Episode 233: The COVID Chronicles, Part Infinity
In this episode Amira Rose Davis, Brenda Elsey and Jessica Luther are back with the latest on COVID-19 chaos. But first they share the video clips that have made them happy. Then, they discuss the many ways sports are navigating COVID surges, including: tennis player Novak Djokovic's scheme to play in the Australian Open, the ridiculous events of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament in football/soccer, and how the NBA is banking on disaster capitalism.
Following this discussion, you'll hear a preview of Jessica's interview with Angel Flores, powerlifter and Queer Eye season 6 guest. Then, the team burns the worst of the sports this week on The Burn Pile. Next, they lift up those making sports better, including Torchbearer of the Week, Natalie Simon, who is the first Black woman to earn a FIFA referee badge. They 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
Djokovic Isn’t the Only One in Australia to Blame for the Mess He’s In: https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/novak-djokovic-australian-open-detention-vaccine-mandate
Novak Djokovic is a profile in selfishness, and sports leaders are failing us all: https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/33050352/novak-djokovic-profile-selfishness-sports-leaders-failing-us-all
Sean Jacobs on the African Cup of Nations: https://11namedpeople.substack.com/p/the-african-cup-of-nations
COVID-19 issues among NBA staffers presenting persistent problems for GMs around league: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33046257/covid-19-issues-nba-staffers-presenting-persistent-problems-gms-league
NBA’s ‘COVID referees’ stay under the spotlight as league tries to endure omicron: https://theathletic.com/3064304/2022/01/13/nbas-covid-referees-stay-under-the-spotlight-as-league-tries-to-endure-omicron
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the sports podcast you need. Amira here, and happy new year, flamethrowers! Jess and Brenda will be joining me today to kick off this new year. Yeah, we're all maybe still in that fuzzy period where you're still writing 2021 everywhere, you barely know what day it is, but it is in fact 2022. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Alabama was playing for a national title, Cowboy fans are in disarray. We're recording on Martin Luther King Day, so we're treated to the familiar usage of quotes out of context that sports leagues are posting and completely ignoring for the rest of the year. And of course, COVID is still COVIDing. With canceled games and Rudy Gobert back on COVID protocols, 2022 started out feeling very March 2020-ish.
So today we are bringing you what feels like part infinity of the COVID in sports chronicles. But hey, Georgia somehow won, beat Alabama, or more importantly, Saban lost. The Bills just beat the Patriots, and Norwich City scored not one but two goals this past weekend! So hey, maybe 2022 has some new things in store for us. So Jess, Brenda, before we dive into this episode, what have been the wildest, randomest, most enjoyable sports clips that you've already seen so far in 2022?
Jessica: The only thing I want to talk about forever is Ja Morant. He's just a phenom in so many ways. I feel like everyone has probably already seen this, like, if you just exist in the world of sports at all. But they were playing the Lakers, first quarter, he was chasing down the point guard for the Lakers, Avery Bradley. And he went up with two hands above the rim and blocked the shot by pulling it down… Like, it doesn't look like a person should be able to do that.
Amira: He jumps so high, he hit his elbow on the backboard! [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah! Just an incredible thing to witness. It's the kind of thing that you're like, this is sports. This is why we love this so much, because I can't even imagine…Like, my vertical was like six inches when I played basketball, [laughs] and this man, like, his knee was like at the shoulder of one of the players when he was up in the air. That's how high he was off the ground. It's incredible.
Amira: Yeah. It’s one of those things I watched over and over and over and over and over again.
Jessica: I made Aaron, like, we paused the television. I was like, you must see this. Someone else in my vicinity must witness this alongside me. [laughter]
Amira: Brenda?
Brenda: Okay. It's not from this year, but since it's a never-ending 2021– [Amira boos] Okay. But it's true. I rewatched it because I was so freezing and cold in the last two weeks, just spontaneously, which is Fernando Tatís being mic’d during the All Star games and several others. [Amira laughs] And there's tons of clips from it. And it looks so warm, and it's so freezing and terrible here, and he's just hilarious and cute and annoyed with the questions that they're asking him. And I don't know, it just cracks my shit up. Like, every time I watch it, I'm just like, ahahaha!
And any of his splits, any of the clips where he's doing the splits over and over and over again, [Jessica laughs] to, you know, make a catch or to…It’s amazing how agile and flexible that man is. I don't know if he's doing yoga all the time or what, but I did just go into a rabbit hole with him. So that's so far my favorite clips of 2022, even though I'm technically breaking the rules.
