Episode 211: Why We Love to Hate Refs
In this episode Shireen Ahmed, Amira Rose Davis and Jessica Luther start the show with a discussion of the Cleveland Guardians. Then, sparked by Game 4 of the NBA playoffs between the Bucks and the Suns, they discuss all things refereeing: Is it getting worse? Do we ever notice good refereeing? Why is yelling at refs so fun? How is tech impacting reffing? Are there any alternative models to traditional refereeing? A continued discussion on various leagues' attempted solutions to inconsistent and poor reffing is available on our Patreon: patreon.com/burnitalldown
Next is a preview of Jessica's interview with journalist Mirin Fader on her new book, Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP. Then they torch all the bad in sports this week on The Burn Pile. Following the flames, they celebrate those shining light including literal Torchbearer Naomi Osaka. The wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what they are watching in sports this week.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Basketball Saved The Finals From The Refs https://defector.com/basketball-saved-the-finals-from-the-refs
Everything you need to know about VAR and referee bias https://blog.innerdrive.co.uk/sports/var-and-referee-biases
The Moral Gatekeeper: Soccer and Technology, the Case of Video Assistant Referee https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7835707
FIFA bans former referee for life for bribery, match-fixing: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/fifa-bans-former-referee-1.4991242
A Sport Without Referees? It’s the Ultimate Debate https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/sports/ultimate-frisbee-debates-a-role-for-referees
Canadiens draft Logan Mailloux, who faced conviction in Sweden, in first round: https://theathletic.com/news/canadiens-draft-logan-mailloux-who-faced-conviction-in-sweden-in-first-round
The Helpful Hand Guiding Brisbane’s Olympic Victory: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/sports/olympics/olympics-brisbane-2032-john-coates
Transcript
Shireen: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Shireen Ahmed, and I am joined by the illustrious Jessica Luther and the fabulous Dr. Amira Rose Davis. This week, we'll be talking about refereeing, officiating – the good, the bad, and the “What the hell was that call?” To jump right into it, we're going to start with a question, a question for both of you. The Cleveland MLB team has recently changed its name. How do we feel about said name change other than obviously it needed to be changed to respect Indigenous communities and history of opportunistic mascotry? Jessica, how do you feel about the Cleveland Guardians?
Jessica: I feel fine. I liked the guardians on the bridge that they're named after, they look cool as hell. I think it's funny that anyone has a problem with the name. So, I looked up to see why they're called the Cleveland Cavaliers, because like, what's that name? And it turns out – I just want to let you guys know, here's my history lesson for today – that the new basketball team in 1970, they just did a name the team contest, and some dude named Jerry [Shireen laughs] thought that Cavaliers were cool. So he wrote an essay about it and drew a picture of a swashbuckler. And he wrote that the cavalier, “represents a group of daring, fearless men whose life pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds.” That's how they chose Cavaliers.
So, I'm excited about Guardians. It's cool that it has a connection directly to the city, to a piece of architecture that's very close to the stadium. And the other thing I wanted to say was there was someone on Twitter responding, Shiv Ramdas. And my favorite part of his tweet was, “the most successful NBA franchise of all time is named after lakes, it will be OK, I promise you.”
Shireen: [laughing] I saw that.
Jessica: And that's because they were from Minneapolis. It has nothing to do with Los Angeles.
Amira: Right! [laughs]
Jessica: Whatever.
Shireen: Amira?
Amira: First of all, obviously happy about the name change. I didn't love the rollout video that failed to even address the reason why they're changing the name and used the kind of same typeface that gestured back to it. So, I didn't love that, but what I did love is they said, “The Guardians and…” and somebody was like, “of the galaxy?” [laughter] “Oh wait, no. Of Cleveland.” And I don't know why that makes me laugh so much. [laughs] It's like, the gap between the Guardians of the Galaxy and “of Cleveland” is so funny to me.
Jessica: There should be an MCU crossover.
Amira: Exactly. Oh my god. A crossover. A Cleveland crossover. [laughs]
Shireen: I mean, I saw a tweet by Dave Zirin and that made me laugh so much. And he said, “The Guardians is a great name because it draws on the city’s history and civic pride. By that metric, the Washington Football Team should be the ‘DC Ben’s Chili Bowls’. (Open to other suggestions.)” [laughs]
Refereeing. Is it getting worse? Is it getting better? Has it always been bad? One of the things that we think about with refereeing – and I know I'm personally scarred from a decision from 2012 during the Olympics against the Canadian women's national team, against specifically goalkeeper Erin McLeod. And I bring this up very regularly, and you listeners know that this is one of those things that has actually stayed with me. I wonder about that referee; notably that I will never go to Norway because of that referee and how still sad I am about that call. But that call in particular and the way that refs can shape or change the trajectory of history, perhaps, and what it looks like. There was a really great article by Chris Thompson in Defector about game four, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns and the 2021 NBA finals, and it was talking about refereeing. And I just want to start with this.
“What I think is perfectly fair to say is that fans are far more acquainted with the concept of a bail-out whistle than they are with a bail-out soaring-from-out-of-nowhere block. The latter is what Wednesday night’s (don’t say pivotal don’t say pivotal don’t say pivotal) pivotal Game 4 produced, during a chaotic fourth-quarter stretch when it seemed like both the referees and the Milwaukee Bucks had finally lost control of the proceedings.”
