Episode 183: As Cases Surge, Refocusing on Covid and Sports
As the Covid-19 pandemic gets worse in the United States, sports carry on. This week, Jessica, Amira, and Lindsay examine troubling situations from pro to youth sports. And they discuss: why are we no longer asking sports to justify their existence in the midst of a pandemic? [6:47] And, as always, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [34:47], Torchbearers, starring Baylor guard DiDi Richards [42:41], and what is good in our worlds [47:24].
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is a member of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Baltimore Ravens' saga is reminder of human element in NFL's COVID-19 era: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/columnist/bell/2020/12/02/baltimore-ravens-covid-19-saga-reminder-human-element-nfl/3805043001
How Kendall Hinton became a starting QB: 24 hours of Broncos quarterback chaos: https://theathletic.com/2226492/2020/11/29/how-kendall-hinton-became-a-starting-qb-24-hours-of-broncos-quarterback-chaos
Why does COVID thrive in hockey rinks? Scientists are trying to solve the mystery: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/04/hockey-covid-transmission-outbreaks
Aaron Rodgers wonders if NFL COVID-19 protocols are actually 'based on science' https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/aaron-rodgers-wonders-if-nfl-covid-19-protocols-are-actually-based-on-science
Rafer Johnson, Winner of a Memorable Decathlon, Is Dead https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/sports/olympics/rafer-johnson-dead
Juventus Women captain Sara Gama named VP of Italian Footballers Association: https://www.blackwhitereadallover.com/2020/12/1/21754493/juventus-women-captain-sara-gama-named-vp
Stephanie Frappart to make Champions League history as 1st female to referee men's match: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/stephanie-frappart-first-female-referee-champions-league
What the USWNT lawsuit settlement means for the ongoing equal pay fight: https://theathletic.com/2233201/2020/12/01/uswnt-lawsuit-settlement
'A walking miracle': How Baylor's DiDi Richards returned from injury that left her temporarily paralyzed: https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/30433486/a-walking-miracle-how-baylor-didi-richards-returned
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and on this week’s show I’m joined by Amira and Lindsay. This week we’re going to talk about sports and COVID, because we haven’t actually had a discussion about the pandemic for quite a while and, ooh, wow, is it making its presence known these days.
Lindsay: We’re headed into a winter that is going to be so dangerous and so horrific, and yet the NBA is going on without a bubble – just going on!
Jessica: Then we’ll burn things that deserve to be burned, highlight the torchbearers who are giving us hope during this dark time, let you know what’s good in our world, and tell you what we’re watching this week. But first, before we get into all of that, I enjoyed people’s Spotify Wrapped list posts this week, seeing what songs and artists people listened to the most in 2020. So I would love to hear what my co-hosts had or would’ve had on their Wrapped lists – in case you aren’t a Spotify listener. Maybe something obvious, or tell us something that would surprise us. Amira?
Amira: Well, I really wish I could participate in this but because Alexa only lets you link one Spotify account everybody uses my Spotify account on their individual Alexas.
Jessica: What is your family’s song? Is it deeply embarrassing?
Amira: It’s terrible. [Jessica laughs] No, it’s not that it’s deeply embarrassing, it’s that I get mad that I can’t see my actual stats. You know how I’m all for that. But they’re so skewed! So, for instance, Spotify told me that the one song that “helped me get through it all this year” was The Lion Guard – Call of the Guard.
Jessica: What is…?
Amira: That’s Zachary. It’s Simba’s son Kion, it’s a Disney Junior show.
Jessica: Ohh! [laughs] So that’s what got Zachary through this year.
Amira: My top songs were Lion Guard, Ben Platt, Ben Platt, more Lion Guard. Samari listens to podcasts such as The Philosophy Guy…
Lindsay: Oh my god.
Amira: She listened to 26 episodes in one day, apparently. My top artist and my top songs were all show tunes or kid’s shows. Top genre was show tunes. They listened to over 80,000 minutes! They listened to it all night. But like I said, I’m not represented on my list at all! So, there it is.
Jessica: Oh my god. I love everything about that though.
Amira: Every year I forget this and every year I eagerly log on to Spotify to pull up my list and every year it’s just my kids, and mostly Samari and show tunes, and now this philosophy…There’s like four philosophy podcasts. I hate philosophy.
Jessica: She’s figuring out her place in the world. She’s figuring out her place in the world.
Lindsay: I hate philosophy! [laughter]
Amira: I do. I really dislike it!
Jessica: Maybe that’s why your daughter loves it.
Amira: She’s trolling me.
Jessica: Yes. I have similar…Like, my top song is Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon because that’s what my son listens to every single night as he falls asleep. Then it’s all of his “parody” songs about Minecraft…? [laughter] Then Aaron listens to the same songs over and over again that he performs with the School of Rock band, so it’s all of that kind of stuff. But I did wanna ask you all if you think that this is obvious about me or a surprise – but I feel like I know the answer! So, the top song on the list that is clearly mine is Taylor Swift’s All Too Well, because I listen to that song all the time. [laughter]
Lindsay: I mean, I assume everyone loves Taylor Swift, so, that’s not surprising. [Amira laughs]
Jessica: That’s the best song.