Amira: [laughs] What’s new, rebel. Mine just happened. So we know that in an effort to, you know, brainwash young kids into being lifelong consumers of the NFL, [Brenda laughs] the NFL has entered into a partnership with Nickelodeon where they get a playoff game or two to broadcast. And even knowing all that, I have to say, it's fucking hilarious to me, the broadcasts…Like, they have SpongeBob in the uprights. So during a field goal, SpongeBob will be like staring critically, and then he'll like, get happy if it goes in. And of course it's Nick, so there's slime everywhere. They had a slime monster at one point just like come out of the field. Like literally, I mean, if you're high in watching this, it has to be the best three hours of your life. I'm convinced.
Brenda: Or a child, we hope? [laughs]
Amira: Or a child. Yeah.
Brenda: The Nickelodeon angle…
Amira: Well, no, I don't want the kids to watch and become lifelong consumers. I’d much rather adults would be pleasantly tipsy or high and enjoying, like, the annotations on Mike McCarthy when the Cowboys lost, and they drew steam coming out of his ears! [laughs]
Brenda: Yes! You sent that to me. That's the only reason I thought it was amazing.
Amira: It's a riot. But by far, I think the most adorable thing of the Nickelodeon broadcast was Young Dylan, who was the game side reporter, who after had this wonderful interview…
Young Dylan: Alright, Deebo can do it all. Samuel, you had a crazy game! You was doing it all. A hundred total yards in a touchdown. How does it feel being mentioned as a running back and a receiver?
Deebo Samuel: I mean, it's just amazing, man…
Amira: It was a joy to watch his joy, asking the questions. My favorite part was when he said, “It’s just between me and you!” [laughs] And like, everybody's watching!
Jessica: I know, it's so cute! But it's so cute, because he's interviewing Deebo Samuel, and you can tell Samuel is so taken by him.
Amira: Yeah!
Jessica: I feel like he probably gave better answers than he would've to an adult! And also he probably recognized that the audience would also be children. And so he looks so happy to be talking to this child, who is like…Like, when Deebo walks away, the kid is so excited!
Amira: [laughs] It’s the best. It’s the best.
Jessica: It’s so, so sweet.
Brenda: He’s also really professional.
Amira: He was.
Jessica: Oh, yeah!
Brenda: Like, he was really well spoken and not nervous. And wow.
Amira: Young Dylan was absolutely on it.
Jessica: He’s twelve!
Amira: We all have kids around this age of Young Dylan and, you know, are happy to get a full sentence in the morning. [laughs] Well, at least me and Brenda's girls.
Brenda: Or get them out of bed, or dressed…
Amira: Or get them out of bed and functioning. To see I'm Dylan doing his thing was very impressive, Young Dylan's parents!
COVID and sports. It's still a thing, because COVID, of course, is still a thing. This segment will provide some updates and perhaps some mediation on the continued and relentless exhaustion that many have experienced at this point in the pandemic, and how sports is navigating or ignoring it. As college bowl season set upon us at the end of 2021, it coincided with ever-rising cases of COVID. And college bowl season rolled on, kind of. In addition to fans flying everywhere and teams flying everywhere, we also had a lot of last minute cancellations. Some, like Texas A&M’s game, you know, they were able to slot in another team.
But 24 hours before the Hawaii Bowl was set to kick off in Hawaii, it was canceled because of COVID protocols, because of not having enough people to field on the field at all. And because Hawaii is so far away – because of colonialism! There's not another team that could just go slot in. And so it was just cancelled. I think that that really epitomizes kind of where we are, where on one hand you have these seasons just kind of rolling merrily along. And the other hand, you still have these huge disruptions, and it feels like a tension in what we're seeing in how sports are operating right now. And they weren't the only cancellations that we saw as we moved into this kind of winter sports season. Right, Jess?
Jessica: Oh, yeah. College basketball…And I will admit up top, I don't follow men's college basketball until March Madness, so I don't really have a good sense of their cancellations. But on the women's side, there's just been a ton. And The Next, they send out a daily email about women's basketball, and there's a section for listing cancellations because it's such a part of the season. So it's like, here are the games you should watch, and here are the games that are canceled. And for example – this one really got me – on January 12th, Em Adler, who writes the newsletter, they wrote, “Only 5% of tomorrow's games are canceled. Woo!” Because that's such a celebration that at this point, if you're only down to 5%, because COVID is just rampant.
Amira: Absolutely. At the same time, over in Premier League, you'll remember that teams were begging Premier League to just stop, you know? At the same time they're running ads for their “festive fixtures.” Here we go, 40 games in 40 days. And people were like, we can't play! [laughter] There's outbreaks on all the teams! Like, we can't actually do this. They've had to start…Literally, they had to start when they show the table, because there's some teams that had so many outbreaks that they had played like three, four games less than other teams. So to have that many games being postponed and canceled – at the exact same time that they're running press for their festive fixtures.