And then further in the article he says, “The foul was so obvious that Mike Breen just calmly described it in realtime as if it’d been called, before gasping and shouting, ‘They didn’t call it!’ Giannis dropped in the follow to bring the score to within a point, but in the moment this felt like the referees had made a determination about who was going to win the game. Booker had been unstoppable all night, and he’d just sacrificed himself to keep a measly two points off the board, and the referees simply looked the other way.”
So, I mean, this is a specific incident that's very fresh in memory, that we can look to to say the call was not made. The call was not made where it ought to have been. And, you know, with watching it, being invested…And we're talking about the NBA finals here, we're talking about game four. And for those who don't know, the Bucks won in six. But to know that this happened this way brings us to the question: do we even notice good reffing, or do we only pay attention when it's bad?
Jessica: Yeah, I think we mainly pay attention when it's bad, when there's like this emotional attachment to games, just like you have, Shireen, [Shireen laughs] where it feels like the refs did a bad job. Whereas when things run smoothly and as they should, we might make a note of it in the moment, but we don't carry that with us. It's not imprinted on us the way that bad reffing seems to be. So it's like when the refs are good, we barely notice them. When they're bad, they become a write-up at The Ringer, right? [Shireen laughs] And live forever. It's interesting, because obviously people get very upset about it – and rightly so, I think – but also at the same time, I just think we kind of love yelling at bad refs. Like, when I go in person, I was screaming at the ref at a recent Austin FC game, just booing the ref is like part of the fun of it. So we have this really complicated relationship, I think as fans, to the sport, around how people ref the games.
Shireen: I mean, I love yelling at bad reffing calls, and I don't even have to know the sport particularly well. I don't know all the rules in volleyball, though I'm a very proud volleyball mom. My son plays at high level, but I don't know some of the things, but I'll still get upset. I watched Canada play last night at the Olympics, the Canadian men against Italy, and there was some blocks I'm like, “That was a touch! That was a touch!” Do I know that it was a touch? No. Do I even know the rules about a touch? Not necessarily. Amira?
Amira: Yeah. I was trying to think of like, who are notable refs that jump to my mind? And immediately I thought about long-term NFL now retired ref Ed Hochuli, and he was easily like one of the most recognizable refs, in part because he was the longest tenured ref in the NFL. And people kind of knew him, like, he was really notable for his biceps. They popped in his little ref uniform. [laughter] And he had like fan pages dedicated to him and his biceps. But really what catapults Ed to fame is in 2008 where he misses a huge call at the end of this game, and it was like–
Shireen: And Amira, what was the miscall? Because I didn't watch football before I met you and I have no idea what happened back then.
Amira: It was a call that came in the final minute of the game. Denver had a second and one right at the one yard line, and they were down by a touchdown. Jay Cutler, quarterback at the time, dropped back and the ball came out of his hands and the Chargers recovered. But Hochuli ruled it an incomplete pass instead of a fumble. So, the fumble would've ended the game essentially, but instead because the whistle was blown, there is no way to overturn it, even though it was very clear that the call was wrong. He immediately said he got the call wrong, but there's literally no way after a whistle’s blown to overturn the call. And then right after that the Broncos went on to score and scored the two point conversion and won.
And so we got a series of pieces asking if like all of his perfection and he constantly tested at the highest of the rule book in the NFL – your referee performance gets graded every week, and those with the highest grades at the end of the season are chosen to be postseason refs and then Super Bowl refs – and he was the constant person in that rotation. So then after this big moment in 2008, you did get a lot of these pieces. And I realize everything that I know about him come from these pieces that are revisiting him that are like, “Will he ever be able to live down this?” and how much he's beating himself up. For the record, I think he personally was able to, seeing as three years ago after he retired he was immortalized with a bobblehead from the national bobblehead hall of fame.
Jessica: There’s a national bobblehead hall of fame?!
Amira: It’s in Milwaukee. The things you now know!
Shireen: Today years old, Amira.
Amira: [laughs] So that's like literally the only person I can think of, like…You know, Sarah Thomas might carry kind of, I know, of course, but like even the most identifiable ref to me I realized really catapulted there because of anger over his decision.
Jessica: It's interesting because I was thinking about tennis because of the umpire that sits in the chair, like, I will often recognize their faces. But like there's one woman from Greece – I'm sorry, I don't know her name! – but whenever I see her, I'm like, oh, she's good. Right? But I feel like most people, if they thought of a tennis ump, they would think of the 2018 US Open final guy that penalized Serena. And there was all that controversy around it, and that's probably what most people would think of. But I don't know good refs by name.
Shireen: There are so many things that make reffing bad. Timing, space, environment, bad calls, didn't necessarily see. Jess, can you talk a little bit about that?
Jessica: There's a rundown of things that might affect the way that a ref calls it that they might not realize is happening. And so there's a site, a UK site called Inner Drive, that looked at a bunch of studies, I think mainly around soccer/football. And so there were five different things that they identified. One: the crowd effect. So, apparently if the crowd is loud and close to the field, the ref will tend to favor the home team. There's also just home advantage. There's a study that showed that home teams tend to receive less yellow and red cards and have more added time when they're losing. There’s one about player body type, and this is what they said. “Those who are assumed to have committed fouls were, on average, taller than the fouled player. When there's an unclear foul tackle situation, referees are more likely to attribute the foul to the taller player. When smaller players go to ground, people tend to attribute it to a foul. However, when tall players go to ground, people tend to attribute it to a non-foul context.”
