Episode 149: NFL CBA, Interview w/ Rachael Rapinoe about cannabis and athletes, and Coronavirus

On this week’s show, Amira, Brenda, and Jessica first talk women’s soccer tourneys around the world with a focus on the #SheBelievesCup. [4:59] Then they dive into the arguments around the NFL’s proposed new CBA. [17:26] Shireen interviews Rachael Rapinoe about cannabis products and athlete recovery. [34:15] Finally, they talk about the impact of the coronavirus on sports, the history of pandemics and sports, and what maybe, possibly will happen to March Madness. [51:12]

Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile, [1:00:19] the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring Weili Zhang, [1:03:46] and what is good in our worlds.

Links

How the Coronavirus Has Disrupted Sports Events: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/sports/coronavirus-sports.html

Coronavirus and the Tokyo Olympics: A lot of questions, few answers: https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/28822423/coronavirus-tokyo-olympics-lot-questions-answers

Coronavirus Looms Over March Madness: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/03/05/first-ncaa-games-canceled-due-coronavirus

Diamond Johnson First Woman Selected to Men's All-American Game at Iverson Classic 24K Showcase: https://scarletknights.com/news/2020/3/2/womens-basketball-diamond-johnson-first-woman-selected-to-mens-all-american-game-at-iverson-classic-24k-showcase.aspx

USA Today’s Christine Brennan recipient of 2020 APSE Red Smith Award: http://apsportseditors.com/x-2/

Histórico: se registraron en AUF las primeras jugadoras profesionales del fútbol uruguayo: https://garra.ladiaria.com.uy/articulo/2020/2/historico-se-registraron-en-auf-las-primeras-jugadoras-profesionales-del-futbol-uruguayo/

ICC Women’s T20 World Cup breaks all audience records: https://www.t20worldcup.com/media-releases/1637901

Fazza 2020 Para Archery: Alim clinched Best Player award in Golden campaign; Japan win 2 golds: https://asianparalympic.org/news/1333/

Transcript

Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. I’m Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and Africa-American studies at Penn State, and I’m running the show today. I’m joined by the A-team: that’s right, my co-hosts whose names also end in ‘a’: Brenda and Jessica. Brenda’s also a historian at Hofstra University in New York, and Jessica’s a freelance sports reporter and writer in Austin, Texas. I’m not sure why you needed that trivia fact but if you’re ever in a trivia that asks you what 3 co-hosts of Burn It All Down’s names end with ‘a’, now you know. Anyways, on today’s show we’ll talk about the NFL collective bargaining agreement, and we’ll also discuss how the coronavirus is impacting the world of sports. Plus, Shireen brings us a very interesting and special interview with Rachael Rapinoe on the effects of cannabis and CBD products on athletes and recovery.

But before we jump into that however, I did want to jump into a quick women’s soccer roundup. So, the beginning of March is just so much fun soccer times! The Algarve Cup is wrapping up this coming week, that’s held in Portugal and it consists of a tournament between Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand, and Portugal. Germany and Italy are currently headed to the finals and it’s important to note though that a  lot of the players from the professional Italian squads, especially those in the north, did not attend this tournament because of coronavirus concerns. We also have the Cyprus Cup going on, it’s also concluding this week. That’s Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Mexico, and Slovakia. Thailand completely withdrew from the tournament because of coronavirus, so we can already see…I know we’re gonna talk about that later in the show, but we can already see some of this impact.

Then for the first time ever you had the Tournoi de France, which was France, Netherlands, Brazil, and Canada. There’s two matches to go this upcoming Tuesday when this episode drops, but France won after defeating Brazil 1-0. Then of course, we have the She Believes Cup, which just kicked off this past week. We have a few days left to go in it. This is a new lineup this year with England, US, Japan, and Spain, and of course this is the first real challenge, the first chance that we get to see new coach Vlatko Andonovski helming the US women’s national team. They had a big test right off the bat; they’re facing England. They’re #1 in the world obviously, and England #6. Brenda, Jess, did you guys watch this game? What were your takeaways?

Jessica: Yeah, US looked good.

Brenda: Okay…[laughs] I didn’t watch the entire game but I did see the beginning of the first and the beginning of the second half. I was kind of surprised by some of the choices, I guess. The even possession I was surprised by, it felt to me like the US kind of sat back at different points, and maybe you could say that’s efficient, and maybe it is, because they obviously won, it was 2-0. But it felt like the first half especially I was frustrated by the lack of possession on the part of the US. If you’re a US fan it felt like they were just giving it away quite a bit. Christen Press was amazing, that was a beautiful little goal there. I love how she doesn’t really celebrate either, just like [celebratory “Uhn!”] Yeah. Like, mm-hmm! [laughs]

Amira: She just jogs effortlessly back.

Jessica: Her face was pretty great, when she turned around once it got in the net. It was pretty great.

Brenda: Yeah. She was great, it was nice. It was a very nice goal. Carli Lloyd is Carli Lloyd, right? I have a newfound respect after her deposition. [laughing to keep from crying?]

Jessica: [laughs]

Brenda: So yeah, it was a good game though.

Amira: I have to say, it’s exciting. Obviously we know we’re leading up to – maybe – the Olympics, to see what the roster will look like and to see the playing style that a new head coach brings to the team. It was fun to see more of Press, there’s a lot of new faces that I think we’re all going to be falling in love with quite soon, so I think it’s exciting. There are a few more games; I just think the She Believes Cup is so exciting this year. You have…If we care at all about FIFA rankings which, you know, we generally don’t, but on paper we have the #1, 6th, 10th, and 13th ranked teams, so I’m exciting. I’m hoping we get some really good matches with the remainder of the tournament.

Alright, so we start today in earnest with the NFL and the messiness that is their CBA voting. So, if you haven’t been up to date with this or you’ve been ignoring this – good decision – but also lemme just walk you through some of the status, where it’s at now. This is very divisive, the collective bargaining agreement that the NFL is trying to push through. It was sent to the players in the league for a vote, but there’s no consistency whatsoever. The 32 team player reps voted to pass along the CBA for a larger voting by a very slim margin, 14 to 17 votes, one person abstained. But the NFLPA executive committee voted 7-4 against the contract earlier that day! Now, NFL ownership have already approved it last week, so even the players are divided on this. It’s very clear that the ownership is pushing it through, and just a reminder of what’s at stake: for some inexplicable reason, the NFL CBA is 10 years. So this is a negotiation that’s putting into place the collective bargaining agreement that will rule the league until 2031. That’s such a long time. And so there’s many issues that are contested in the CBA but one of the biggest ones we’ve been hearing about comes down to the length of the season. Jessica, what are you seeing about the discussion about the season length?