I think all of these things as we’ve moved into this winter season and into the new year is really where we are right now, where sports are part of getting that return to normal, but really just emphasizing what the new normal is, which is that we just cross our fingers and hope for the best, hope you can play. So, the thing that has been really capturing some of the biggest attention would be over in the world of tennis, down under. Jessica Luther, can you help us make sense of the chaos?
Jessica: Yeah, I can. I'm so excited about this, which is sad. So, Australia requires all foreign visitors to be vaccinated, but they can grant exemptions. And a couple of days ago, the Australian Open started – first major grand slam of the year in tennis. Tennis Australia, which is run by a guy named Craig Tiley, they have seemed to try very, very hard to make sure that Novak Djokovic would be exempt and able to play in the Australian Open. So, it was unknown publicly until now the Djokovic was unvaccinated – though most people strongly, strongly believed it, because he was one of those people that wouldn't answer the question of whether or not he was, which is always a pretty good indication. He's also said before that, even before vaccines were created for COVID, that he wouldn't be getting one.
So, Craig Tiley constantly pushed for more information about what would count as an exemption from the Australian government, including asking more than once if a recent COVID infection would count as being fully vaccinated and able to get an exemption – and was told no each time he asked. But still, Tennis Australia created an exemption process. And Djokovic, according to Tennis Australia, was worthy of an exemption.
Turns out, Djokovic says he got COVID again and received a positive test on December 16th. But it also turns out that Djokovic, despite that positive test, appeared at public events without a mask in the immediate days after he believed he was exposed and even after testing positive. That includes an event the day after he got his positive result, where he appeared with youth tennis players, unmasked, at his tennis center. He claims he didn't yet know the test result. But still, he did know the next day when he participated in a photo shoot and interview with L'Equipe. He now says that was, quote, “an error of judgment.”
But also, he wrote on his visa paperwork that he had not traveled to any other countries in the 14 days before arriving in Australia. That was either a mistake or a lie, depending on how generous you want to be. Djokovic had in fact traveled between Spain and Serbia, and we know that because he himself posted about it on social media. So when he showed up in Australia on January 5th, he was not allowed in. The border guards said no, and he was held in an immigration detention hotel. The court briefly put a stay on the canceled visa, but ultimately the Australian immigration minister, Alex Hawke, he revoked Djokovic's visa. And a three judge panel upheld his decision, saying he had the right to do so. And Djokovic returned to Serbia before the tournament got underway.
What really gets me about this is Djokovic has had a cavalier attitude about the virus the entire time. You know, I burned him back in the summer of 2020 when he put on his own tournament that led to a bunch of people getting COVID, including Djokovic. That was his first bout of it. On some level, I mean, I get why Tiley and Tennis Australia want him at the tournament. He is the number one player in the world on the men's side. He's the reigning champion. He's won the Australian Open nine times, more than anyone else. He’d be going for 10. He'd be going for 21 grand slams overall. He's currently tied with Rafa and Federer, so he would be the leader on the men's side for that. And so they wanted all of this, right?Federer is out with injury. I'm now rooting for Rafa, who is there. Go Rafa.
But like, part of what sucks about this is like, there are just a lot of other players. Like, hometown favorite Australian Ash Barty is ranked number one in the world! And she may actually finally win at home, right? That's a huge fucking deal. Naomi's back, reigning champion. But there are two other things I want to mention before I open it up to you guys. Australians were pissed. They are rule followers, so it was like, they're very upset. And it's very interesting…Ben Rothenberg, who's in Australia to cover the tournament, noted that Djokovic is not even that popular there, despite how much he's won, and that someone in the marketing department for the Australian Open knew it. Ben reported at Slate that Djokovic's image is missing from all the promotional materials in Melbourne, both on the grounds and in the city. So they knew going into it that this was going to be a problem on the marketing side.
And the other thing I want to mention, there was one other player who got an exemption: Renata Voracova. Most people have probably never heard of this woman. She's a doubles player from the Czech Republic. She got a visa on an exemption. She went to Australia, made it through border control, played in a warm-up tournament. And on January 5th, the day that Djokovic arrived in Australia and they revoked his visa, they revoked hers too. And they deported her. She though, of course, didn't have the media, didn’t have the means. He is, to be clear here, Djokovic has made more money playing tennis than any other player in the history of tennis. Like, this man has means, right? She didn't have any of that. So, she was deported immediately. And the timing of it appears to be that it was all about Djokovic. So at that point, when it failed for him, she didn't matter anymore.
I don't know. What do you even do with all of that? What a mess! What an asshole. But also like, Tennis Australia, what are you doing? You could have just done a whole campaign around Ash Barty, for god's sake. Like, it doesn't make any sense. And it's so frustrating when you see all those pieces together.