There's the idea of the dirty team effect. So, if the ref comes in thinking that the team is quote-unquote “dirty” or has reffed that team in the past and called a lot of fouls on them, that experience will travel into this game with them and they'll call more fouls on them. And then there's the nationality bias. According to the site, researchers tracked referee assignments over 12 seasons in the Champs League and found that when a player is the same nationality as the official, the number of beneficial calls given to them was increased by 10% and even up to 15 to 20% in some cases for national team members during later stages of international tournaments. And this is this kind of bias that we all carry with us that referees probably don't even understand is happening in the moment, but it is interesting to think about all of the outside stuff that can actually affect the type of calls that they're making.
Amira: Certainly. And we've covered on this show before, especially in episode 113 when we were talking about colonization and soccer at the World Cup, the effect of racialized refereeing as well and like the way that Black physicality is perceived and policed. And Brenda has talked about this as well in terms of Latin American soccer players and their kind of complicated relationship to refereeing and officiating there. I think that the first thing that comes to mind when I think about refereeing, and one of the biggest markers of my athletic experience, was the way that my teams and myself were overcarded. Like, my basketball team, my AAU team, four out of the five starters were Black girls in a predominantly white league. And I can barely remember the games where we didn't all have fouls, right?
Like notoriously at one championships, the four of us all were on the brink of fouling out very early on, and it felt like we're not doing anything. The most egregious to me was especially in soccer and in these football spaces, because it was predominantly white, and I felt like every collision, everything you did…Me and the other woman of color on my team were constantly getting cards or warnings or things like that. What sticks out in my mind the most was we played a team that would hook their fingers in your shorts and try to pull you, like, it was kind of underhanded. And they also tended to be the team that would say the most kind of slurrish, racial slurrish stuff. So I remember one time we pulled away quite aggressively from them and the force with which we pulled away was what got their attention, and not the fact that they were A) calling us out of our name, and B) physically constraining us.
And so I think that a lot of people grow up with those experiences, and then you get some of those things on like the highest levels of sport where you're like, hmm, this kind of feels like the perception of Black physicality which we know runs through everything – runs through policing, runs through refereeing, runs through school safety officers. And also impacts the games in this way, what is called.
Shireen: I wanted to just sort of add on that. The first time I was racially abused, it was on the pitch. And we're lined up for a set piece, like a corner kick, and I have a tendency to lean in, you know, and I was known as “the aggressive one.” And I'm not sure if, looking back – and I didn't have the language, certainly, didn't then, to read into that as being the aggressive brown girl, do you know, like being loud. And on one hand, the character traits that I have are really important for a striker to be tenacious, to be relentless. But then, you know, I still get categorize. But what happened was she called me a racial slur and I was so angry I ended up punching her. But the ref didn't hear her, so I got ejected for…Can you imagine, like an under 12 getting rejected for two games? It was embarrassing. And to this day I still think about it and I still think about how no one knew how to act, and the ref just thought that I was punching and wouldn't listen to me when I was trying to say this is what happened.
My coach certainly didn't advocate for me at the time and had no idea what to do and was like, “Why did you have to do that? Why can't you just ignore her?” And the argument was, well, I didn't hear it, so I cannot do anything. So if the ref actually misses part…And this is the system of football, that if the ref doesn't see it, it can't be issued as a foul, if it's not witnessed by the officials. There was one thing that I’d been thinking as we were prepping for this episode, was corruption. You know, one of the most egregious offenders of corruption in football is it was a Nigerien official who was in 2019 banned for life from refereeing at any level. His name is Ibrahim Chaibou. He was fined 200,000 Swiss francs, which is about $250,000.
It was said, and I'm just quoting the CBC article, that “the Niger official was paid bribes to influence the outcomes of national team games played in Africa, the Middle East and South America, and his favored tactic was awarding questionable penalty kicks, often for real and imagined handball offenses, to help increase the number of goals scored.” I just…I think about that, and I think about the implications politically and socially of when a team loses and how, if it's already stacked against them, how unfair that is. So when we're angry about calls like this, one thing we do is yell at refs. So, does it actually do anything for the person, Jessica? [laughs]
Jessica: I have no idea. So, now that I am a soccer aficionado from all of the soccer that I have been watching, [Shireen laughs] one of the things that I think is so funny is that every time the ref makes a call it's like almost instantly there is a group of men, they group around him and start screaming in his face. And he has to do the hand thing and they all back off at like, I just don’t…They do it in basketball too. Does that work? Does it ever work? Is it just for the players themselves to like let off steam towards the ref? I just think it's so funny. It's just constant. And I'm like, they seem so unswayed by everything is happening. [laughs] So, I don't know. I just think it's a funny part of the reffing process, is like herding these men, keeping their emotions in check and stuff. Certainly women yell at the refs, and in basketball Diana Taurasi is incredibly famous for it.
Amira: Yeah, I think it's also like who's doing the yelling. Like, back when I had the conversation with Erica Dambach, head coach of Penn State and current assistant coach at the Olympics with the US national team. I asked her how she was like, so calm on the sidelines all the time, because she's remarkably calm. And she was like, well, she's learned how to do that. But one of the things, both her and Ann Cook who's the assistant coach said is they actually were working on making sure they were better advocates for their players. And there was times where she felt like she was so conscious of the perception of yelling at the ref that she wouldn't say anything but thought that something was over the line or that a player was hurt.