Jessica: Yeah, I think this is really interesting. One thing I wanted to mention was the owners of these teams seem to really really want this to happen. We’re a year out, right, as Amira just said. The current CBA ends in a year and they’re already pushing this, and anytime the owners of the teams want anything I feel suspicious of that! Because I don’t trust any of their motives, ever. So, one thing they want is to have a 17-game schedule in the regular season, up from 16. Preseason will go from 4 games to 3, and then they want to expand the playoffs: 6 playoff teams in each conference will go up to 7, so there’ll be 14 in total, with the 2nd seed losing its first round bye. And this is a really huge point of contention because 1) the heath and safety of the players: one more game can be a really devastating thing. Playing a full-out NFL game is just on a whole other level from basically anything else, right? So even cutting down the preseason games, a lot of top players aren’t playing in those games, they don’t pay them as hard, all those sort of things. I, as a fan – well, I don’t know, am I a fan anymore? But as someone who will be watching I also just sort of wonder, like, how good could that possibly be?

One of the things they’ve done is they’re proposing to make the roster bigger so there are more players, so if you are hurting…You know, we see a lot of teams by the end of the season, they just have a lot of hurt players, so they can put more people in. I don't know, I think it will just be a lot of bad football at the end of the season, but why would NFL owners care, right? Because then they get revenue from the TV deal. That’s the big thing, right? That they want to lock the CBA in now so when they go to the negotiating table for their next TV deal they can say well, look, we got you 17 games for the next decade. And then also of course, ticket sales. I did want to mention, Jeremy Fowler, just this weekend there was a quote from reporting he had done, quote: “A number of NFL owners hope the proposed collective bargaining agreement doesn't pass with the players because they believe they can negotiate a better deal,” that means for the owners, “with eyes on an 18-game season in the future.”

Amira: Ay-ay-ay…

Jessica: That is just wild. As Amira said, if this goes through this’ll be 10 years that this is locked in. So, I don’t know. It makes me really really question all of this.

Amira: Anytime we get into CBA negotiations, and particularly with the NFL, we’re confronted again with what’s at stake for the owners and the way they work behind the scenes to really coalesce and push through their interests. But then it just returns us to this thing that we take for granted so much that we’re comfortable just calling them “owners.” Brenda?

Brenda: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know any other…It’s a really particular workplace, right? So it’s really interesting because so many people thing, well, anyone would give everything to be where these people are, in terms of the athletes. So very few people think of them as workers and it really was Michael Bennett’s book where he says, “In what other job would I have to call my boss my owner?” And what are the politics of that given the racial breakdown of the owners vs the athletes and I think it’s so…The whole discourse around the negotiation, the labor negotiation, is different when it has to do with sports, especially professional sports. It’s fascinating to watch the ways in which their demands are totally discounted in all these small micro-aggression-types of ways. I’m just sort of fascinated by it. It’s a big topic for me, athletes as workers, and so I’ve been fascinated to watch any CBA negotiations. I had a question and wondered if you all knew, do you have a sense of why the vote went down that way?

Amira: Yeah, you know I think I’ve seen some talk about how this current CBA has a bit of a split between those who are absolute stars and those that are kind of worker bees, journeymen on rosters. I think that there’s places in which you can see those tiers of playing make it really hard to negotiate, make it really hard to come together as players. Yes, there’s players as a kind of supported class, but the experiences within that vary considerably. Just to point out the kind of thing that I’ve been watching with great interest in these negotiations has been what they do with healthcare. Now, many players have been pushing for lifetime healthcare to be included which always was kind of a pipe dream, but the issue with healthcare and what you get as a rested player is a huge, huge issue. I’ve seen this personally with my best friend’s husband and we’re looking at the clock like, oh my gosh, you’re still feeling the ailments of playing and your healthcare’s about to run out.

But one of the things that this CBA proposes is an expansion of healthcare coverage but also the creations of new networks of hospitals in all of the cities in which there are NFL franchises, and these hospitals would provide ongoing care, x-rays, rehabilitation; they’re basically setting up as like an extension of the team trainers and doctors that people get access to in the league. But here’s where we get one of these little kind of fissures where we see how this might have players landing on different sides of this:  the general healthcare coverage after retirement is still capped at like 5 years with your benefits. What that means is if you hit that veteran’s minimum or you count as a veteran, which is four years in the league. If you play four years in the league and you get these benefits, you’re getting more benefits than the time you’ve played. But if you’re somebody who has played in the league for 10, 15 years, many of those players are making arguments that their healthcare needs, the brunt that their bodies are taking over the decade or more, necessitates a longer period of retirement coverage.

So this is one area where you can see even in healthcare negotiations that players who have been stars or workhorses or running backs or have longevity in the league might want a little something more from a retirement package vs the average player who churns out in about 5-7 years. So I think that’s one of the things that you see, is that it’s really hard to negotiate with the NFL vs like we’ve seen in the WNBA, a lot of the players there are on the same page. You have a few stars going overseas and you have the CBA kind of accounting for that. In the NFL you have a lot of different tiers in which players exist, so I think that could be one. Jess, do you have a few quotes from players talking about where their decisions lie?

Jessica: Yeah, I was gonna add specifically Sam Acho, who’s a linebacker for Tampa Bay, he was on one of the ESPN morning shows – I can’t remember what they’re called anymore, but anyways he was on one of those, and he said something that I think really informs Brenda’s question that he voted yes. One of his points was that some players want 17 games, that it’s more money for them which, again, is what Amira is talking about here. He then said that his real worry was that if they don’t say yes, what are they outcomes for them? He laid out three things, this is what he said he imagines happening: there’s either a strike, there’s a system that gets imposed on you and he didn’t really explain that totally; or there’s a lockout, and for players none of those things are good. Basically this is as good as they’re going to get, so, I don’t know. It’s interesting to me…There are a lot of players talking very publicly and on the ‘yes’ side I just wanted to use some of their words to explain what it is that they’re thinking.