Lindsay: There’s a lot of Taylor Swift.
Jessica: On yours? Yeah. Party For One by Carly Rae is on there. That’s me, I’m represented 3 times on this list, probably. Lindsay, what about you?
Lindsay: Yeah, so I listen to podcasts so much that music has become…I’m trying to get back into music because podcasts are what I listen to when I work out. I listen to too many podcasts. But podcasts are the best medium! Then when I’m writing I have a playlist and it’s a Pandora station that I’ve used to write to since I was like…
Jessica: I have a lo-fi that I listen to.
Lindsay: Right. For like, 20 years. But I do listen to Spotify sometimes, and the thing is since I’m not super tuned in with music I don’t know names of artists that well. I’m just kind of like, here’s a shuffle, you know? Let’s see what this shuffle is, surprise me. So I was very surprised that Marshmallo, the DJ – I had to Google to find out he’s a DJ – [Amira laughs] has showed up on my top 20 a couple of times. The top 1 is the song Be Kind with Halsey, which…I don’t even know which one that song is! But I’m sure I love it.
Amira: I love that.
Jessica: I’ll have to go listen.
Lindsay: I’m sure I’ll recognize it, that’s what it is – I’m always surprised when I found out they’re people that I know. Somebody will be like, oh, that’s a Selena Gomez song! And I’ll be like, Selena Gomez? Like, the tiny girl? Huh? [laughter] But Maren Morris is the most represented–
Amira: YES! The Bones is my favorite song! And my whole family knows this because I play it very loudly at all times and sing it at the top of my lungs and I’m tone deaf and I take every Peloton class that has that on the playlist. [Lindsay laughing]
Jessica: Wow, I thought we were gonna get through this whole little bit here without Peloton.
Amira: Never!
Jessica: Linz, is there a top Maren Morris song?
Lindsay: Well here it actually says it’s not The Bones, it’s To Hell And Back. But I also really love…These are the two albums I listen to the most when I’m chilling, which is the new Taylor Swift this year.
Jessica: Folklore.
Lindsay: Folklore, and then The Highwomen’s album. I love love love The Highwomen. But that’s not on my Spotify that much because that’s one of the rare ones I download on iTunes.
Jessica: So I think the last time this group talked specifically about COVID and sports was episode 174 – that was early October when we did our good, bad, and ugly roundup of the return of sports. We touch on it a lot though, here and there. Most of it in the burn pile as we rage at the ways COVID is being disregarded in sports. But as the virus gets worse here in the United States, on Wednesday the US had its highest number of deaths in a single day since the pandemic started: 2,885 people lost their lives that day. Sports continues on. Now seems like a good time to talk once more about this global pandemic and what the hell is going on in sports. Let’s start with a quick roundup of some COVID sports stories to give listeners an idea of how much of a mess this is all right now. We’re gonna mainly focus on US sports since that’s where we live and what we know the best. Lindsay, please tell us what the hell’s going on in the NFL.
Lindsay: Well, and I was gonna say, and also US sports because we’re handling it the poorest, that this is where there’s the most horrible stories.
Jessica: Yeah.
Lindsay: So there’s been two really big stories in the NFL, which is just barreling towards the end of this season. It’s on week 13 and Roger Goodell is completely determined to get this season done in 17 weeks like normal and go right on. This week there were two examples of how foolish this is. Number one, there was an outbreak of sorts within the Denver Broncos – one of its quarterbacks tested positive after all of the quarterbacks had been in a quarterback-only meeting on their off day, not following their mask protocol. So, all four quarterbacks – there are three quarterbacks on the roster and then their practice squad quarterback – all had to be quarantined. This though wasn’t found out until later in the week because they lied about whether or not they had followed protocols or not. So ultimately less than 24 hours before the game against the New Orleans Saints, which had one of the best defenses in football, they were told that none of their quarterbacks could go.
So Kendall Hinton, who has never played an NFL game, he is a practice squad wide receiver who played quarterback at Wake Forest very early in his college career before switching to wide receiver in college – he didn't even play quarterback throughout college – was told, “You are going in as quarterback tomorrow.” One of the most bizarre kind of stories in NFL history, but anyways, we’ll get into later why I think it’s less kind of quirky and unique, and more dangerous. Then another story was the Baltimore Ravens had an outbreak where basically for 9 days straight a player on their team tested positive and their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was pushed back from…It was supposed to be the Thanksgiving night game, and it was pushed until Wednesday afternoon, so almost a full week later. So I think those two examples just show that on paper, yes, the NFL is on schedule. The actual book? It’s a disaster.
