombian league flounder to the point where the women actually told me, "We prefer not to have a professional league any more at all." What this has done is forced people to go into debt, to give up other job opportunities and basically, I guess I just want to burn, metaphorically, the patriarchs of this club. I want to burn the leadership of the Mexican Federation and the horrible position that these women are in, hedging their bets that things will improve, risking their livelihood, their well-being for something that was promised to them that isn't turning out. They need contracts, they need to separate, or the Mexican Federation needs to make sure that this doesn't continue to happen. Again, I'm just going to say the best way to turn this is as a labor violation. The Mexican state should be all over this. So I want to burn what has happened to them and, ugh, yes, that. Burn.

Group: Burn.

Shireen: I'm going to go next. Earlier this month, there was a high school runner from Ohio named Noor Abukaram, Noor Alexandra Abukaram, and she is 16 years old. She's been wearing a hijab since 2016. She runs cross country, which is running voluntarily for long distances, and mad respect for that. She participated in a regional race, registered, and she had noted that one of her teammates was told that you have to be absolutely matching with the rest of your team and it was something involving a stripe on the shorts. They're just very particular about that. So she ran and she did a personal best for a 5k. It was like 22 minutes or something, which is amazing. And afterwards, she was told that she was disqualified. And she's like, "Why?" And it was because of her hijab.

Now, I saw this story. It doesn't surprise me. I got flagged a whole bunch of times. People were like, "Shireen, can you," whatever. And I was like, “Yeah! It's like four days before my TEDx Toronto talk, but okay!” I just didn't get a chance to sort of dive into it the way I wanted to. But the thing is that this is not something I'm surprised about. The only thing I'm surprised about is that it actually happened in running, because the IAAF doesn't have these kinds of rules about hijab bans and I understand that the OHSAA, as they say, which is the Ohio High School Athletic Association, as sort of arbitrary rules and why they're in there. What ended up happening is this went very public. It took a lot out of Noor. Her cousin helped her do a Facebook post and it went viral. She was contacted and was interviewed a bunch of times about it and I think it's really important to understand that the rules are arbitrary.

I actually reached out to the OHSSA and said, "I need you to tell me why this is a violation. Is it on a religious basis, and if so, do you tell runners with crucifixes on their necklaces or Star of Davids that they can't have religious symbolism? Or is it a safety thing, and if so, what is the proof behind this?" It's a non-contact sport. It shouldn't be an issue. And as a result, because of all of this and the energy it took out of Noor, who then subsequently ran another race and she even beat that time. I don't know how you run 5k in less than 22 minutes, but anyway, she did it. She's amazing.

But what this took out of her…As a 16 year old runner, you're not anticipating being in the national spotlight, having to explain, having to deal with hate. And I mean, a lot of the comments were like, "Why doesn't she just take it off?" That's not actually the point! This is about controlling and dismissing the participation of a particular group of people and I hate it! I hate all of it. Props to her for shifting the focus onto the policy and they're in talks of changing it at their next meeting, but what she had to endure…One thing that was really harrowing for me is when this went on Twitter, how many people I saw saying this had happened to them but they didn't say anything. They're like, "Well, I wasn't very good." Well, that's not the point. Whether you're in first place. Doesn't matter how many people…And it was literally hundreds, I was pouring through on Twitter. It made me so sad at how many women, young women have been excluded and just feel they have no recourse. This was a fail on the part of the coach, it's a fail on the part of the state body, and it's impacting young women who turn away from sport for this reason. I want to burn all of that.

Group: Burn.

Brenda: Linds?

Lindsay: Yeah. My burn is quite a lot more trivial than everybody else's, so I don't really know how to switch gears, I guess. So I'm just going to acknowledge the awkward transition and dive right into it! But I want to complain and burn the extremely slow court speeds of the WTA Finals in Shenzhen in China over this past week. So as we'll mention in the Badass Woman of the Week, Ash Barty just won the WTA Finals, won a record $4.2 million, I think it is, payday. This is the most money ever at a women's only sporting event. The total prize money was 14 million and they put out a court, on indoor court which…indoors are known for fast speeds which brings really fun, exciting tennis.

They put out a court that Belinda Bencic, who was one of the players there, compared to sand, saying it was so tough on the body, so painful for the body. It produced some competitive matches but some ugly tennis and this is the final event of the year. Why are you putting this on a surface? You can choose the surface speed. Why are you putting on a surface that is so punishing to these women's bodies? We have three really big players, Naomi Osaka, Bianca Andreescu, and, I think, Kiki Bertens all were injured in this tournament or had to withdraw due to injuries. I'm not saying that's definitely because of the court speed. They could've been injured anyways. But I think it shows that this time of the year, the player's bodies are already under so much punishment. This is a round robin tournament, so everyone's going to play at least three matches. And, why!