So, we have Ryan Fitzpatrick, Miami Dolphins quarterback, he said “I think the fact that in signing this CBA and voting yes shows solidarity with owners and players. I think that’s important. I think it also shows the stability and strength of our league. As we go into negotiate these new sponsorship deals and TV deals, solidarity and strength and stability are things that are going to be on our side. They’re going to help us increase the overall worth of that pie and it’s a win-win for players and owners in that regard.” Devon Kennard for the Detroit Lions, he’s a linebacker, he said “"The deal is not perfect, by any means, and there are things that I most certainly wish were different and/or better, but when I took a step back, majority of the things we wanted (are) included in this deal. EVERY player will get 1/17th game check. Minimum salaries have made a significant increase. We now get 48% with opportunity to reach 48.5% once 17 game schedule is implemented (which will lead to all players making much more $). Player benefits have improved immensely including former players and lastly work rules, around camp schedules specifically are much improved. Overall, this is a deal that is going to lead to NFL players getting paid more than we ever have in the past and I LOVE that.”

On the ‘no’ side you have people like Corey Peters, Arizona Cardinals’ defensive tackle, he voted ‘no’ on the CBA because “for a league that has preached player safety to add additional games is hypocritical. Although there are positive aspects to the deal, it does not go far enough to earn my support, especially as it relates to the off-season schedule.” And finally Aaron Rodgers, who needs no introduction around here, but he is the quarterback for Green Bay. He said, quote, “16 games to me, was never something to be negotiated. The owners made it clear that the 17th game is about paying for the ‘added’ benefits, and had nothing to do with positive feedback received about any extra risks involved with the added regular season game.” I mean, they have to vote by this Thursday, so we will see. Everyone gets a vote, right? And I think that’s really interesting about this. Every single player, whether or not you’re famous, you get to be a part of this decision. And if they vote yes, I guess we’re in for ten years.

Amira: Wow.

Next up, Shireen interviews Rachael Rapinoe about the use of cannabis products for athletes’ rehab and recovery.

Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, it’s Shireen here. Today I’m so, so happy to have the amazing Rachael Rapinoe on the show with us. Rachael Rapinoe won an NCAA national championship at the University of Portland in 2005, played professional soccer in Europe in 2010, but eventually retired to pursue her passion in the health and fitness industry. She leveraged her masters in health and exercise and went on to build Rapinoe SC, a top soccer performance training company and lifestyle apparel brand with her twin who you might have heard of: Megan Rapinoe. She’s trained thousands of players across the US from youth to professional level, and her robust and trusted training brand has made her a highly sought-after trainer in the Portland area. She was a strength and conditioning coach for the University of Portland women’s soccer team, and applied her expertise and training in competition to better understand the role recovery has in performance of the human body. She started concepting the company Mendi with other cofounders several years ago, and grew to understand the role cannabis has in keeping athletes at the top of their performance. Rachael, thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down.

Rachael: Thank you so much for having me, I’m really excited to be here.

Shireen: So, can you tell me a little bit about, as mentioned, your role in understanding and having expertise in the human body and physiology, how that made you think about recovery and how cannabis and cannabinoids play a role in that?

Rachael: Well, so let’s just start with performance, because any performance coach or anyone working in exercise science will tell you that everything is about how quickly you can recover for the next training session or the next bout of exercise, and that’s where all of the metrics and science is gonna point to: how well are you sleeping? Are you combatting pain and inflammation? And so on, and so forth. So, as a trainer, yes, you want to periodize your programs and slowly progress your players to reaching peak performance, but I would say the most important element of anyone’s training program is recovery, right? Because if you’re not fully recovered for your next training or your next session your performance is gonna suffer. As a coach that’s what I learned in my six years of training and what every professional athlete strives for is to just better recover.

And it’s not just one thing, right? It’s a culmination of things: it’s what you put in your body, it’s how well you sleep, it’s what you’re doing…Really every decision you make outside of training and competition that’s gonna affect your next performance. Then I was introduced to cannabis, honestly, by professional athletes. They’d been using it for years because there has been and still is a very real opiate crisis in our country, particularly in sports, and athletes don’t want to use those types of medications. They don’t want to use Ambien to sleep, they don’t want to use Celebrex for years and years and years, because that stuff’s not great for your liver and for the rest of your body–

Shireen: And highly addictive, in some cases.

Rachael: Highly addictive, yeah, there’s definitely withdrawal effects from it as well when you try to get off of it. So we all know that athletes have been using cannabis and what I noticed though, a few years ago, is that there wasn’t one trusted brand, and there’s just really a lack of education or miseducation around cannabis. I noticed athletes didn’t know what brand they were using, they definitely didn’t know what dosage they were using, they didn’t know if it was marijuana-derived CBD or hemp-derived CBD. Four years ago we saw – we meaning me and my other two co-founders – we saw a huge opportunity to win the sports market in the cannabis space.

Shireen: Yeah, that’s really important. I wrote a piece last year about my own journey and I was telling you this briefly a little bit before about how I actually have an allergy to a type of narcotic – sorry, a type of codeine, so that left me…post-surgery of my ACL tear, it was a hamstring graft, it was a complete reconstruction, and so it left me with no pain management. Like, I’ve had four unmedicated births and this was way worse!

Rachael: Oh my god.

Shireen: Yeah, and I have a pretty high pain tolerance, let’s put it that way. But not having the option…I would’ve liked to have had the option, and that’s something I’d like to talk about with you is the options and just misinformation. I found that the medical community that I’m around, and I say this now in Canada where cannabis use is legal in some contexts and some spaces. I mean, there’s also the criminalization of Black and brown people in those spaces, but I’m talking about a prescription and being helped by a physician and an expert in pain management, you can use cannabis for pain management, absolutely, in this country. What I’m trying to say is why do you think that’s fueled, that reluctance of the traditional medical community to offer this as an option? For me its a no-brainer.

Rachael: Yeah, well it’s been years and years and years and years of propaganda, at least in the United States. It was a racial divide, it was an act by our government to oppress people of color and that honestly is what it is. They created this whole propaganda that anyone who used marijuana were bad people in society, and then big pharma has been able to benefit greatly from the oppression of cannabis and the FDA has allowed a lot of these bigger corporations and companies to do their own clinical research. Unfortunately cannabis has been so restricted that while there is a lot of data supporting the positive effects of it, and we know that it’s not harmful for you, the medical community and our federal government has not deemed a lot of that data credible because it’s not a controlled clinical trial, and you can’t hold controlled clinical trials unless the FDA approves it, so obviously there’s a lot of hoops that we have to go through. I think it’s heading in the right direction, but it’s still a very very very restricted industry in the United States.