They were talking about like needing to be vocal as coaches and tell the ref, “You need to constantly hear me, because I'm worried about my players’ safety.” And then of course, I think that line gets very muddled. Your other psychological point, Jess, is like, when we're sitting at home on our couch, [Shireen laughs] or you're in a bar or whatever, and you're screaming, I mean…What is the psychology behind that? I absolutely think maybe that's just to make yourself feel better, you just need it to be noted. Like, why do people leave reviews or call hotlines? I feel like people like to like to note their opinion on things, right? The comment sections. Screaming at the refs to me is like the walking embodiment of that.
Jessica: Yes. I like that. I also think it's interesting. You bring up like coaches and yelling at refs, because there are times…I think of like a basketball coach getting a technical and ejected from the game for screaming at the ref, and there are times where I really admire the coach. I'm like, good for you! Good for you for standing up for your team and all that. And so, yeah, it is very complicated, I think. Refs exists so that there'll be quote-unquote “fair play” and everyone will follow the rules, but then they get just…Because they're like the thing that does that, everyone directs all of their feelings at the ref constantly. Who wants to do that? [laughs] Who wants to be a ref? Goodness.
Shireen: Well, I remember last year in the wubble and I was watching Chicago Sky’s James Wade was advocating for the players and I remember he got attacked and part of me he's like, he's doing something valiant by defending the players against this huge injustice–
Jessica: Against the man!
Shireen: Against the man! W’re so invested in sport that when these things happen, it's like, there's this righteousness that comes up and this indignation and you're like, no, this is unfair! And then, you know, that carries.
Amira: Well, it also makes me think of Jess's tremendous piece on fairness in sports. But like, that constant pursuit of like, “What is fair and equitable?!” right, is the guise of all this in terms of like angst against the refs and how the refs are supposed to be like the gatekeepers of fairness. And so what we've seen, right, Shireen, is attempts to help this fairness process within refereeing, which sometimes means taking the decisions out of people's hands and putting it into like, I dunno, machines.
Shireen: Right. So, technology. If we can't trust people, if they can be bribed, if they can be corrupt, can we trust machines? Is this a possible solution or plausible solution? Jessica, let's talk about tech.
Jessica: Yeah, I think it's so interesting, the turn to tech as a way to mitigate human subjectivity. And that's such a good point, Amira, that they are the locus of “fairness” within the game, the refs, but we also recognize constantly that they are humans who fuck up. And like, we are just holding all of that at once. So it's really interesting to me when we get a new piece of technology that is coming in to mitigate that subjectivity – Hawkeye in tennis, VAR in soccer, robots as umpires in baseball. [laughs] There’s like…I remember watching a whole Real Sports episode about how much better these robot machines are then actual empires, but people get so angry about this kind of technology coming in to help with this problem that everyone is already so angry about. I mean, it makes sense. Brenda's a huge VAR fan. It's like, for all of the things Brenda does not like, she definitely likes VAR because it removes that kind of subjectivity within the game, because you can check on things that you couldn't before – handballs in particular, as Shireen was talking about with that corrupt official.
There are legitimate concerns though. Like, what happens, especially at the pro level, if we're subbing in all this technology, what is going on at the lower levels? And I think about this with tennis in particular. So when it went to Hawkeye fully, right, for the US Open during the pandemic, I think it was fully Hawkeye doing all of the calls. So they got rid of all the line judges and just had the umpire and the chair. And the thing that people kept bringing up was that you become an umpire because you're a line judge and you learn the game of tennis and how to judge it and how to ref it properly by going up the ranks as a line judge and eventually sitting in the chair and doing that. So like, if we're removing the learning process that comes from being a ref that allows you to be the overall umbrella ref, what's being lost there? And I think that's such an interesting quandary of like, how do we manage the knowledge of the game? Because I don't think you can fully remove humans. But also this attempt to be more fair.
And the other thing I'll say about this is just always the caveat that technology is created by humans. So like, technology is not some perfect…Like, there's a human subjectivity with any kind of technology that you have. But man, I love Hawkeye. Like, I'm so glad that tennis uses it now. But I do wonder what that will mean if we fully get rid of line judges, what would the impact possibly be on the umpires in the chair?
Amira: Yeah. So, the other thing that I think of – and go with me here, because at first it's going to seem like a little bit of a stretch. You know, when we talk about prison abolition, when we talk about community policing and stuff like that, a lot of times it's a hard conversation to have because we don't have a framework for thinking about it. People are like, well, what would it look like without cops? Like, what would it…I interviewed Benji about abolition in sports a few episodes ago, and it's one of the things they made a point about was like, well, we already have places in which we know what that looks like: colleges, for instance, where you see self policing outside of the structure of law. And so it made me think about where we saw currently in sports, where there was an absence of refs or a different model of refereeing or officiating sport. And so the example that I thought about was ultimate Frisbee. Now, we've had ultimate folks on the show of course, and, you know, growing up in western Massachusetts, we're like ultimate central, baby.