Jessica: Yeah, and that’s very much mirrored in college football, right? Which has been postponing and cancelling its football games left and right since the season started back up. I recently talked to Nicole Auerbach for this show in one of our interviews about all of this. A good example about the impact of all of this is Ohio State, which is a historically powerhouse football team. It has played in so few games at this point that it will most likely not play enough games to qualify for inclusion in the Big Ten championship, which is normally a prerequisite for making the college football playoffs. It’s possible that the Big Ten is going to change its qualifying rules for the Big Ten championship just so Ohio State can get in. It’s possible that the college football playoff committee will let them into the playoffs no matter what happens here. The number of games that Ohio State has played so far this year is five, and you need to play six to make it into the Big Ten championship, which is normally half of a season. So it’s not even playing half of a season because of how bad COVID has been and because of how the Big Ten itself handled all of this. So that’s just one of the many many examples we could talk about in college football. Amira, how are these non-bubble sports like football serving as blueprints right now?
Amira: Yeah, I mean, it’s a mess. As messy as it is, they are providing kind of ideas as we move into the winter season and we’re moving into indoor winter sports. So if you recall, the University of New Mexico moved its entire football team into a hotel to play this season because New Mexico’s restrictions would’ve impacted their game, they couldn’t have played. So they moved into a hotel in Las Vegas with 140 people including players, staff, all of these folks. They’re living out of a Hilton. It costs approximately $70,000 per week, and this is how they’ve had their football season. So now as we move into basketball season the University of New Mexico has elected to follow this blueprint that they’ve used with the football team and they’ve relocated both their women’s and men’s basketball teams out of state. This time instead of going to Vegas they have gone into Texas, into Lubbock and Amarillo. There’s two things here. One, it’s very clear they’re doing the same kind of pandemic math. The New Mexico athletic director told Nicole that it didn’t matter the cost per week because at the end of the day the whole season might cost $300,000 but their payout for playing from the Mountain West Conference, from college football playoff bowl tournaments, would be close to $4 million.
So their pandemic math was, yeah, we’ll pay a lot of money up front to be able to participate but we’re gonna get at least a $3 million payout. That logic and that kind of economy that college football sports exist in the same kind of logic being used to move their basketball teams, but the other thing that can’t be looked away from is that they’re moving their teams into some of the most COVID-positive places in the state of Texas. They’re moving into counties that the governor refuses to help shut down, and so they’re open spaces with hospitalization rates that are already nearly at 40-50%. This is where they’re moving their teams. So you have both of them doing this blueprint and serving as the pandemic math logic taking them into the winter season, but also you can see that it’s just churning along even if it means moving into high COVID counties in order to get these payouts.
Jessica: Yeah, and we saw multiple successful bubbles this summer. One of them was the NBA, and they’re about to start their season up again on December 22nd without a bubble, and news this week: they tested 546 players getting them ready to go into practice, and 48 of them tested positive. So, it’s not a great sign of where everything is headed this winter. So that’s a good overview, I think, of some of the issues with COVID, specific examples of COVID and sports. Let's talk now about sort of what this means in a big picture way. Lindsay, can you talk to us about COVID protocols that are causing issues in other ways?
Lindsay: Yeah, let's just talk about the Kendall Hinton situation, right? Is it really safe to put a player on the field who didn’t even get to go through a full practice at quarterback–
Jessica: Wow!
Lindsay: Not even one single practice. He basically had time for walk through and then he’s having to be put on the field as quarterback in the NFL, having never played an NFL game, having never been even a practice squad quarterback, not even been in the meeting rooms. How is that prioritizing health and safety? [laughs] It’s just not. Same with the Ravens – they had to go into this game against the Steelers barely having had a full practice for over a week because of all the COVID protocols. You know, football is a sport where staying in game shape involves a lot of work and a lot of teamwork. Then they go into this incredibly physical game. So I think that what we’re seeing – not that we don’t always see injuries in football, of course we do. But taking players out of their rhythm like this, limiting practice time, jumping through hoops for COVID – when we can debate whether they’re even the correct hoops or even will the hoops even work at all!
Jessica: Right.
Lindsay: But let’s just say at least they are doing these quarantines, they’re trying to isolate players, they’re not allowing practices at times; but trying then to force these games to go on, it is putting them at the risk of so many injuries. At the same time there's the mental health aspect of all of this. Amira just talked about college programs being in hotels, away from their community, being isolated. The whole thing that we talked about with the bubbles this summer, the successful ones in the NBA, WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League – yeah, they worked! They were kind of emergency situations that were put together for a short term to make this work, but they were incredibly incredibly tough for players’ mental health. You had NBA player Paul George speaking about it in the playoff, Kayla McBride wrote about it in The Players’ Tribune.
So, now we have the 49ers in the NFL headed to Arizona because San Francisco is basically shutting down so they had to find a new home field. San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan is really worried about the team’s mental health. He just kind of said he’s trying to encourage them to talk to one another, that there’s no problem too big or too small, just really trying to get them all to look out for themselves and each other, because the whole point of not having the bubble was to not have to put this mental health strain on the players, right? Players didn't wanna do the bubbles long term, understandably so. But now you’re having players dealing with the outbreaks that come with not being in a bubble, and now because the pandemic is surging having to be put in a bubble-like situation anyways and being removed from their families. It’s just pretty devastating.