Shireen: Yeah, for sure. Another question I have about, for people that might not understand outside of America, could you explain a little bit how it works in terms of marijuana and cannabis and cannabinoids have not been decriminalized across the US, have they? Or is it state jurisdiction in terms of allowance? Because from what I understand in Oregon it’s permissible but what about other places in the US? How can people and athletes recovering who want this, or people suffering from pain, how can they access these products? Can they even?

Rachael: It is state by state in terms of marijuana. Now hemp became federally legal…The hemp farm bill passed in 2018 which legalized hemp. So hemp is federally legal and you can ship across all states except for two, which if you live in states like Idaho and South Dakota, I believe, the laws are a little bit grey there, so if you’re a citizen living in that state you just have to know where your state stands in regards to hemp CBD, but every other state you can ship freely, so anyone who is a DTC business can ship to everyone’s doorsteps. In saying that though, on the flip side, is that the FDA has not come out with the rules and regulations around it, so it’s still a very restricted industry. In terms of banking, not every bank is gonna accept someone selling hemp CBD, so although it’s federally legal there’s all these other laws that have not caught up to it. So, very restricted.

Now on the marijuana side, I believe there are 12 states now that are federally legal, but you can’t cross state borders. So there are 12 states that are federally legal, they have a legal rec program and obviously medical program and there’s like 33 states that have a legal medical program and there’s only a handful of states that don’t have either program. So again, getting there, but not fully. Can’t cross state borders, so you have to have a multi-state operation if you want to be present in every state, which is very costly. We’re hoping it’ll become federally legal within the next year. I think from an athlete’s perspective, where they get really frustrated is that when you’re living in a state where it’s federally legal, why can’t they go get some pot to help manage their pain just like everyone else in that state? And that’s been the argument the past year, year and a half, is that a lot of these professional athletes are like, “Everyone else in my state is able to get this, I can’t just because my league hasn’t lifted the ban?” That’s where the tension is in terms of the athletes’ perspective.

Shireen: Yeah, there’s one thing I wanted to clarify for some people that may not be familiar. I just wanted to clarify the difference between what’s out there, what’s offered. Mendi, I understand, has three products: gel caps, gummies, and a stick, which are CBD-based, but they do not have THC. THC is the compound that is banned, is more regulated. Could you clarify that in terms of marijuana vis a vis cannabinoid products for people that may not be sure?

Rachael: Yeah, so marijuana is the mother plant and it was bred to have significantly higher levels of THC. THC is the cannabinoid that gets you mentally intoxicated, so that’s like the high that most people experience. And then hemp is the sister plant, and it was bred to have significantly lower levels of THC. If it’s a true hemp plant it should only have 0.3% or less of THC, so predominantly CBD. There’s over 100 cannabinoids in the entire plant, and CBD is one of them. CBD is the one that most people talk about and it’s very trendy and it’s very sexy and that’s something that most of the research has been done on. WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and ASADA, they’ve lifted their CBD bans. MLB does not have a CBD or THC ban anymore…

Shireen: Major League Baseball is with it.

Rachael: Yeah, they just lifted their entire cannabis ban, not just CBD. Most places are probably only gonna lift CBD, I’d be shocked if leagues are gonna lift the entire cannabis ban, although they should because both THC and CBD work better together, but I think you’ll mostly see just lifting the CBD ban with hopefully minimal traces of THC. When I say minimal traces it should be coming from the hemp plant which again has 0.3% or less of THC, so it will not get you high or anything like that, but you’re still going to be getting those great cannabinoid properties from it.

Shireen: So in order to get your products do people need to see a physician and get a prescription, or they can just order them online? How does Mendi work?

Rachael: We decided to have a hemp-only line to start because, again, we don’t wanna be jumping through a bunch of hoops and hemp is federally legal. So we were able to get a bank account and a payment processor and we can ship all of our products directly to people’s doorsteps. All of our products are hemp, and we actually just launched a fourth product, which is our massage oil, so now we have two ingestibles, two topical, and it’s all hemp. We came out with a pro-line, so we’ve actually stripped all the THC from it because we know that CBD is the only thing that’s legal, so there’s minimal traces of other cannabinoids in our products but pretty much it’s 99.9999% CBD only, because that’s what’s legal with most of these leagues. Then we’ll come out with a full spectrum line which again is still hemp but it has 0.3% or less of THC, so again minimal traces of THC. For anyone needing to get tested, and usually the markers can only test for THC, you actually can’t test for CBD, you need to make sure that the products don’t have any THC in them. 

Shireen: Right. Where do you see Mendi going, Rachael? Where do you want it to go?

Rachael: We want to be the world’s most trusted sports CBD brand, so that’s where we’re going. On a day to day basis, if we’re not improving athletes’ lives with just nature’s best recovery tools then we don’t feel like we’re doing our job. That’s our day to day mission, to improve people’s lives in the healthiest way possible using nature’s best. Long-term, again, we wanna be the world’s most trusted sports CBD brand.

Shireen: That’s amazing. I’m so excited to hear about this, because this is one aspect, I think, of sports medicine and sports recovery that I just unfortunately don’t think is spoken of. People are very timid to talk about it because nobody really knows…Where can our listeners find out more about Mendi and where can they find you and all this other important information?

Rachael: So right now Mendi is 100% DTC, direct to consumer, so we only sell online because we really want to control the brand experience and the educational experience. You can find us at www.themendico.com and then you can find me in Portland, Oregon.

Shireen: [laughs]

Rachael: What I was gonna say though, unfortunately federally we are not allowed to ship outside of the United States, so that’s the only bummer. Hopefully those laws are gonna change, but right now we’re only allowed to ship inside the United States. But you can find us at www.themendico.com, both on Instagram and Twitter, and then same with Facebook.

Shireen: Awesome.

Rachael: My personal handle is @rrapinoe.

Shireen: Okay, is it safe to say you’re a Portland Thorns fan? 

Rachael: Oof…I can’t say that. I can’t go on record.

Shireen: [laughing]

Rachael: I have multiple people up against me. My girlfriend plays for the North Carolina Courage, so I definitely can’t say that. My sister played for the Seattle Reign. So I’m really stuck between a rock and a hard place up here in Portland. What I will say is that I love Portland and I want all Portland teams to do well.