So I grew up playing summer ultimate, and one of the features of ultimate is that the players are the refs, the players make their own calls. And this is not simply like a kind of quirky, fun feature. It's actually the core ethos of the sport. This is the text from one rulebook: “Ultimate relies on a spirit of sportsmanship that places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of mutual respect among competitors, adherence to the agreed upon rules, or the basic joy of play.” And how it works in practice is, like, if you feel like you got fouled, you say, hey, you fouled me. But one of the things that's been interesting in ultimate, especially as it’s been getting more professional and global and even at one point the IOC was considering it for Olympic inclusion, was as it moved up there's this kind of outside insistence, like, hey, well now you need to introduce refs, right? Because what happens if you have bad calls?
One of the things that, especially in talks with the IOC, is they were like, oh, what the IOC likes about us is that we're like most adhered to their model, like mutual respect and all this stuff. But what will some outside person, how will some outside person watching know better than the players if that was really a foul or if that was really what you're doing? And so some of the negotiations where it stands now is there’s some leagues that have introduced, like, not quite a ref, but what they call like a kind of observer who's more like a mediator, right? So less like, hi, I'm in control, this is what it is, but more like an outside person who's like, okay, well, if you guys have a disagreement, from my standpoint this is kind of what went down. And it's like playground rules, like obviously you call your own fouls, of course sometimes people are like, okay, no, you weren't really fouled.
But I think part of it is within that culture, within the idea, is that everybody does have a kind of sense of like what is really a foul or not, and can tell each other, no, that wasn't a foul, you're just bullshitting. So ultimate is one model of refereeing and officiating outside of what we usually see. Jess, do you have an another example?
Jessica: I do have another example: youth tennis. So, the junior level of tennis, and apparently also in high school, they don't have line judges. And so the players themselves, which often they're very young, are the ones calling whether or not it's in or out. And as you're talking about ultimate I'm like, but people then cheat! Like, I can't get away from that cynical notion. And so I actually came across this essay at Sports Illustrated by a high school tennis player and he was critiquing the lack of line judges because he says high school tennis is now just fully corrupt, that like people cheat all the time, that there's massive unfair calls. He had this one example of a time when he was sure that the ball was out and the other player had said it was in, and he got in trouble for fighting it, like, that he wasn't being sportsmanlike, and how frustrating that was as a player and that high school tennis is a mess. And so it's so interesting, because I am so cynical about the idea of sportsmanship I guess, [laughs] those feelings that coming up when he was…I was like, they cheat! Like… [laughs]
Amira: But I get, honestly, I get that frustration. Because it's so frustrating when something's unfair. This is going to feel like out of left field, but like, this is what it makes me feel…You know how competitive I am. Me and Michael were on one of those like newlyweds games on a Disney cruise ship–
Jessica: Of course. [Shireen laughs] This is like the most Amira story ever.
Amira: –and we won, we were on a roll. And the question was, what did Mike first notice about me or whatever, and it's a running joke that he noticed that I didn't have an ass. Okay. That's like the running joke. I know that's what he said. So I said, oh, of course it was my quote unquote lack of…Like, as a joke. And they said I got it wrong. And I was like, I know for a fact that that's not wrong. It's just that they weren't fully listening. And it made me so mad. Like, I will constantly think about that.
Jessica: I wish you guys could see her face right now. Like, her eyes are gigantic. [laughter] She's really upset.
Amira: I’m really upset about it. And I had one too many drinks at that point, so I was very vocal. I was like, I am a professor. I know things! That is not true. That was incorrect.
Jessica: You need a mediator.
Amira: So I get it.
Shireen: But also like, sport for a lot of people is about winning. And not just sport, like, if it's a newlywed game or…I remember my ex-husband and I used to play mini putt and I at one point almost pushed him over a little bridge because I wanted to win that game – and I offer no apologies for it, like, whatever. But the idea of youth being in charge of this and knowing at that point that honesty and sportsmanship is paramount…I'm sorry, if I was 12…And when I coach, honestly, when I coach young girls playing soccer–
Jessica: You tell them to cheat.
Shireen: I don’t tell them to cheat. [Jessica laughs] I don't tell them to cheat. I say if the ball goes out, girls, pick it up and put it in to save time and just do it, like, don't stop and look at the ref and go, “Whose call is it?” [Amira laughs] Pick up the damn ball. You take that and you move, which I think is strategy. It's not cheating. It's strategy.
Jessica: You call putt putt, “mini putt”?
Shireen: It’s mini golf.
Amira: Mini golf.
Shireen: Mini putt.
Amira: Oh, my gosh. I agree with Shireen on a saying!
Shireen: Mini golf.
Jessica: She called it mini putt!
Shireen: I oscillate between mini putt and mini golf, but it's usually a mini golf.
Amira: Oh, mini putt. So that last story you told was about mini golf. So the bridge was in a mini putt. Now that makes it work. Understanding.
Jessica: See, told you. We don't call it mini putt!
Shireen: For an extended discussion on officiating refereeing and what could be considered good solutions or ideas to improve that sphere, head over to Patreon and we have more discussion. For our interview, which drops on Thursday, Jessica talks with journalist Mirin Fader about her new book, Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP. They talk about Mirin’s basketball skills, how she got into writing about sports, and of course about NBA champion and two time MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Mirin Fader: I was just so moved by the more vulnerable sides of Giannis, because I think at the time everyone just kind of talked about his freakish athleticism, and they didn't really talk about, you know, who he is as a person and what he's like as a big brother, and just how he's gone through so much with the death of his father.