Amira: Well, and I'll add another piece to it, to watch the calculation of, like, “This is the value that he supposedly brings in, thus we have to do all this stuff” when it's in recent memory watching all four slams gang up on Naomi, right? To publicly admonish her, you know, to discipline even Serena for her catsuit. And like, when you think about the treatment of other stars, where they want them, and they know they are valuable to the tournament, and then their idea has been to basically publicly shame and admonish and brow beat them into just performing their tennis labor. And then you see this situation, and it's like, how much more can we coddle you? Like, what can we do?
And the last piece of it was really hard, especially with the constant updates. Every other time you would open Twitter, it'd be like, “Now he's being deported..” and they would have images. And it's like, he's in a posh ass fucking hotel. Like, it's so hard to have that imagery being paired with these updates on it, when you think about like the story you just told about the other player. And I'd be very curious to see where she was staying, what her accommodations looked like through this process. And everyday people who we know are removed over these man-made borders, and not this way.
Jessica: Well, there was like a whole…Advocates were working for immigrants who were being held at the same hotel and have been working for many, many, many months for the government to do something for these people. And the government cares not at all. And the expedited thing around Djokovic has been so intense. And so, I mean, on some level I get there's a whole discussion in Australia about should the immigration minister have this much power over every single person coming in and out? And like, there's bigger discussions here to be had, and they've all just been shrunk into just this one asshole dude making a selfish decision.
Amira: So, where things stand now, Jess…He's gone.
Jessica: He's gone.
Amira: Tournament’s going.
Jessica: It’s already started.
Amira: If you have a revoked visa, does that mean that you can't go for three years?
Jessica: It's not clear at this point. So yeah, there's a chance that he won't be allowed to go back for three years, but like with everything else, apparently there's all kinds of exemptions that can be in place for, you know, they can change that at will, basically. So, we'll see what happens. And it's interesting – the French Open put out a statement immediately, like, “He can come play in France,” but it's also not clear that that's true, that France has put out, you know, they have made it clear that at this point he would not be allowed into France based on everything. So, we'll see.
Amira: Well, we will keep monitoring it moving forward. Meanwhile, the Australia Open has begun, and Naomi is already through to the next round. Coco was upset. People are playing on, and we know there'll be a new winner on the men's side, if nothing else. Brenda, another tournament that is happening over in the land of football is AFCON. What in the world is happening?
Brenda: Well, I should say, I love AFCON, actually. The Africa Cup of Nations, which started at the end of the 1950s; since the late 1960s held every two years. It is a huge piece of global football because it has to do with the independence of African nations and the end of imperialism. It's a real big deal. You know, they started coming into FIFA as independent nations. The football teams were a really important outgrowth of that. However, it's pretty ridiculous. It's pretty fucking ridiculous. So, Senegal, who I had decided was my favorite team going in to AFCON – I'm not really sure why; I don't have a good reason, and it's now changed to Equatorial Guinea – it's missing 11 players.
Amira: That's a whole side. [laughs]
Brenda: 11 players. That's a whole side! And here's the hilarious thing: people think, 11 players? Oh, you've got 12 more. And it's like, what if among the 11 players is every forward and every goalkeeper? [laughs] It's ridiculous. So anyway, this is going on, it goes all of January, and you should follow Sean Jacobs and Africa Is a Country on this because he is always out there posting different stuff to his Substack and updating and all the people he's associated with write great stuff about it. But yeah, it's brought a lot of things to the fore.
First of all, it's become a very sort of drama-filled tournament already, a source of intrigue, right? So, Burkina Faso claims that the COVID infections that their players tested positive for having, just a few hours before the kickoff of the tournament, they felt like they were meant to wait by the confederation to take it so that they were more likely to show positive and not be able to play. [laughs] There’s nothing more AFCON than that. Then now it's become a whole thing where they're like, you know, when the tests come, what kind of tests they're using, what the protocols are. You know, it becomes this big deal about who's getting a psychological or otherwise advantage.
The other thing has to do with spectators. That's been a really big part of it. In Cameroon – which is a place with a lot of medical facilities, so not to be assumed to be quote-unquote “underdeveloped” whatsoever – only 6% of the population is vaccinated. And that is a requirement for going to see AFCON. And so, to their credit, the Cameroonians have used this as a means to try to convince people to get vaxxed. They have to be fully vaxxed and to have a test – a negative test, obviously – to come in and see AFCON. So, to their credit, the Cameroonian government has tried to use this, but you've seen very sparse attendance because of the low vaccination rate.