Shireen: You’re so incredibly diplomatic. I’m Canadian and I refer to Christine Sinclair as our co-Prime Minister, but I love Portland so much – with the exception of the Trailblazers, because I’m a Raptors fan, obviously. But mad respect. Love, love, love Portland so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We didn’t get into talking about your being a connoisseur of southeast Asian cuisine, but maybe if I’m ever in Portland we can go have some.

Rachael: Yes definitely, or when I’m in Toronto you can show me around.

Shireen: Absolutely. We have incredible incredible pho here, so that would be hopefully up to your standard. I’m loving this conversation and we would love to have you on Burn It All Down anytime.

Rachael: Yes, thank you so much again for having me on and I consider us friends moving forward. Any questions that you or your…audience…listeners? In my head we say “consumers” and I’m like no, clients, customers…None of those sound right!

Shireen: But thank you again for being on Burn It All Down.

Rachael: Thank you for having me.

Shireen: It was so awesome to talk to you, and we will be keeping track of this as we move forward.

Rachael: Okay, great. Thank you, have a wonderful day.

Amira: Next up we wanted to chat a little bit about the coronavirus and specifically about the impact it’s having on the sports world. Now, what we’ve seen over the last few weeks is that this global pandemic is affecting all walks of life from college to travel, quarantines; every day there’s new cases and it’s certainly a very concerning and scary time. We want to continue a conversation that started to happen…We’ve talked about last week, I forget who burned it, but we’ve talked about the impact particularly on the Olympics, and we wanna take up the threads of that conversation and talk about not only the impact but some of the other themes that emerge in conversations around this virus and sports. Again, the 2020 Olympics are supposed to be happening in Tokyo this summer, kicking off July 24th. That’s still up in the air, there’s a lot of concern about those Games being able to go on, although the IOC seems steadfast, assuring at least their sponsors that it is continuing. We’ve seen that sponsorship aspect being a huge issue: SXSW was just cancelled in Austin and it was largely due to sponsors pulling out first. A lot of the IOC statements in Tokyo are geared at calming down sponsors who are integral – we know big sporting mega-events mean big money – integral to the functioning of the Games.

So you have the conversation about the Olympics, but also we’re seeing it impacting other sporting events right now. Women’s worlds, the premier ice hockey championship that was going to be held in Halifax at the end of March to beginning of April, they announced just this past weekend that that tournament would be cancelled, women’s world hockey championships would be cancelled now. Again, this is the premier tournament for women’s ice hockey in the world. So we’ve seen that; we’ve seen the NBA send out notices to teams preparing them about playing in front of empty arenas that only have essential staff and no fans. And of course we’re coming up on March Madness. Jessica, what might this concern mean for that tournament?

Jessica: I am so interested in what is gonna happen here because this is a huge tournament, right? It’s not just that it spans weeks of time, so it’s something like for the men’s tournament 68 Division 1 men’s basketball teams at arenas in 12 different states. For the women’s it’s 64 Division 1 teams at various campuses, because they don’t set the first and second rounds until they release the bracket. Then they definitely won’t be in five different states. On the men’s side Gonzaga is doing wonderfully, they might be able to win the whole thing, and so their first round and second round games in Spokane which…I know is nowhere near Seattle, but I just sort of wonder, because Washington’s such a hotbed here in the US for what’s going down with the coronavirus, are they gonna move that? What’s gonna happen? I just find this fascinating.

The NCAA have a COVID-19 advisory panel and they put out a statement just on Friday and one of the things they said is “The panel members believe that we need to better understand COVID-19” which is just such a noncommittal statement, like, what else do you need to know about it? I also agree I would like to know more about it when making these huge decisions. They said, “The key is for all stakeholders and athletes to practice risk mitigation at all events,” which to me just sounds they they’re pushing the responsibility off the NCAA and onto those people. At the present the panel’s not recommending cancellation or “ public spacing of athletic and related events” and I just want to say, I have been…Because I’m here in Austin and it was a huge discussion about whether or not South By was going to be cancelled and I was talking to a friend of mine who was adamant that if South By could be cancelled then March Madness could be cancelled and when that came down it was like, well, this will be next! I just don’t know. I just don’t know because March Madness counts for 80% of the NCAA’s annual revenue.

Amira: Right.

Jessica: CBS has put billions of dollars into this tournament. It’s the most profitable postseason TV deal in sports, according to Forbes. I just can’t imagine that kind of money…I guess one of the things I keep thinking about…They are not gonna cancel it, I just can’t imagine a full-out cancellation of that kind of money tournament. The idea of them playing the entire tournament in front of no one is a possibility, because it’s not the tickets, that’s part of it-

Amira: It’s the TV, yeah.

Jessica: It’s the TV. But I imagine the universities and arenas and stuff probably want tickets to be sold and they want that money. I just keep thinking…I understand they’re not playing and they’re doing preseason in Japan, baseball, men’s baseball, and they’re in empty stadiums. Italian football they’re doing in empty stadiums. But the idea of no crowds during March Madness, I don’t know. I keep thinking about what’s the importance of the crowd and the fan in what we imagine a sport, especially moneyed sports. Part of what you feed off of, even when you’re watching on television, is how the crowd is responding emotionally to what’s happening on court, and I wonder if people will still watch it the same way if they don’t have that. I honestly don’t know.

Amira: No, totally. Brenda.

Brenda: Just on the point of the NCAA tournament there, I will lose my shit if some schools don’t pull out and I’ll tell you why: faculty have been restricted from university-related travel for 60 days in most universities right now. Okay? What…

Jessica: You’re not worth billions of dollars, Brenda!

Brenda: Right! I mean…hell no! No. If I can’t go to my conference, if my Cuba study abroad trip which was supposed to leave next Friday is cancelled and those students are so disappointed and so sad and we’ve been planning for months…If they send student athletes there, what’s a liability and what’s a liability? 

Amira: And also who’s disposable, because as long as they get their athletic labor damned if the players themselves survive this.

Brenda: Right!

Amira: But I do wanna go back to this point, Jess, about the role of the fans and cheering and that part of sporting culture. I was in Baltimore when Freddie Gray was murdered in 2015 and one of the things that happened in the wake of that, there was uprising and unrest all over the cities and one of the things that happened on a night of unrest was the predominantly white and affluent fans coming out of Camden Yards, they met up with protesters in the streets and the fans were largely already intoxicated, and there was a series of skirmishes. Now, these immediately were blasted by the media as protesters attacking these fans. Once we started getting more images and videos back you saw that that was a very simplistic story; there was a lot of fans who were aggressive first, but either way on April 29th of 2015 the Orioles then played the Chicago White Sox in a crowdless game. It was the first crowdless game ever played by MLB and they prevented fans from coming into the stadium, citing civil unrest, although inexplicably allowed them to gather around the stadium, which seems like not exactly the point.