Jessica: Yeah. Those are really good points, Linz. You know, the sad thing is that on some level this makes sense to us – we live in a capitalistic society, Amira just talked about the economy of these sports, this is where the money is. But there are also problems with youth sports, right, Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, they’re really trying to figure out how not just to get youth sports up and going but youth sports are being shut down kind of across the country. I think that it’s a sad thing, you know, kids need to get outside, we wanna see youth sports continue, we know how important it is, but since it’s not the moneymaking behemoths that these pro sports are they’re being put on pause indefinitely. There’s a lot of dispute within a lot of local communities about whether or not this is actually the right thing to do. But for me I just keep thinking about what’s going on in the NFL and how Goodell and all of them say over and over again, “We’re prioritizing health and safety, we’re prioritizing health and safety, we’re prioritizing health and safety,” when really the only thing they’re trying to do is get through the season without COVID tests, you know? That’s all the health and safety. It’s not a holistic look at health and safety.
Jessica: Right. That makes me just wonder what that means for children. [Lindsay laughs] Like, when we're talking about children.
Lindsay: Children!
Jessica: And we see how they’re treating…Yeah. Amira, you have a really specific example of how this is working with youth sports.
Amira: Yeah, because the shutdowns of youth sports are relatively new in this kind of version of the pandemic, they were some of the first things to come back over the summer – modified, outside, things like that. But also when professional and college sports are going on it’s very hard for youth sports. Part of the argument is, well, everybody else is playing sports, so why’s our season shut down? One of the biggest issues that has arisen is specifically in hockey. So while other youth sports have seen some cases, whatever, they’re seeing a huge disparity in outbreaks within youth hockey leagues. So, especially in places like the midwest and the northeast where there’s a lot of hockey culture and tournaments. Massachusetts logged over a hundred youth hockey cases in just three weeks. Maine had an asymptomatic ref expose up to 400 people in two days. There’s a great article in the Washington Post that just came out this week by Ariana Eunjung Cha and Karin Brulliard if you want to dive deeper into some of these outbreaks. But one of the things that they’ve seen is why are they getting these huge case numbers in youth hockey tournaments that they weren’t seeing in other sports.
So there’s a few theories that epidemiologists are trying to track down. One is that the nature of hockey – the fast line changes that you're kind of sprinting when you’re on and you’re running off develops in harsher breathing and deeper breaths. And then because it's played indoors but also in cold weather that air is stratified, that it’s cold air, that it hangs in the air longer. One of the things that is bolstering this theory is that they’ve seen other outbreaks in other kind of cold places like a meat processing factory, or there was a curling match earlier in the pandemic which resulted in an outbreak. So there’s a lot of unknowns right now but the other thing that they’re tracking is could there be something specific about the way hockey is played? In the temperature it’s played in? And then on top of that just the general kind of youth hockey culture which is a lot of mixing of players and of parents and getting people in and out of their uniforms. So hockey is a place to keep our eye on because it seems to be facing major difficulties right now, right off the gate, that is leading the way in COVID problems when it comes to youth sports.
Jessica: Wow, that is fascinating and scary, I would say. My goodness. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about the science in all of this and how sports seems to just disregard so much it. We’ve been told from the beginning: mask up, keep distance, be outside, no contact, all of these things. Then sports is like, eh, whatever! It’s hard, when I hear what you just said, Amira, I’m like, cancel hockey! It seems like the evidence is pointing that it’s very bad and it should be over. But I feel like that in so many ways around all of this. The one thing I wanted to mention in particular, it happened this week. Roger Goodell did a presser for the NFL with everything, with the Ravens that Lindsay talked about, and it's very much like, “We’re following the science,” and I always just, like…Every time, especially the NFL comes out and wants us to believe that I keep thinking about concussions and how we’ve known that for decades, decades! They ignored it or they downplayed it, just for the benefit of keeping injured players in the game. So I just can’t trust them at all. I thought it was nice at least to hear that Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, he recently wondered aloud on a radio show about all of the COVID protocols in the NFL and he said, “Some of it is definitely for the optics of it, some of it is probably based on science.” I just really appreciated his “probably” in that quote, like, probably based on science!
Amira: And don’t y’all also think it’s to the point where you’re like, I don’t believe anything you’re saying because you’re throwing it all out, and when you have reports of players being on a plane and somebody being like, “Hey, a player tested positive on the plane with the rest of the team.”
Jessica: Yeah.
Amira: Then shouldn’t, by the protocols we’ve been given, shouldn’t the whole team be quarantined? So it's also this flouting, it’s like, “Here, we have these suped up protocols,” but also the basic protocols that are also given to the general public are not being followed.
Jessica: Exactly.
Amira: What is science even anymore?