But they've been on the kind of offensive, saying like, we're going to try to use AFCON – because it's all throughout January, it doesn't end until February – to try to get more people vaxxed. They say that they've gotten thousands that are just interested in attending the tournament. So, that's about as optimistic as you'll hear me be. [laughs]
Amira: Well, Bren, I wanted to ask you a question. Right before AFCON, when folks were naming their national teams, there's a lot of conversation because obviously some players they're pulling from Premier League teams. And there are some people who are being more difficult than others about letting folks go. And that of course inspired a conversation about the lack of respect for AFCON versus other kind of national tournaments. And then it turned into the COVID discussion, and I feel like lost in all of that is the football itself. And so for the teams who are able to field people to play, what’s happening away from the COVID and away from the kind of disrespect that is, you know, still pushing it along?
Brenda: So, a couple of things. I mean, first, fuck the Premier League ever saying anything about AFCON ever. Give me a break! Give me a break. First you just exploited that entire region, period. And then you decided to set up football academies where you exploit these young men, and then you tell them that the one thing that they might be able to kind of, you know, represent, if they can't live in their own countries and play as professionals after the age of 18, now they don't even get to represent their countries in this tournament? Oh, fuck off. Again, Sean Jacobs writes about this brilliantly. It is awesome. These are super talented people. I don't know if the upsets are caused by the COVID thing, because I'm not familiar enough with it.
But Equatorial Guinea, for example, beating defending champion Algeria was amazing. Like, the joy of these players, they are making…I mean, there's some of them playing like the fourth tier teams of Sweden, but the depth of talent is such that they're just like, world-class goal finishes, like, amazing…Okay, there’s some really bad goalkeeping. There's horrendous officiating, as always. And Egypt is awful, you know? They’re really arrogant and they've got Mo Salah and they just sort of trot around like they're the hottest game in town. So I can't wait for them to get beat soon. But it's really wonderful. And the fans that are there are playing music the whole time, celebrating the whole time. I hope they keep their masks on. I don't know, hand wringing. But it's great. It's great. Watch it if you can.
Amira: Yeah. And I think the importance of having, you know, like you said, Cameroon's vaccination drive and stuff like that, but it's so hard to watch the COVID discussion and think about the way a lot of Western nations are hoarding resources, medical supplies, vaccinations, et cetera, is like, you know, part and parcel of this as well. Jess?
Jessica: Yeah. I was just going to piggyback off of that, and I think it's interesting with tennis, they used sport to get the players vaccinated. Like in the summer, like 50 to 60% of the tour was vaccinated. And then Australia was like, “You gotta get a vaccine if you want to come play here.” And it went up to 97% of the tour. Like, sports can do it if they want to, in certain ways. And so, you know, good for Cameron for using AFCON in this way.
Amira: But of course, one of the biggest sports that is in season now is basketball. And like, I have been in one of those arenas. So, I went to Alexis's game. I was like, oh, the students are out, it's women's basketball, which is like, sad fact, but I was like, maybe I'll be a little more safe, I’ll have like an area to myself. No, no. It was 9,190 people in the PMAC! [laughs] I was like, I think my family were the only people with masks on. We were like, what is happening? And it's so hard because their numbers of attendance keep rising at LSU, right? And it's really great to see them embrace women's basketball. And I'm also like, oh my gosh, these arenas…And I'm like, what is happening, Jess, in the NBA?
Jessica: What is happening in the NBA? That's actually a great question. I mean, as you said at the top of the show, like, fucking Rudy Gobert got COVID again! And the stark difference between how the NBA reacted in March 2020 versus now. I did want to read...There was this ESPN piece about the NBA and dealing with COVID, and the lede is just wild. So it says, “While more than 300 NBA players have entered the league’s health and safety protocols this season because of COVID-19 related issues, several league general managers told ESPN that a debilitating issue remains the recent surge of team staffers, from coaches to support staff and beyond, entering protocols for the same reason.” So, more than 300 players, team staff, referees…Like, literally the entire league is infected with COVID. And yet they play on. It's just something that this was the league that basically started the real shutdown, the closest thing we got to one in the US. And here they are just like, ah, fuck it!
Amira: And it's wild too, like when you’re…They have commercials now, right? About like their preferred COVID testing device. Like, “The official testing device of the NBA!” Which is wild if you think about it.
Jessica: Well, they’re really using it. [laughter] Like, extensively, at this point!
Amira: But like, it's just disaster capitalism. Like, it's opened up avenues for new sponsorships of the league. It's like, the official COVID device of the National Basketball Association! But yeah, like you said, there's a lot of call-ups happening, and so people are getting…Opportunities?
Jessica: Yeah. It's weird. It's like the silver lining of this? And it feels weird to, I mean, it feels weird at all to be like, yay! But it is interesting to me, there've been a bunch of G Leaguers who've gotten called up. The NBA changed the rules – they had to change the rules in order to make this possible. But they're getting 10 day contracts to fill in the holes. As of late December, more than 80 had gotten called up at one point. It’s probably higher now, we're in the middle of January. I just want to spotlight 40 year old Joe Johnson, he got signed to one. He left the league about three years ago and he's been trying to get back in and he got to play in a winning game.