But one of the things that’s so interesting about this was they had empty seats but they still let the media in, and they actually had three times as many press requests as usual because of the national media attention on it. It was standing room only in the press box and empty seats throughout the rest of the stadium. Now, the players in the game talked about how eerie it was, how weird it was to play in silence. It became this kind of camaraderie against the players, because they were all doing this thing together. Brett Edgerton from ESPN asked, if there was a baseball game and no one was there to see it, did it really happen? They talked about it just being eerie and at least one player said they blamed the loss on not having the fans there to hype them up, but also because they understood the reason that the fans weren’t there, and that was weighing heavily on their mind. I think that’s what your question brought me back to was this crowdless moment where even watching it on TV was strange because it was like watching a practice. You realize how much of that curation of the dog and pony show around the game goes into that experience and it just felt heavy. It was empty, but really heavy at the same time.

It would be interesting to see what comes of that, and certainly if nothing else people are getting a lot of Brewers jokes out of the way about empty stadiums and whatnot, and that was true in 2015. The Brewers say, oh, you get used to playing in front of no crowds. I’ve already seen memes that say oh, Brewers leading the way on public health and safety! I think at the end of the day people will also fall back on humor to try and make sense of this situation. Now Brenda, I wanted to ask you, is there historical precedent for considering global disease and sport? 

Brenda: Yeah, one of the things I thought about – this shows you how nerdy I can be – was a hundred years ago, the largest flu epidemic was 1918-1919 and it was estimated at that time, and of course it has to do with imperialism, a lot of the Spanish Flu and that influenza pandemic was spread by US Navy personnel, but it’s also a result of World War I and it was estimated that about 500 million people or 1/3 of the world’s population was infected with that virus, that strain of the flu. The number of deaths was estimated about 50 million worldwide, and when that happened…That’s really interesting you said no MLB games were cancelled by the MLB, but plenty were cancelled by cities. Really it was cities and mayors that ends up at the forefront of these things, and we’re seeing it now. There’s plenty of sporting events that were closed down. I heard New York City mayor Bill de Blasio – think of him what you will – he’s offering free testing to everyone in the New York area right now, and the only reason he’s declared a state of emergency, and so has Cuomo, is because it allows them to free up emergency money. They’ve been very clear about that, they’ve been very level-headed, but they are also super front lines.

When it happened a hundred years ago it was the mayors that shut everything down, like Minneapolis for example, in 1918, shut down all sporting events. If you read the petitions, the importance of sport in terms of maintaining normalcy, you get it from all these letters. I read one from the bowling leagues of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1918 to please, please allow them to bowl again. You really get this sense…And the football teams in Minneapolis in 1918 played anyway and it was the local police that the mayor sent to stop them from playing and said no, no, you can’t do this. You’re not above this. Then on the other hand in 1918 a lot of really famous athletes died from it, so it also just became this extra reminder to people that if the strongest, the fastest, the most ideal bodies are subject to this, how vulnerable we all are.

Amira: Mm-hmm. Right.

Brenda: So I think it’s really interesting to look back at that. The whole thing lasted a total of about 12-13 months, a little over a year. It’s a long time, but again though, you’re looking at World War I, people are just massively migrating: the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, all these kinds of changes, I don’t think were in the same kind of moment, but it’s really poignant, I think, the sort of quest for that scheduling of sports. What’s gonna happen on Sunday and Monday and Thursday? Not just the sports that we watch but these are these civic associations where all the people that wanna go out and like, bowl.

Amira: Right.

Brenda: It’s really touching.

Jessica: Yeah, that’s so interesting. I had not considered…As I mentioned, March Madness happens in a ton of cities and a ton of states and so maybe it’s gonna get cancelled location by location? And how will the NCAA manage that? I don’t know, I hadn’t even considered the role of mayors and governors in possibly shutting down the tournament because their job is to take care of the health of their community whether or not the NCAA cares about it. I wonder what kind of backroom stuff is happening with making sure that these things go forward, that’s fascinating to think about.

Amira: Right, and the interplay there because that’s a threat coming in, but also that’s the revenue. 

Jessica: Mm-hmm, yeah.

Amira: Bren, we’ve talked about how, a hundred years ago, we had all these different migratory patterns and now we have the technology that allows people to move so openly and freely and pour into places and go…We’ve talked about what universities we’ve seen responses from, them asking faculty to move their classes online at the University of Washington; Stanford, they suspended classes and in person meetings. It’s very interesting, as an aside, all of these accommodations that disability activists have been asking for in terms of like, virtual conferences, that have never been possible are suddenly all possible.

Jessica: Yeah…

Amira: Penn State just hit spring break, and so not only do we have our athletes in tournaments all over the place, they’ve cancelled all study abroad and embedded courses, but we just let 50,000 undergraduates leave State College, Pennsylvania and go all over. And then in a week they’ll be pouring back into State College. I think this is something to track, not only in sports obviously but something we will have our eye on. Just to end this, a reminder that fear around this is not an excuse for racism, particularly anti-Asian racism. If you recall a few episodes ago I burned the use of a gas mask in trying to attack her competitor, Zhang Weili, on Instagram, leading up to the UFC battle. I’m happy to report that as of last night Zhang beat her in a very very close match, retained her title, and I just thought that was a point to remember. In the meantime I hope everyone is healthy out there. Wash your hands, and we will see.

Alright, it’s time to burn some things. Brenda.

Brenda: Ugh. I wanna burn two things that are related. The first is that we still don’t know where the Women’s World Cup is in 2023.

Amira: Which is so ridiculous!

Brenda: Okay, and they don’t expect to know til June, yeah. So we have known the men’s 2026 for eons, right? We knew about France like 5 years in advance. This is going to be 3 years at most and it’s not enough, it’s simply not enough, especially when it’s expanded from 24 to 32 teams, or that’s what Infantino is claiming is going to happen, so it’s bigger than it’s ever been, theoretically. It’s down to Brazil, Colombia, Japan, and then Australia-New Zealand have a joint bid. Basically these have all been finalized, the four submissions. FIFA claims there’s ‘unprecedented interest.’ Gianni Infantino said, quote, “France 2019 was certainly a watershed moment for women’s football.” Whatever!