I mean, courts were slowed down in tennis to accommodate men's tennis, which had become boring with all of the big serving. So courts were slowed down to help bring out longer rallies. It was never done for women's tennis. Women just had to deal with it at the slams and stuff. So why, on this women's only tournament, the biggest showcase of the year, wouldn't you pick a faster surface that set this apart from other events, was easier on the bodies, and really showcased women's tennis in the best light? It's stupid, it makes me mad, and I want to burn it. Burn.

Group: Burn.

Shireen: Before we do our Badass Woman of the Week segment, everybody here at Burn It All Down would like to express our sincere condolences to the Mexican women's football family. The devastating loss of Diana Victoria Gonzalez Barrera, the 26 year old champion with Club America died at the age of 26 on Friday, November 1st. Rest in power, Diana.

Honorable mentions for this week. Congrats to the Navajo Prep's Lady Eagles volleyball team who are the 2019 District 1-3A champions and they are off to the state playoffs. Sian Massey-Ellis has become the first English female to officiate in a men's European fixture for the UEFA Europa League game between PSV Eindhoven and Linzer ASK. Canadian figure skater Tessa Virtue received an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario. Congratulations, Dr. Virtue. Waneek Horn-Miller has entered Canada's Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2019. She was the first female athlete from the Mohawk people to compete in the Olympics and she is the first athlete from water polo to be inducted.

Lisa Leslie has entered the US Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame. Lisa joins Teresa Edwards as the only USA Women's National Basketball Team member in the Hall of Fame. Also, shout-out to Khadijah Mellah of the Ebony Horse Club in Brixton, England. She premiered her documentary, Riding a Dream. At the age of 18, Mellah made history and headlines over this summer. We did mention her on the show. She became the first British Muslim woman to win a horse race and she won after barely being on the horse for four months. Congratulation to Australian Ash Barty, this year's French Open champion, and she will not only end the year ranked number one, but she also won the championship at the WTA Finals in China.

Also, shout-out to Noor Abukaram, the high school runner from Ohio who, through her experience, forced the OHSSA to change an exclusionary rule that banned hijab from competition. It takes a lot of physical and emotional labor and it doesn't just benefit Muslim women, but every community that is marginalized in sports. Can I have a drum-roll please?

Badass Woman of the Week, our new brides, Wek Hernandez and Lisa Yang, who deadlifted a 253 pound barbell during their wedding ceremony in Prospect Park, New York-

Lindsay: That's amazing.

Shireen: ... on September 28th, 2019. I am so obsessed with them, wish them all the luck and love and heavy lifting in the world. They are a magnificent example of what you do together, you can be stronger and I was just, I love it.

Now, what is good, Jessica?

Jessica: Yeah. So I just want to give everyone a romance book update because I've been reading a ton of them recently and they always make me happy. Just last night I finished Rebekah Weatherspoon's Xeni: A Marriage of Inconvenience. It was wonderful. I'm obsessed with Evie Dunmore's Bringing Down the Duke. I could tell from like the fifth sentence that I was going to love that book and I totally did. And then I, over the weekend, read, which I guess, yesterday, I read Christina Lauren's Twice in a Blue Moon. I know, I read so many romance novels. People have no idea. And I just found that to be a total delight.

So that is good, and then today, he hates that I talk about this on here, but I don't care. Aaron is performing in his School of Rock adult performance today and they're doing '80s rock and he's the lead guitar on George Michael's Faith and he's doing Boys of Summer and Final Countdown and I bought him a denim vest to wear and a neon pink hat and he loves me a lot, so he's going to wear that for me when he's performing today and so I'm just really, really excited about that.

Shireen: That's awesome. Bren.

Brenda: I don't want to be a walking advertisement. I really don't. I'm not suggesting anyone go and download this app, but I'm obsessed with this app called Forza Football. It's from Sweden and there's no venture capitalism, by the way, here, but it's from Sweden and it gives you, you put, I'm embarrassed to say this. You put the day that you want, it's a calendar, and it gives you every football match, soccer match played in the world. Yeah.

Shireen: Oh, wow.

Brenda: Yeah.

Shireen: There goes all my time!

Brenda: Correct. So I'm supposed to be grading mid-terms, but I have to tell you, just looking at what's taking place, you know what I mean? That alone, much less the fact…and why did it take me so long? Thank you to Christopher Gaffney, who visited Hofstra this week and downloaded it to my phone. I mean, thank you, but also, I hate you because it's so good. Anyway, that's good in my world. People who know me know when I get really anxious, I either watch highlights of Messi or I do shit like this. And so I've been looking at everything and it's amazing to think of it all in motion from some geographical standpoint. Anyway, whatever about that. Forza, F-O-R-Z-A football. And then you can choose teams to follow, so if you want to do all women's, you could totally do that, follow a particular league, whatever the case is.