Shireen: Now on to everyone's favorite segment, the burn pile. Jessica, what are you torching?
Jessica: So the 2020, 2021, whatever you want to call them, Summer Olympics are in full swing, but I'd like to look ahead to the 2032 Olympics, which we learned this week will be hosted by Brisbane, Australia. The IOC has instituted a new process for selecting cities to host the games because of all the corruption involved in the previous bidding wars. The IOC now uses two panels to review potential cities and make recommendations to the organization's board. In February, the selection committee said Brisbane was its “preferred partner,” and so the IOC’s membership votes last week were just actually a mere formality. But corrupt institutions stay corrupting. And so there have been concerns about this new process, which, surprise, happens out of the public eye and in secret, and therefore has no transparency.
And it turns out the first time they use this method for selecting a host city it just so happens to go to Australia, and the current president of the Australian Olympic committee is John Coates, who as the New York Times put it, “is also an IOC vice-president and a close ally of Bach.” Bach being Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC. The IOC has of course said anyone with a conflict of interest had no role in this selection, but you'll simply have to take their word for it since there's no transparency and just a questionable outcome. Coates has amassed a lot of power in the IOC. He heads the IOC’s legal commission and presides over the Court of Arbitration for Sport. These two positions are significant.
Rob Koehler, the director general of Global Athlete, an advocacy group for athletes, told the New York Times, quote, "For example, the IOC athlete commission indicated that the IOC legal's affair commission, headed by Coates, will look at sanctioning rules for athletes that break podium protests in Tokyo. If an athlete wants to appeal the sanction,” – which, the sanction is by the legal affairs, run by Coates – “it goes to CAS, the Court of Arbitration for Sport.” Also headed by Coates. He's in charge of the appeal body, as well as the body that does the sanction. That's not a separation of powers, nor does it scream independence. One other job that Coates has in the IOC – are y'all ready for this? This is so good. I love it.
Bach tasked Coates with deciding the new process by which cities would be selected to host the games. So this new fair process that chose Brisbane, Australia, of which Coates is the president of the Australian Olympic Committee, that process was created by Coates himself. It's amazing how that happens in the IOC. It's just...You can't make this shit up. But you just have to trust them. This is like the trailblazers, right? You just have to believe that everything is fine. So you can't really expect anything else from the IOC, but I'm still gonna burn all of this. Coates, the way he wields power, and how the IOC decides all these things. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Amira.
Amira: I have four Olympic related things that I'm very mad about, and I'm just going to run down the list because I can't decide which I'm more mad about. I'm mad about all of them, to be honest. The first thing, you might recall about two weeks ago, the IOC reversed their ridiculous decision to not allow nursing infants into the Olympic village and Olympic space. And while people applauded that, there's new information emerging about why we should maybe hold our applause. Spanish synchronized swimmer Ona Carbonell talked about how, even though this reversal happened, she still was not going to be able to bring her child. Why, you ask? Well, because the IOC’s decision to let people bring their child and the child's other caretaker, put them still at an offsite location, meaning that if you want to go nurse your child, you know, multiple times a day, you have to leave the bubble area of your team. You have to put your health at risk and your team's health at risk to go to a different location to nurse your child. Just logistically this remains a nightmare. So just letting people come does not logistically solve the problem if you're not letting people easily and accessibly still feed their children. So, that's ridiculous.
The USOPC is also being ridiculous because Becca Meyers, one of our most decorated Paralympians, recently completely withdrew from the games. Why, you ask? Because the USOPC is being complete fuckers. She's a deaf-blind Paralympian. They are not letting her bring her mom as her personal care assistant. Their response was they already had a PCA available to Paralympians in swimming. Let's just be clear: they have a single PCA for 33 Paralympic swimmers, 10 of them who are visually impaired. Just…The math doesn't add up up, USOPC. And it is terrible and it's heartbreaking that because she can't get a reasonable accommodation and she can't have somebody safe and who she trusts to help her at the Olympic games, she's choosing to withdraw. She deserved better than that. That's some bullshit.
Speaking of some bullshit, also from Team USA, let me talk to you really quick about this fencer dude. Team USA alternate Alen Hadzic, who should not be at the Olympic games, he has been under SafeSport investigation. There was literally a letter sent last month by multiple women in fencing, including two Olympians, who said they don't feel safe with him being on the team. The response from the US Olympic committee was to say, oh, well, we'll tell SafeSport – who's already investigating him! They already know. And to send the women who wrote the letter a list of available mental health services included telling them they can get on Headspace and address their mental health concerns. They're not concerned about that! What they're concerned about is that you're letting an abuser on the Olympic team, despite him being under investigation. And the compromise was that he could go to the games, but he can't be in the Olympic village. And he's mad about that. Turning around and having the audacity to say I'm mad because it's infringing on my right to be in the village. You shouldn't be there! You're harming people. People are telling you they're deeply concerned. The fact that he's included at expense of other people's safety is wild.
And lastly, that brings me to yet another similar case of Taylor Crabb, Taylor Crabb, the USA Volleyball person who was serving a suspension from international competition because he's not supposed to be near girls. We don't know the extent of the investigation. We know that the ruling from SafeSport was that you can't compete internationally, you can't be near girls. He violated that and coached junior camp, and then they shortened the suspension, let him compete at worlds, and let him go to the Olympics. He was all set to go to the Olympics. He got COVID, he won't be at the games, but everything is framing it like, oh no, he can't be there because of COVID – without pausing to say, hey, he shouldn't have been there in the first place because he had a suspension preventing him from doing that because he keeps violating the order to stay away from junior girls because of a pattern of abuse!