Amira: Quote: “Whatever.”

Brenda: I know, it’s like, every time I quote him I’m just like, half-laughing and half-crying-inside. The Brazilian delegation, I would just like to say, in some sense in terms of a mega-event, Brazil makes a lot of sense because it has obviously all the stadiums and there shouldn’t be tons of construction…Of course there will be, because graft and corruption. But they’re presented their bid to FIFA, and they brought their team, and that team didn’t have a woman.

Amira: [groans] I just can’t deal with these people.

Brenda: All you can do is laugh! All you can do is laugh.

Amira: They’re caricatures at this point, jeez Louise. 

Brenda: Even when the head, Aline Pellegrino, of the São Paulo women’s football federation, who oversees the largest body of women’s soccer probably in the world at a region level, was available to go! So I would like to burn the entire bidding process, but particularly the Brazilian federation’s misogyny and idiocy when it comes to preparing a bid for the Women’s World Cup without a single woman representative.

All: Burn.

Amira: Ay-ay-ay. I will go next. First and foremost, I don’t need to burn it because we’ve burned it before, but I just wanted to flag yet another bill, this time in Louisiana, attacking trans athletes. This one is called “Save Women’s Sports Act.” Go back and listen to the multiple times we’ve burned bills such as this, it’s literally the same thing. But I did wanna flag that and toss it on the burn pile because it’s a terrible trend, and it’s awful. But this week I wanted to do a burn sent to us by flamethrower Alison Young. Thank you, Alison, for highlighting this. I want to share with you her burn.

She says this weekend was the Olympic trials for the marathon. This was a HUGE deal for fans of women's running because a record number of women qualified for the event. For perspective, over 500 women qualified vs 260 men. There was 35 master's women (women over age 40) who qualified – only 4 men qualified by a point of comparison. To qualify you had to run basically 2:45:00 which is about 6:18 per mile, which is ridiculous. This race also included the first openly trans athlete to ever run in the trials plus 2 women who were 25 weeks or more pregnant who qualified pre-pregnancy and still competed in the trials last week. So there’s lots of great stories, well-deserved hype. And this was the deepest field in history of the Olympic marathon trials with 15-20 women with a legitimate shot of making the team. For example, one of the women who ultimately placed as an alternate was on the last 2 Olympic marathon teams! So a really, really deep field. And it was shown live on NBC. This gets up to the burnable part of this. The coverage of the race was abysmal. The men's race finished first, around the time the women were getting close to the last 10k of their race, and they took the cameras completely off the women's race for extensive interviews with the men's qualifiers, which was exciting of course but they didn’t do a split screen, they didn’t do a picture in picture, they didn’t cut back to the women’s race, and when they went away from the women's race there were still 12 contenders in the lead pack.

By the time they finally got around to covering the women they had missed the breakaway completely and the pack had spread out. So no one watching the TV coverage got to see the MOST IMPORTANT PART of the women's race. When someone pushed away, when people started to fall back is essentially what decided the rest of the race. Even after that they continued to concentrate just on the two people in front without letting spectators know anything about how the race behind them for 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc was unfolding. Alison said, “It was infuriating,” and knew she was not the only person who thought so. They obviously needed to acknowledge the men who just made the Olympic team but there was no possible way they could do that and not follow the women’s race at the same time? Just, sigh. So again, just to recap, despite the fact that the women’s race was more hyped of the 2 races and was record-breaking in many ways, and had fascinating stories, the coverage of it was still an afterthought. Burn.

All: Burn. 

Amira: And I would just like to note that Alison wants everyone to know that if you want more news on women’s running, check out http://www.fast-women.org/. Alright Jess, bring us home.

Jessica: Ugh. I’m feeling that burn, because they have the men go first and the women separate so they can have coverage! That’s wild. Okay. So, Alyssa Wruble is the only girl on her varsity hockey team at Northampton Area High School in East Allen Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania. During a playoff hockey game a couple weeks ago some dipshit brought a sign – a piece of poster board – put it up against the glass. It said on it, “ALYSSA GENDER REVEAL?” And it had a blue box with the symbol for the male sex and a pink box with the symbol for the female sex. Wruble said that she actually didn’t even see the sign, but she heard the accompanying chant, “Wruble, you’re a dude.” Her family also heard people in the stands saying she had a penis.

Wruble scored two goals in the game. She’s a junior in high school, plays on a travel team, attends the Philadelphia Hockey Academy, and has hopes of playing D1 women’s hockey in college and being on the US women’s Olympic team. She’s threatening. The school, Parkland High School, whose fans were taunting her, has said, quote, “There is no place for unsportsmanlike conduct or personal harassment in our school, or any where, and anyone involved will be disciplined according to Parkland policy and procedures. Furthermore, to Alyssa and her family, we are sorry for the pain caused by the sign. Parkland fully supports gender equity and Parkland is proud to have female players on its own hockey team.” I’m sure. This feels like one of those scenarios where what is practiced around equality in sports at that school is probably very different than what they say…The kids learned this somewhere, right? Maybe Parkland needs to do some internal reassessing.

Okay, so there’s a few things here, right? First, just let girls play sports and leave them the fuck alone. Spend your time practicing and maybe you won’t be so damn insecure. Second, this is transphobic garbage, right? What if she was a girl with a penis? So what? Third, what is even the point of these taunts? The problem is just that she’s super good at hockey, so therefore she has to be a boy? What’s the actual insult here? It mainly sounds like a bunch of people were insulting themselves and their intensely fragile masculinities. And finally, this is yet another reason gender reveal parties should go. Look what they have wrought! [laughs] It’s terrible. So on behalf of girls, non-binary and trans athletes who are actively discouraged from participating in sports because of shit like this, and then this case specifically on behalf of Alyssa Wruble: burn all of this. 

All: Burn.

Amira: After all that burning it’s time to shout out some badass women of the week. The UC Capitals have gone back-to-back, winning their ninth WNBL Championship after defeating the Southside Flyers 71-68.

Last year Diamillet Quiles became the first woman to play in an official game and this year became the first woman to hit safely in the Béisbol Doble A league of Puerto Rico.

Diamond Johnson is the first Woman Selected to Men's All-American Game at Iverson Classic Showcase.

Christine Brennan is the recipient of the 2020 Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, which is given to a person who has made “major contributions to sports journalism.”

At the end of February the Uruguayan football federation announced it would contract women footballers for the first time as professionals.