And besides that, I'm going to Emory this week to give a couple of talks with Paolo Palomino and Jeffrey Lesser, who are two historians that I really love, so I'll be in Atlanta for a few days and going to be happy that it's a bit warmer and to meet everybody there.

Shireen: That's awesome. I did a TEDx Toronto talk that I-

Jessica: Woo!!

Lindsay: Woo!!!

Shireen: ... that I suggested and hinted at, thank you. I love you people. Just thanks to everybody for the positive shout-outs. I got to meet Kardinal Offishall, who I love and who is an incredibly humble and wonderful person. Shout-out to my older two, particularly my daughter, Jihad, who was like my wing-man with me in the green room, helped me navigate a little panic attack before I went up. So that was amazing. I've actually told someone the next day I felt postpartum. I felt like I'd birthed something and it was an incredibly huge experience for me and professionally, just a big thing.

I am watching Modern Love on Amazon Prime Video. Thank you, Jessica, for suggesting. I cried the whole way through. I haven't watched the Queer Eye segment in Japan yet, which I will get to later this week. I'm also super obsessed with the Washington Capitals' Labrador-retriever puppy. Just love that little dog. Just all about those. I think sports and animals also have a big thing, a connection. I did not get up to watch the whole thing, but congratulations to South Africa for winning the World Rugby Cup. Siya Kolisi is the first black captain of the Springboks and there's some beautiful, beautiful writing about what this means, what this championship means to black South Africans and how important it is and I've just been so moved by that.

Also, speaking of rugby, you know I'm an All Blacks fan and Sonny Bill Williams is probably coming to Toronto! To the Wolfpack! which means that Shireen will be stalking him on the, no, stalking's a hard word to use.

Lindsay: Oh, no.

Shireen: On the sidelines because he is a phenomenal person-

Lindsay: Please don't get arrested! Please don't get arrested!

Shireen: Yeah, no! Just a huge fan of him. He is an incredible human and I will totally be like, "Yo, salaam alaikum, brother! Fellow Muslim! Give me an interview!” So I will try that. Anyways, there's a lot of exciting things happening. Linds!

Lindsay: Yeah, so I know you're all sick of me talking about it, but you're just going to have to hear me talk about it a little bit more.

Jessica: No, we're not.

Shireen: No. We're not.

Jessica: Do it again.

Brenda: We're not.

Lindsay: This week was the launch of Power Plays, powerplays.news. I think was telling my co-host before this that I've never felt this much anxiety in my life, but it's also been overwhelming with the support. Thank you all for listening to the Hot Take I did with Jessica. If you missed that, go back and listen, where I kind of talk about why I'm starting this. But yeah, the first week was not as optimal as I had hoped, but I got through it and I think that's the biggest thing. I'm really proud of the two issues I put out. One was on Title IX as a feminist, not Title IX, sorry, ending amateurism as a women's rights issue and reframing that subject to how much women stand to gain once these amateurism rules go away. And then the other issue was just about how men in control of women's sports keep perpetuating the narrative that women's sports are in peril. It's a self-perpetuating narrative.

So I'm really proud of those two and I'm so excited for this week, but the real what's good is through my anxiety, I decided, well, the reason I'm anxious, I'm sure, is because my room needs to be redone, obviously. Now I'm working full-time at home, so obviously the reason I'm not feeling good about my work is because my space is a disaster and it's dark and it's gloomy. It looks like a college kid's room. So I invested in this big L-shaped desk and I am so happy right now, sitting here working on this desk.

Shireen: Yay!

Lindsay: So this desk is what's good.

Shireen: Awesome. Lindsay, we are so proud of you. Everybody, please subscribe to powerplays.news and you will not regret it.

That's it for this week in Burn It All Down. Although we are done for now, you can always burn all day and night with our fabulous array of merchandise, including mugs, pillows, tees, hoodies, bags. What better way to crush toxic patriarchy in sports and sports media by getting someone you love a pillow with our logo on it? So the website is www.teespring.com/store/burnitalldown. Burn It All Down lives on SoundCloud but can be found on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and TuneIn. We appreciate your reviews and feedback, so please subscribe and rate to let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at burnitalldownpod and on Twitter at burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com and check out our website, www.burnitalldownpod.com, where you will find previous episodes, transcripts, and a link to our Patreon. We would appreciate your subscribing, sharing, and rating our show, which helps us do the work we love to do and keeps burning what needs to be burned. And as Brenda always says, burn on and not out.

Shelby Weldon