What is happening!? What is happening? Let people be safe, give them accommodations they need let them nurse their damn children, and keep abusers away from people who say were harmed and concerned by their inclusion on this damn team while we're trying to compete in the stupid Olympics. Like, jeez! Burn!
All: Burn.
Shireen: I'm going to go last and I do want to offer a trigger warning for this. Last night was NHL draft night and for hardcore hockey fans it's a really big deal. Well, there was a bit of a damper on last night's event. So, it was Friday 23rd. Logan Mailloux was drafted 31st in the first round by the Montreal Canadiens, despite being convicted last year in Sweden for a sex crime. And I'm going to be quoting from a piece in The Athletic. “Logan Mailloux, who actually withdrew from the NHL draft earlier this week, following his conviction last year in Sweden, was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens with the 31st pick of the first round on Friday. Mailloux was convicted in the Swedish court in December for taking a photo of a woman performing a sex act without her consent and circulating it amongst some teammates.” At least 11 teams removed the defenseman from their list ahead of the draft, which is something The Athletic previously reported.
The Montreal Canadiens had an incredible postseason this year, but what a fucking way to alienate fans who have been revived in a place, like, what a way to come out and be like, hey everybody, we're just going to draft this person who's been convicted of sex crimes. Yeah, no. The Montreal Canadiens issued a statement and they said, “The Canadiens are aware of the situation and by no means minimize the severity of Logan's actions. Logan understands the impact of his actions. His recent public statement is a genuine acknowledgement of his poor behavior and first step on his personal journey. We are making a commitment to accompany Logan on his journey by providing him with the tools to mature and the necessary support to guide him in his development. We are also committed to raising awareness amongst our players about the repercussions of their actions on the lives of others.”
What repercussions? He was still drafted in the first fucking round. And he'll continue to be fine because there's no culture of accountability, of actual accountability, in this sport. Are they likening his crime to immaturity? Is that what we're doing? Is he getting a pass because he has potential and we don't want to absolutely fuck up his career, his potential, what he could be?! I'm angry about this for many, many reasons. Also just want to point out, and this is something Jessica tweeted. Marc Bergevin, who is the GM of the Montreal Canadiens, was also director of player personnel in 2010 with the Chicago NHL team. This is a fucking mess.
The same NHL team that's constantly being investigated – and just shoutout to Rick Westhead of TSN for his incredible reporting on players who are now suing the club for being sexually abused by a former coach. So, I enjoyed the postseason of Montreal, but I'm happy to hate and continue to disassociate from a team that upholds misogyny and ignores the action of players because they value them more than the lives of women. Same team also who signed Nick Cousins also implicated in a sexual assault case in Ontario and hired Sean Burke, assistant goalie coach who was accused of repeatedly beating his wife. So, Montreal Canadiens, I'm going to take you and I'm going to put you on the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn
Shireen: After all that burning, let's let some light into our lives. Amira, who is the luminous athlete?
Amira: Our luminous athlete of the week is Luke Prokop of the Nashville Predators, and is the first player under NHL contract to come out as gay. Shout out to you, Luke.
Shireen: And for athlete with a dazzling debut: 24 year old Uche Eke is the first gymnast to represent Nigeria at the Olympics, and we are so happy to see him there. Jessica who is our eternal flame?
Jessica: Marta. That's it. No… [Shireen laughs] Marta, the Brazilian soccer star, is the first person ever to score goals in five consecutive Olympics. She scored a brace against China and Brazil's win. After her second goal, Marta formed a T shape with her arms, a dedication to her fiancée and Orlando Pride teammate, Toni Pressley.
Shireen: And our northern star for this week is Christine Sinclair, captain of the Canadian women's national team, who becomes the first Canadian and the fourth player ever to make 300 international appearances for their country. As we know, Sinky is the top international goal score of all time. Jess, who's our bright light?
Jessica: Barbra Banda, Zambian footballer, is the first African woman to score three or more goals at the Olympics, and as of this recording has scored six – two hat tricks in two games – tying her for the most goals scored by an African player in the men's or women's game at an Olympics.
Shireen: And Amira, tell me about our match lighters.
Amira: Match lighters of the week are the players association of the National Women's Soccer League who launched a new website, nomoresidehustles.com. Please check it out. It's a site where you can spread the word and sign the pledge agreeing that professional athletes, regardless of gender, shouldn't have to work two, three or four jobs to support themselves. Of course, this is coming from a league in the NWSL where 75% of the league makes $31,000 or less. Multiple people have worked multiple jobs. If you check out their website, you can sign the pledge, you can support it. And it's calling on multiple leagues to ensure that athletes have ideal labor conditions and don't have to do all these side hustles to survive. They are our match lighters of the week.
Shireen: Can I get a drum roll, please?
[drumroll]
Literal torchbearer is Naomi Osaka. The final celebration of the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremonies was Japanese born Naomi Osaka lighting the Tokyo Olympic cauldron. Osaka was passed the torch from Yankees legend, Hideki Matsui, and her absolutely gorgeous white outfit accented with red lines, also matching the colors of the Japanese flag, also matching her red box braids. [laughs]
Amira: And those braids, yes girl!