Also, the winner of the T20 Final (this is cricket, for those who don’t know) was Australia! They won by 85 runs in front of 86,000 fans. They broke all sorts of audience records this entire year, truly thrilling.

Also, Singaporean para-archer Nur Syahidah Alim won gold at the Compound Open women's final in Dubai at the Fazza Para Archery World Ranking Tournament in Dubai.

Cheers to Carrie Taylor, an assistant coach with the USL’s San Diego Loyal, the first and only woman coaching in the USL.

Lisa Baird was named the new NWSL commissioner, and now a drumroll please?

[drumroll]

Our badass woman of the week goes to someone I already shouted out but I just had to shout her out again, Zhang Weili: her title defense, her UFC 248 title defense, and just her general badassery. When I told you before it was tight – this is the 115-lb title – this is the first time she was defending her belt. The judges scored this 48-47 in her favor, 48-47 for her competitor, and then again 48-47 with the other poll. Everybody who was judging this match judged it so close. She very clearly gave Joanna a massive hematoma across her forehead, a lot of people on Twitter were posting pictures of that, but I really wanted to shout out the fact that Zhang had to flee China in response to the coronavirus in early February. She spent most of the last month in transit, she finally was able to relocate to Thailand and then Abu Dhabi, and then finally came to the United States in advance of her title defense. She said, “It was hard with the coronavirus in my country, everybody knows that, but coronavirus is getting much better, and I hope everybody stays together and fights together. We can win this. Our country is suffering from the tragedy right now, but we're fighting together and winning it.” For that statement, for your general badassery, for your title defense, you are our badass woman of the week.

Alright ladies, what is good? Bren.

Brenda: So this is a weird one, because at first it was bad: as I mentioned earlier the study abroad trip that I was supposed to shepherd starting next week to Cuba was cancelled, and it was very sad. It was sad on so many intellectual levels, research levels…We should all basically be running to Cuba, but at the same time it’s true. I don’t want to bring a bunch of students that ruin it. So at first this was really bad, but there really is a silver lining to things getting cancelled sometimes because I’m staring down the barrel of a spring break with no plans. I’m like, huh…Look at that! [laughing] I have literally never had that. So I’m thinking…I don’t know. I write books, I meet nephews? It’s 10 days, but that’s a lot! Maybe I visit Shireen? These are the types of fun things that one gets to do when they see the bright side, so that’s good right now.

Amira: Yeah, definitely. Jess, what’s good with you?

Jessica: I’m about to finish recording here, and then I’m going immediately to breakfast with a really good friend of mine in town from Minneapolis, so I’m really excited to see her. I took a cake decorating class earlier this week–

Amira: Aww.

Jessica: –which was fun, because you know I love that stuff. I’m not good with flowers on icing so I learned a bunch about that, but then I also got to take a cake home, and we got to eat cake all week. So that was a win. Then I just wanna mention, it was in everyone’s feed this week, a teaser for our February Patreon. I did an interview with romance novelist Alexa Martin and she was so charming and lovely and it was just really fun for me to bring romance novels into Burn It All Down and talk about that in this space because I completely love sports romance novels. Go check that out, this was very fun for me.

Amira: Awesome. It’s thrilling, I really echo that. Go listen! Sign up for our Patreon if you’re not, because it’s worth your time. So for me, we’re recording this on Sunday, March 8th. March 8th for the last two years has been very eventful for me: last year of course was our first ever live show. This is the anniversary of the five of us coming together for the first time in New York.

Jessica: Wow! Aww…

Amira: And then the year before that my goddaughter was born, and I got to be there for that, and so today is Noelle’s 2nd birthday, and right after we wrap this up I’m jumping in the car to Philadelphia to celebrate with my best friend, Thelma, and my god kids, and then me and Samari are on spring break here. Me and Samari are going to go into the city, which is now in a state of emergency, but that’s okay.

Brenda: Just to release funds!

Amira: I’m gonna keep saying that. The hotels in Times Square were $70, so here we are.

Brenda: Yeah…

Jessica: [laughing]

Amira: I’m gonna check on the Jackie Robinson museum which is opening, I’m on the advisory board of that, then we’re going over to see Six which is a Broadway musical. It started in London, then it went to Chicago, and now it is on Broadway. It opened this month and it’s about the six wives of Henry VIII.

Jessica: Oh, that’s right! Oh, it looks amazing! 

Amira: So this is what me and Samari are doing. I’m really looking forward to having some time with her. She’s hungover from her play last week; they just finished Bye Bye Birdie, and if you’re a drama mamma like I am you know tech weeks have rehearsals til 10 at night and then show nights where we don’t get in the house until after 12:30am every night that weekend. We’re all just exhausted from it, so we’re looking for a low-key spring break and just the first half of it will be a little bit of a girls’ trip so I’m looking forward to that and I just want to shout out Noelle, happy birthday! And everybody on International Women’s Day from Burn It All Down: we see you, we stand with you, keep fighting around the globe.

Brenda: Burn on, not out?

Amira: Burn on, not out!

That’s it for this week’s episode of Burn It All Down. Thank you for listening! You can listen and subscribe to Burn It All Down on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Play, wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate the show, share it…We love when the podcasts gets out into the world and reaches even more people. We’re also on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod, and Twitter @burnitdownpod. For more information about the show including links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website, https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/. You can email us directly from the site to give us feedback; we always want to hear from you. Also on the website you’ll get a link to our merchandise shop on Teespring for all your BIAD merch gear, and of course our Patreon. Let me just take a moment to thank our patrons from the bottom of our hearts: thank you so much. Sign up for as little as $2 to support the podcast and unlock all this extra bonus content. For instance, Jessica talked to Alexa Martin! She found a way to bring together romance novels, sports, and Burn It All Down. For the longer conversation between the two of them, all of that conversation is on Patreon. Plus we have our monthly vlogs; I just uploaded a Patreon vlog taking you behind the scenes of my time at the IOC headquarters and museum and research studies center in Lausanne, Switzerland. Check those things out now!

And of course before we leave I want to direct everybody to our Twitter page, check out our Facebook page to see our latest video announcement. We look back at International Women’s Day last year when we all came together in person for the first time and did our first live show, and we drop a very special announcement about upcoming events, so if you haven’t already run to those pages, check out the video, and we can’t wait to hopefully see some of you soon. Until then flamethrowers, burn on, not out. We’ll see you next week.

Shelby Weldon