Jessica: It also makes me think about how we just talked about, how fuzzy numbers can be. As soon as the numbers interfere with anything within sports, “Oh, the numbers don’t matter.” It feels like that with the science. I wanna just say that I don’t think it’s just the leagues and the teams and the universities or whatever that are downplaying the seriousness of this. I don’t know how y’all are feeling but I’ve been annoyed at how sports media in general is often talking about this, like it's an inconvenience or that the biggest adversity at play is not a possibly fatal virus being spread everywhere but that there’s a confusing schedule! Amira, what are you thinking about that?
Amira: Absolutely. I mean, I think that is gone part and parcel with, like Lindsay said from the top, about the seriousness, at least in the United States, of how this is regarded. Sports media, I think, is also part and parcel of this in perpetuating this kind of…It’s become normal to talk about this as an injury report, you know? To say, “Oh no, there’s been an outbreak on this team and so therefore this really jeopardizes Ohio State’s ability to get into the game.” Like, that’s the second sentence, right? That becomes the point of the tweet or of the article or of the concern. Now you have the COVID injury list, so it’s like, oh, these people aren’t available because they’re on the COVID list. It’s become so detached from what does that mean? You have baseball players who had COVID who are still struggling. You have people…Karl Anthony Towns has lost seven people, including his mother. Seven people in his family have died because of COVID.
Jessica: Yeah.
Lindsay: Oh my god.
Amira: Seven people have died because of COVID. When Jessica started this talking about the enormity of people we’re losing in this country, there’s so many reasons and ways that we’re made to feel detached from what actual death and destruction looks like because of this pandemic. But when you get reports about a game and you’re like, “Oh, they’ll have to overcome COVID,” – like it’s an arm. Like it’s a tweaked ankle. It contributes to the detachment we have from the actual toll of what we’re dealing with and the enormity of the loss and the potential loss and the actual still very very scary nature of a pandemic that has taken so much from so many people.
Jessica: I do feel like at this point, does any of this even matter? We’ve talked about all of this stuff and it just feels like so much at the beginning of this was us talking about the ways that these leagues and universities and organizations were justifying going back, like how are they making the case that this is okay? And now that’s not even where the conversation starts. It just is. Sports are just happening, and we’re not even asking them to justify that they exist in this way in the middle of this pandemic. Lindsay?
Lindsay: I just cannot believe that an NBA season is starting in a couple of weeks. That is where I actually start kind of shaking. First of all, there’s so few NBA players compared to an NFL team – their quarantines are gonna be like 10 days, which means that you have players missing so many games. I mean, at least the NFL, it’s once a week. So they’re kind of working around it. And the NFL is a disaster! The NBA, it’s traveling all around the country, multiple games a week, INDOORS, with far fewer players to serve as replacements and to come in and to help keep things going. How! How is this happening? One positive test from Rudy Gobert rightly shut down the country, basically, back in March. We are headed into a winter that is going to be so dangerous and so horrific as far as the death toll, as far as the virus spreading, combining the flu. We can’t even really comprehend how bad it’s gonna get in a December, January, February, and yet the NBA is going on without a bubble – just going on! I was listening to podcasts breaking down the John Wall vs Russell Westbrook trade, and we’re just not even questioning the right for sports to exist anymore.
Jessica: Amira, bring us home.
Amira: It’s just exhausting to think about the enormity of this. We have really only scratched the surface in this discussion. There’s so many ripple effects from this – like scholarship money, you know? The NCAA has given an eligibility year for all of these athletes that just wrapped their last season, but now you have too many players. You have an incoming class that’s running up against people who are also trying to return to keep their year, the transfer system is overloaded. There’s cuts to the programs we’ve already documented, there’s all of these dominos and ripple effects that are enormous problems in and of themselves, but are on the perimeter of the issues that we even discussed today, and sometimes just looking at the great…We have lost sight of how much has shifted as we’ve learned to live with COVID. We have, I feel – and I’m speaking of ‘we’ as a country – have been so eager to find a new normal and return to it that we’ve come to accept pandemic sports and what makes them go as “fixed.”
So fuck the bubble – now, like Lindsay said, we’re having a season, we’re gonna get these protocol snapshots, things are just gonna go on. We’ve become used to the fact that multiple people are gonna test positive, that teams are gonna have to cancel games. We’ve become used to the rescheduling, the shuffling, and then we just keep rolling along. Like people aren’t dying. It’s baffling. Like Lindsay said: one case, shut it down. We’re in a worse place, and we’re like, fuck it. So when you say, are we past the point of it mattering? It’s hard to feel like anything can matter anymore. It’s hard because you’re sitting at home – are you complicit when you turn on a game? I don’t know. Who has the answers anymore? Sometimes when we actually sit and have this discussion I become so overwhelmed by it because it’s just like, if you have to sit and face, actually look and think about all that has been lost or rearranged or shifted because of this pandemic and actually feel the weight of it, it’s such a heavy load to carry. So maybe the coping mechanism is to ignore it, maybe that’s where we’re at.