Shireen: She climbed the steps and lit the cauldron. Naomi Osaka took to social media later and said, “Greatest athletic achievement I will ever have in my life. I have no words to describe the feelings I have right now, but I do know that I am currently filled with gratefulness and thankfulness. Love you guys. Thank you.” What’s good, Jessica? What’s good?
Jessica: This is a very hard one for me this week. I had a really hard week. So, on Friday I was deadlifting. I was warming up to deadlift, so it wasn't even a ton of weight. My lower back popped. I'm not sure if there was a sound, but there was certainly a feeling of a lot of pain. My Saturday morning, it was so intense that Aaron wanted to call an ambulance. We weren't sure that we could get me out of the house, but he was able to get me to the car. He took me to the ER. Everything was so bad that they actually gave me two shots, which hurt like hell. One was anti-inflammatory drug to try to calm my muscles down, and the other one was just straight morphine. And then they gave me pain meds with narcotics in them. They gave me a muscle relaxer and they sent me home. I feel like I slept through Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, probably part of Wednesday. It was just a really tough time. And so like, I feel like I'm going to cry.
I guess what's good in my world is Aaron. [laughs] He was amazing this week. I still, I mean, I couldn't walk on my own for days, and he would lead me around the house. I would grab onto his forearms and I couldn't sit down so he would have to help me on and off the toilet. He'd have to like pull my pants on and off because I couldn't bend over. [sniffles] Anyway, Aaron is good. [laughs] On Monday it was our anniversary, 18 years married. We were supposed to go have a nice dinner at a restaurant we've always wanted to go to, which of course we couldn't do because I couldn't sit in a chair. And he was great about all of that. So Aaron was very good this week. Also, Amira brought me my favorite ice cream from a local ice cream shop, Lick, on Friday night. And chocolates – those chocolate were really good, Amira. I don't feel like I told you that. [Amira laughs] That was all good, but man, what a week it was.
Shireen: I’m glad you're feeling better, Jess.
Jessica: Me too.
Shireen: Amira, what's good?
Amira: Yeah, well, obviously I'm in Austin now.
Jessica: Yay!
Amira: Yeah, when we made it here, it was not a cute drive. [laughs] But we did it. We're in the house. We've been here for about a week, and mostly unpacked. There's tacos and also just like so many food options, and I feel like I'm just in a utopia, because you know, your girl's been struggling in State College. So, it has been a wonderful week where like I went to HEB to get food, to stop spending money and like actually cook. And then I was like, except absolutely need to go get some dumplings and like something from Bird Bird Biscuit, and like, oh, here's some rolled ice cream! There's always something. [laughs] So, it's been great. You know, the kids are doing well. Me and Samari went to a Beatles concert, but it was like performed by Black people who were performing covers of Black people covering Beatles songs, so it was like, Aretha Franklin’s version of the…It was so good. Samari loved it. She was like, even her like teenage angsty exterior couldn’t stop her from outright joy. And by the end of it she was literally up dancing on her feet because she couldn't even contain herself. And these two little old white ladies who were dancing like the whole show, they came over and kidnapped her and she danced with them during the last set, under the stars. It was just a beautiful night.
We went to an escape room. We escaped. We made some friends while we did that. And I got to see my fam from back in Massachusetts, who run a Frida Friday's and Las Ofrendas, like the biggest marketplace here for Black, Indigenous, Latinx and queer vendors. I went with the kids last night and we got a bunch of beautiful jewelry. Samari got some vintage shirt…My girl loves to thrift. I never really understand how it's going to work, and then she makes it work. It’s like totally very cute. So, we did that last night. And so it's just been a really fun week of getting to know Austin and reconnecting with people and, you know, eating. And of course to cap it all off, Ted Lasso season two premiered and I got to get some of my grad school friends to do a rewatch with me. That's my what's good.
Shireen: I will go and just say that, although I was really rooting for the Phoenix Suns and Chris Paul in particular to get a ring, I was really happy with Giannis winning and being phenomenal and going to order chicken nuggets and, you know, live streaming it with his partner. I love all of that. I love him shouting out about his brothers to Malika Andrews – who was amazing by the way, on NBA finals sideline reporting. That made me really happy. And you know, it's distracting me from thesis writing, which is what I'm doing. Also, things in Ontario have opened up a little bit, like quite a bit, and I've been able to see friends a lot, and that has been amazing. It's been absolutely, you know…It fills my cup to see people that I love. Happy birthday to Sabrina Razack, somebody I love so dearly. She's a PhD candidate at U of T in kinesiology, and Sabs, I love you so much. Going to your karaoke party tonight. And I'm very excited about that, because I have not done karaoke probably in years, so I'm assuming it will be a Shakira song or something retro related. Also, happy birthday belated to my son, Sallahuddin, whose team Ontario volleyball camp…He's the way this weekend doing that. I love you, and I will resist the urge to go see you at the overnight camp and check on you and climb up the window on a ladder and make sure you're okay. I will not do that.
What we are watching this week. Athletes Unlimited began its inaugural lacrosse season last week, and you can watch the games on CBS sports network, Fox Sports and YouTube. Also, the Olympics.
Amira: Little thing. [laughs]
Shireen: Just a small thing. And that's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our fire merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you to our patrons – your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown, and lastly, burn on and not out.