And it's also refs are getting called up. David Aldridge reported at The Athletic that, “One team front office member volunteered last week that the quality of officiating has been impacted much worse than the quality of play around the league, even allowing for all the 10 day contracts and deals for once great stars who've had to replace the more than 120 players since the league’s health and safety protocols in December.” So, it's having a real impact with these people getting to come up, but that's cool that they get to go play in the NBA? I don't know.
Brenda: Well, I have my suspicion that the NBA would like nothing better than to get rid of the draft and NCAA and have a minor league program, and that the G league is really–
Jessica: Yeah, haven’t they been moving towards that?
Brenda: Yeah, that’s what really what they want to do.
Jessica: So this is good for the NBA, is what you're saying. [laughs]
Brenda: It's good for the NBA, because I think really, like, signing bonuses, draft picks, stuff like…They would love to get rid of that. And also to show you that they can develop like the minor leagues do and they don't need to rely upon college anymore. I don't think they want to mess with the NCAA anymore. Maybe they're hedging a little on the NIL. Like, they might be able to get a player that makes a name for themselves in college that can bring in some branding opportunities. So I think they're not ready to say no more NCAA, but I think they look at the G League and they are sort of salivating at the idea that MLB makes money on the minor leagues. Maybe they can make money on the G League and that there is a missing opportunity with the NCAA. And I think there is for them.
Amira: Right. Because they've been in this hybrid limbo. Like the NFL, right?
Jessica: Yes.
Amira: College football, why we call it a farm system for that NFL is because there's not alternatives. Like, it's the why they're a monopoly, right? Some people can go to Canada or they play arena, but that's not really the pathways. That's why you have people staying in at least three years and then going pro because that's the only way. And basketball has been a little bit more in limbo where, like Brenda said, you could get stars. But there's other pathways to professional basketball. I mean, the frustration of the pandemic, we've watched how it’s brought so much destruction and hardship to so many people.
And we also have watched people in institutions who are already rich and well-resourced get richer. Why I call it disaster capitalism is we see these moments that open up possibilities and they're supposed to open up possibilities to strengthen community care and public health and the way we do things. And instead it feels like it opens up possibilities for these institutions to get better at being themselves.
Brenda: To make money!
Amira: Yeah.
Brenda: They use disasters to make money.
Amira: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. It was such a perfect Burn It All Down intervention, Brenda, because it's like, I'm thinking, oh, look at these nice individual stories of these players. And you're like, look at the systemic shit around it. And it's like, oh god…Like, it's so hard.
Brenda: But both are true!
Jessica: Exactly.
Brenda: Both are true. It's very cute–
Jessica: Both are true. And which is why this sucks! [laughs]
Brenda: It's very cute to see the Lance Stephenson love all around, and also the NBA say, how can I make money off of that real goodwill, you know?
Jessica: Yeah.
Brenda: Because it is so cute, like, all the other players and the audience, and people are like, oh wow, that's awesome. You know? I like it too.
Amira: Well, that kind of leads to the question I kind of want to end with. So, two years ago, sports, as Jess mentioned, were largely the thing that made the world take notice of the severity of COVID-19. But their return also facilitated a feeling of normalcy. So where are we? What are we left with when we look around this landscape? When we look from AFCON to, you know, NBA, in college arenas, over down to the Australian Open. And where does that leave us?
Jessica: Yeah, that's a good question, and I'm not sure that I feel like I have a good answer to it. I think in Australia, they certainly felt like Djokovic was bad. Like, he was bad news and could foster more anti-vax sentiment. Kicking him out, we could argue, might've done that as well. But you know, there is this feeling there that these things go together. I do want to just tell everyone, Howard Bryant, friend of the show, he wrote a great piece at ESPN last week called Novak Djokovic is a profile in selfishness, and sports leaders are failing us all. And there's a lot of great stuff about Djokovic in there. So, if you want to continue to burn your rage there, Howard's got it. But he does a really beautiful job, painfully so in its precision, of pointing to sports in general as part of the problem here. And I'm just going to quote a little piece of it.
It says, “It is the entire industry of sports, the leagues and their teams, governing bodies, the players and their unions, and fans that has collectively been one of the least responsible entities during the pandemic. Perhaps COVID-19 has merely exposed the selfishness that comes with individualism as orthodoxy, but it has been the game’s leadership that has enabled the players' behavior, not the other way around.” And I feel like when we have these discussions, even with Djokovic, like, recognizing Tennis Australia's role in leaving that space for him to even show up and for all of this to happen is really important. And so, it doesn't make me feel good, what sports are doing. I constantly am feeling bad about it, at this point.