Jessica: If you wanna hear more about the intersection of COVID and sports, tune in on Thursday for my interview with cultural anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton, who we had on the show back in March on episode 151, not long after that Rudy Gobert positive test. Not only do we talk about this particular moment, but I do the mean thing where I ask her to answer for her March predictions, but also I make her make predictions for 2021.
Adia: To some extent one could possibly support bubbles. [laughs] It would mean paying people, testing people, caring for people, and thinking about people’s movement and facilitating that. On the other hand, that is not how our society is currently operating and we are not going to take our cues from professional sports. So, what it’s also showing us is that certain people will be protected, privileged or whatever, for the sake of our entertainment.
Jessica: Now it's time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. Lindsay, what are you burning?
Lindsay: Yeah, well, speaking of that Wednesday Steelers-Ravens game, Cris Collinsworth was on the call for NBC and during that he talked about spending some time with some Pittsburgh Steelers fans during the week. “Everybody’s a fan,” he said, “in particular the ladies that I met. They had really specific questions about the game. I’m like, wow, just blown away.” [laughter] REALLY? Really? In the year of 2020, we’re really doing this? Like, I read the article about this and then the response articles by brilliant female journalists across the industry, and I do feel like I’m reading stuff that could’ve been written exactly in 1980, in 1990, in the year 2000! We’re still here.
Collinsworth has of course apologized for insinuating that he was shocked that women knew about football, but that’s very clearly what we meant. We’re not reading between the lines. Let's just stop this! All genders can love and be knowledgeable about sports. All of them. And if you don’t believe that, if you are still shocked that someone who does not look like you knows about football, then you are a sexist pig. End of sentence, done. Burn, burn, burn that bullshit. Burn! I just can’t believe we’re even here doing this, but burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: I really liked your Cris Collinsworth impersonation there, Lindsay. [Amira laughs] I think you should read all sexist comments in that lovely voice. Amira, what do you want to torch?
Amira: Yeah, I just wanted to give an update on a case that we followed back when it started, which was the Robert Kraft massage parlor mayhem. I just wanted to mostly say, hey, if you listen to this podcast and read what our co-hosts write – in particular if you listened to Lindsay’s reporting on this – then none of this will come as a surprise. Lindsay wrote a piece for ThinkProgress (RIP) back in March of 2019, where she talked about how punishing Robert Kraft wouldn’t help the real victims of this. In that, in breaking it down, one of the things that Lindsay and other reporters on the ground, including an interview that Lindsay did with Susan Elizabeth Shepard back on episode 95, pointed out that a lot of times these investigations on so-called sex trafficking are also just a way to bust up sex workers, and that has turned out to absolutely be the case. So, this week the women in the parlor plead guilty to soliciting prostitution charges. They had to pay thousands of dollars in fines, they’re facing probation, their work is shut down. Reminder that every man involved in this, including Kraft, has had their charges dropped.
They are not facing any repercussions for this, because as you dig through it it’s very clear to see that the real targets here were the immigrant women sex workers. At the end of this whole saga what is left is that they are paying fines, they’re facing jail time, they are the ones who bore the brunt and the price of all of this, while people were able to get caught up in big headlines, celebrity, and chasing that story really became a faux-moralistic cover for a crackdown on women, on immigrant sex workers. I can’t think of anything more that talks about the imbalance of powers in this country, to think about sex workers who are engaging in labor practices that men like Robert Kraft take advantage of and are the ones who have such precarious labor that they can get it shut down and face fines and jail and things like that. And even in this moment when they’re purported to be the victims, when people are under the guise of caring about sex trafficking are really shutting down their ability to work and stacking them and the weight of the state against them, while everybody else kind of frolics along – they got off and they got going, and that’s it. So I would just like to burn it: burn the predictable but no less frustrating conclusion of this case. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Maggie Haney, a former gymnastics coach for Olympic gold medalist Laurie Hernandez, was suspended in March by USA Gymnastics for 8 years for “severe, agressive behavior against athletes.” USAG determine that after nearly a dozen of her students, including Hernandez, reported Haney for abuse. In May Hernandez told the New York Times’ Juliet Macur that Haney would berate her for her weight or any small mistake, and pushed her to train on dislocated knees and broken wrists. Hernandez says she developed eating disorders and suffered from depression as a result. This past week Macur talked to Haney, who blamed the abuse that she did to these athletes on “caring too much.” But Haney also claims that she remembers her interactions differently than the gymnasts do. She believes that she treated Hernandez well, like a part of her family even, and says that the Hernandez family is being motivated by money, and Haney fell back on a normal line: that times have changed, that culture has changed, and she is worried that without the kind of abuse that Hernandez and others described, gymnastics will be filled with underachievers. The entire piece ends with this quote from Haney, which really tells you everything you need to know. “I feel that somebody needs to stand up for coaches. If I don’t stand up and fight for the truth, then other coaches aren’t going to either. I know if this can happen to me, I think it can happen to anyone.” In other words, Haney and other coaches being held accountable for their behavior are the victims here.