Brenda: I think when Howard writes “individualism as orthodoxy,” you know, it's so hard to expect sports to be anything better than a government. I mean, I’m pissed too!
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Brenda: You know what I mean? But athletes, like all workers, like you and me – Burn It All Down going to Portland, potentially – we are put in a position where we have to make decisions that shouldn't be up to the individual. And so I really like that Howard pointed to that, because the things that we're being asked to do are too hard. If it's a young graduate student being asked to make a decision, does she go to a conference to do an interview? Even if she finds it's irresponsible, and works on public fucking health herself, and has to go?
Amira: It's the CDC being like, you're good in five days to go back to work.
Brenda: Yeah. Don't take a test!
Amira: When we know that’s A) not a thing, and B) we haven't even begun to wrap our collective arms around the extent of long COVID and these lasting effects, or just like the gaps of loss and grief and disruption. And, you know, I find sports to be maybe back where we were in 2020 when it was like, the athletes involved are laboring under conditions that we are seeing mirrored in other kinds of labor conditions. And also, so many people find it an escape from their conditions that it holds it in this place of escape, right? It's fun to go to the games. Like, I don't go out much, but the fact that I'll drive to Baton Rouge to see my cousin, like, there's a way that family has become so, I mean, underscored importance of family and of being there. And it was this kind of thing of like, it's gonna go on. I feel powerless to stop it.
There's a kind of exhaustion and feeling of smallness. Like you can't do anything as an individual, even though we've made the burden of this pandemic an individual one – wear your mask, get your shot, do this – when it's institutional failure upon institutional failure. And sports are also institutions. And so here we are. So, welcome to Burn It All Down, where we have lots of questions, very little answers [laughter] and all of the outrage. But 2022 is here. COVID is still a thing. Sports are rolling merrily along, and we will continue to monitor how all these things collide, overlap, and exist together in the messiness of the world of sports.
This week, Jess talks to powerlifter and recent Queer Eye star Angel Flores about Angel competing in the new MX division, and her conflicting feelings about it. Plus, her experience on Queer Eye and what she wants to say to trans youth in this moment. Check it out on Thursday.
Angel Flores: Everybody should have a right to be a champion. Everybody should have the right to push themselves and work hard and put a medal around their necks and envision themselves in the podium. We shouldn't be taking that away from people, because taking that away will honestly detract from lives, and taking that away is what ends up causing high suicide rates and high rates of self-harm and high rates of depression and anxiety.
Amira: All right, y’all, the first burn pile of 2022 is here, and I am excited to get it going. It's another year, another end of football season, which means more discussion on the lack of Black head coaches in the NFL. If you're listening to this today, there is one, that is one Black head coach in the National Football League: Mike Tomlin. Let me say that again for you: Mike Tomlin is currently the only Black head coach in the National Football League – who has players who are Black upwards of 69% of the damn league. This is obviously the time of year where everybody pretends to give a crap about the Rooney Rule and we talk about it and we debate it, and nothing fucking changes.
The two kind of big surprise firings that contributed to this, one, Brian Flores, who we had shouted out on the show. Brenda had talked about Brian getting the job at Miami as the Dolphins’ head coach. Brian was let go after leading Miami to an 8 and 1 finish, which was tied for the best finish of the last nine weeks of the NFL. Turned the season around, had a winning season, the first consecutive winning seasons for Miami since 2003. I was a freshman in high school! And yet, on Black Monday, which is very appropriately named lately, Stephen Ross said, “An organization can only function if it's collaborative and if it works well together, and we're not working well together,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he fired him.
There are lots of reports about who in the building were friends, what to do with the quarterback, yada yada, yada. But it's very clear here that the Dolphins have gone all in on their GM casting Flores out. This comes, of course, on the same day that the Houston Texans fired David Culley in his first season. Culley was the only Black coach hired in the last cycle. So in the last cycle, when we were talking about why Eric Bieniemy wasn't hired and all these other Black coordinators weren't hired, the one person they could point to was David Culley. He is now out of a job.
It is very rare to be fired in your first year. It wasn't a good season – 4 and 13. It's also in a pandemic. There's also injuries. You also have time, like, people who make investments in people give them time to develop, and that was not extended at all. This is probably one of the most shocking and atrocious firings of the season. The Texans’ front office was like, look, we just have a difference in opinion and philosophy of moving forward, which is something that you think, I don't know, might have come up during the interviews that they just did last year! Who knows. What I do know is that this conversation is tired, and seemingly never ending.