Kathy Johnson Clarke, a former American gymnast and current commentator for ESPN and the SEC network, took to Twitter about this piece in a long thread that says a lot about what I’m feeling about this. But here’s the part that I want to highlight from Johnson Clarke’s thread: “The sad and alarming part is the seeming belief that as long as there was enough good gymnastics, smiling, laughing and music in the gym or that Maggie treated Laurie like family and did so many wonderful things with and for her that it should outweigh substantiated abuse. I've no doubt there were good times and many reasons to be grateful, but I implore you to imagine every time you’re called ‘weak, lazy or messed up in the head’ or each day you’ve fought off depression as a nail hammered into wood. You can remove the nail, but the hole remains. Gymnasts are not fully developed adults in a professional sport. They are children for much of their gymnastics careers and that should be the determining factor in how this sport is overseen.” Haney has appealed her suspension and should know soon if an arbiter will reduce or remove it. We’ve done it before, but let’s do it again and just burn, burn the shitty culture of USA Gymnastics, personified this week by Maggie Haney. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Now to highlight people carrying the torch and changing sports culture. First, Amira, with memoriam.
Amira: This past week we lost Rafer Johnson, American Olympian. He was the first Black captain of a US Olympic team in 1960. The image of him carrying the flag into the Rome Olympics brought him much acclaim. He followed that up with a decathlon gold medal. He went on to have a career as a goodwill ambassador for the state, he worked closely with the Kennedy administration and family, including Eunice Kennedy Shriver who, of course, helped found the Special Olympics, and he was a founding board member of the Special Olympics, which is a little unknown fact about Rafer Johnson. He also is the person who apprehended Sirhan Sirhan after he assassinated Bobby Kennedy – he was the one who tackled him. So, Rafer Johnson has had these very interesting post-Olympic lives and stories.
Lindsay: Forrest Gump! Oh my god.
Amira: Yeah, exactly.
Lindsay: That’s what it’s like! [laughing]
Amira: Exactly.
Lindsay: Amazing.
Amira: But he was a phenomenal athlete, a phenomenal man. I just hope you rest in power, Rafer.
Jessica: Lindsay, who is our Going Where No Woman Has Gone Before of the Week?
Lindsay: [laughs] Sara Gama, Italian national player with over 100 caps and long-serving captain for Juventus, became the first-ever woman to be elected as vice president in the Italian Footballers Association. Super great.
Jessica: For Glass Ceiling Shatterer of the Week, we have Stephanie Frappart, who has been in our honorable mentions at least two previous times for shattering glass ceilings in soccer reffing. Frappart made Champions League history when she became the first woman to referee a men's match in the tournament last week. Lindsay, who are our A Long Time Coming of the Week?
Lindsay: I have a few questions about our grammar here, but I’m gonna keep blazing forward! [laughs]
Jessica: Go with it!
Lindsay: The US women’s national team and US Soccer Federation, they resolved several non-compensation issues that were part of the US women’s national team’s equal pay lawsuit. Here is how friend of the show, Meg Linehan, explained it at The Athletic: “There will be an equal number of charter flights between the men’s and women’s teams, in addition to comparable hotel budgets and an equal number (between 18-21) of supporting staff. There are also new guidelines on venue selection (though sealed in the filing) with requirements for both teams’ matches to be played on grass in almost all cases.” How was this all not the case already?! [laughter] I don’t know, but that’s great.
Jessica: It was a long time coming, is what I’m saying!
Lindsay: Yes. I get it, I get it. [laughs]
Jessica: Alright, can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Amira, please tell us about our torchbearer of the week.
Amira: I would love to. Didi Richards, senior guard at Baylor, national defensive player of the year last year, had a very scary accident on October 24th, collided in practice with Moon. After the collision they found her on the ground, unconscious. Not only was DiDi unconscious, she was paralyzed. When they took her to the hospital she couldn’t feel her legs at all and essentially she had “spinal shock” – that meant that they were worried that she would ever walk again. Playing was out of the question at that point. That was 38 days ago. This week she returned to the basketball court. Two minutes after getting on the game she scored her first basket. She stole the ball twice, she finished with four points, she made seven assists. They’ve described it as a “walking miracle.” DiDi talked about her journey over the last few months, and she said, “My legs felt stuck, or they would hesitate, or jump a bit. That's when I learned to celebrate each little thing, every different thing that was something I wasn't able to do the day before. I became more positive with the little victories.” And step by step, almost improbably, she was cleared to play and she’s back on the court. She says it’s drawn her closer to the game, and I would just like to raise her up and to say our hearts are with you in this journey and I am so pleased to see you up – walking, running, shooting, moving again.
Jessica: Okay. What’s good, y’all? Lindsay, what is good with you?
Lindsay: [laughs] Well, this is a mixed feelings one, but ultimately I’ve moved out of DC on Saturday, which is yesterday. I finished packing and cleaning and I packed my tiny little Buick sedan up to brim with everything I could from my room, and I’m gonna get junk removers to come and take out the rest. I’m down in North Carolina, I don’t know exactly where I’m living full-time yet, like I don’t know which apartment or condo, there’s still a lot up in the air. But I’m with my aunt and this is gonna allow me to be closer for all the mom stuff and, you know, I’ve spent the last 3 months going back and forth between DC and Greensboro and it has been completely exhausting. I’ve been pretty unable to function, work-wise, during this time. So I’m so excited to be settled and to really get back into working, working, working. On that note, another good thing that happened this week was Power Plays had our first virtual event, a Zoom event, and it was for Jessica’s book, which was our book club pick!
Jessica: Yay!
Lindsay: That was super exciting, and I was so nervous because the reason I never held a Zoom thing for Power Plays before was because I was afraid nobody would come, and…[laughing]
Jessica: So many people came!
Lindsay: So many of our subscribers came, and Jess and Kavitha…Of course they came for Jess and Kavitha, who were phenomenal. The whole thing made me very happy. I was staying at my aunt’s house during it and she listened in and that was Monday, and between then and now I’ve been back and forth. I’ve packed up my entire DC apartment and come back here. When I came in last night, what was laying on her side table, open? Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back!
Jessica: Yay! [Lindsay laughs] Aw, that’s so lovely.
Lindsay: Yeah.
Jessica: Aw, Linz, I love that. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, this past week was Jackson’s birthday so my little dude is 8, which is wild. I obviously didn’t think when the pandemic started…I was like, okay – I thought my birthday was safe in JUNE! Then we had to wrap our heads around doing Zachary’s 4th birthday, and I never imagined that we would be doing Jackson’s birthday also COVID-y, and looking like Samari’s next month as well. But it was a good day, it was very low-key. He had virtual school but his teacher dropped off a gift bag with slime and ninja stuff and a book about Black inventors, because Jackson invents things all the time. Then he logged on and you hear all these little voices on Zoom say, “Happy birthday, Jackson!” Then we went into all these breakout rooms throughout the day – they schedule play dates in breakout rooms – and Jackson recently has started doing it and becoming very coy when we’re looking at him on Zoom, and he’s like, “What? We’re just playing.” Then you walk into the room as he’s Zooming and he’ll wait. He needs his privacy to talk to his friends!
Jessica: Aw!
Amira: So, this is 8. But yeah, we had a low-key day. We had some cake, we watched TV, it was really low-key but he’s very happy and that is the most important thing. So him and his little light…He calls himself the center of our family. He’s a middle child but without a lot of the middle child angst. He’s like, “I’m great, it's the center, I’m the center of the family!” and in many ways he is very much its heartbeat. So, Jackson will always be my what’s good.
Jessica: Aw.
Lindsay: Aw!
Jessica: Happy birthday, Jackson. Happy birthing day, Amira.
Amira: Thank you!
Jessica: So, my family in two days, I think, watched the entire new season of Saved By the Bell, which is on Peacock – you do have to pay for the premium subscription but you can get a seven day trial. I don’t even know how…I don’t have enough words to say how great Saved By the Bell, the reboot, is. In the year 2020 you get all the nostalgia factor if you like me grew up on Saved By the Bell and watched every episode 400 times. You get all of that, but then it’s just good and it’s smart and it’s cutting and it’s funny. It was just wonderful and I highly highly recommend it. Then book stuff is still very good. As Lindsay said, I got to do the Power Plays Zoom this week. Today after this is over I have to go pick up a copy of the New York Times because our book was reviewed positively in their book review and it’s out today in print. Then I think it’s in two days – I should’ve checked before – but Shireen’s mom is…Happy birthday to her mother, this week! Shireen originally wanted me to just like sign a piece of paper and scan it in and then she was gonna print it out and put it in a book, and I was like, no, I’m gonna send this to your mother. So I sent off a copy of the book signed to her mom and I had flagged the parts of the book that have Shireen’s name in them, where she shows up. So I got very cute photos of Shireen’s mom opening the book this weekend, and she was very excited. Shireen told me that she immediately read out loud the sections about her daughter.
Lindsay: Aww!
Jessica: So that made me feel really good this week. Okay, so what we’re watching this week feels particularly weird [laughs] to even be talking about after our COVID discussion, but I will just say, if you’re into football the NFL and college football are trying their best, they’re limping through. College basketball is back. In soccer, international stuff: the women’s Euro qualifiers, FA Women’s Super League, FA Women’s Championship and Premier League are continuing, as is the men’s Champs League. That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of all of us here, burn on and not out.
This episode was produced by the delightful Martin Kessler. Tressa Versteeg edits our interview segments, Shelby Weldon does our website, episode transcripts, and social media. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn, all the places. For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website: burnitalldownpod.com. From there you can email us directly or go shopping at our Teespring store – it’s the perfect time to pick up a hoodie or a blanket. As always, an evergreen thank you to our patrons for your support. It means the world. You can sign up to be a monthly sustaining donor to Burn It All Down at patreon.com/burnitalldown.