Jess wrote in the chat, who wants to cook the Texans? Which is, again, this is the situation you're coming into. And all the names floated so far have been like, hey, Brian Flores can go over and coach in Houston. And it just feels like another year of the same conversation to maybe hire one Black coach and maybe next year we'll have a new way to have the same conversation we've been having for years and years and years! And I would like to burn that down because I'm sick, I'm sick. I'm just completely over it. And there's nothing else to do at this point, except burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: Now, along the lines of that conversation, you want to talk about pipelines? You want to talk about college coaches? Well, Jess has a burn for us.
Jessica: Yeah, I do. I considered burning the glossing over of Roethlisberger’s harms as he goes into retirement. See you, Ben. Diana Moskovitz handled that, though, at Defector. Go read that. And also the way the GMs and owners in the NBA treated Becky Hammon. But Kirk Ferentz showed up yesterday just begging to be in the burn pile, and I had to oblige. On Sunday, it was announced that Ferentz, the head football coach at Iowa, had disbanded an alumni advisory committee that he created following a 2020 investigation by an outside law firm, Husch Blackwell, that found, quote, “the program's rules perpetuated racial or cultural biases and diminished the value of cultural diversity.”
Iowa let go their racist, bullying strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle, paying him $1.1 million in severance to go away. Side note: you'll remember that Urban Meyer then hired Doyle to be part of his staff at the Jacksonville Jaguars and then quickly had to force him to resign when people were rightly upset that he had hired a racist bully. Ferentz’s son, Brian, remains the offensive coordinator at Iowa, despite being named by multiple players as the source of some of these problems, and is a defendant in a racial discrimination lawsuit brought on by seven former players.
Anyway, Ferentz put together an ex-player advisory committee to work on these problems following this report in 2020. 18 months in, he’s done with it. According to The Athletic, there was a fraught meeting in October. The chair of the committee, David Porter, a former offensive lineman for Iowa, asked one of the assistant coaches to answer the question, “what is your role in creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive environment, and what have you done to help foster that environment?” But at the meeting, the assistants didn't have detailed answers for Porter, and it was “unproductive.”
Then, on January 2nd, Porter sent an email to some former players and others – but not Ferentz – in which he wrote, “After gathering facts for about a year and a half and objectively looking at everything, I have come to this conclusion: the biggest opportunity for our football program to get better is to bring in a new head football coach, football staff, and athletic director.” Nine days later, Ferentz disbanded the committee, writing in an email to the committee, “I've come to a decision that this is an appropriate time to dissolve our committee as it stands currently. As we start a new calendar year and prepare to move forward with our preparation for 2022 season, I am giving thought to how we restructure the committee board in a way that best serves our program moving forward.”
Ferentz of course denies that Porter's email and saying that he should be fired and him ending the committee are at all related, [Amira laughs] saying he actually made this decision back in November and just didn't tell anybody until now. At least one other member of the committee, Jordan Lomax, has tweeted that others in the group disagreed with Porter's assessment.
Okay. My job has taught me not to trust what coaches tell us without definitive proof. It has also taught me that these men will do whatever it takes to secure their job. Ferentz has been in Iowa since 1999, making him the nation's longest tenured FBS head coach. He literally last week signed a contract extension through the 2029 season. He has clearly mastered staying in his job. This also just feels like the way these kinds of things go – you create a committee to help you navigate your program's racism at a time when the spotlight on racism is bright, and then the support for that work wanes as the scrutiny decreases.
I mean, it's very clear that Ferentz hasn't seemed to care that much about this issue for the vast majority of this long-ass tenure that he's had at Iowa. And apparently the athletic director doesn't care either. So, it's wild on some level that Ferentz was even in charge of this committee and therefore could disband it at will on his own. His son is still being sued for racial discrimination! What is happening at Iowa? So, this all sucks, and I just want to start this year burning some shit in college football that looks real rotten, so, burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: All right, Bren, bring us home.
Brenda: So, the Mexican federation of football, the FMF, is run by a guy name Yon de Luisa. He actually is an alum of University of Texas Austin, where he got his MBA. He is a cosmopolitan man who made most of his money off of Televisa and broadcasting rights to football tournaments. He is, along with Henry Kissinger, on the committee of the 2026 World Cup to be held in the United States, Mexico and Canada – both of whom also participate in the human rights review. [laughter] And I think Henry Kissinger really is an appropriate person to review human rights, given that he has violated them no less than 3 million times, for which he cannot leave the country, lest he be arrested by the International Criminal Court. These are the people that Yon de Luisa hangs out with on a regular basis.
So, Yon…Yon, by the way, is a Spanish-ified way to say John, so you should say “Jon,” really. Yon and his friends have decided that all of the punishments that Mexico has been given by FIFA are ridiculous, for the p-chant, the chant that they say when the opposing goalkeeper touches the ball, a homophobic chant. They spent years trying to contort the Spanish language so that it didn't sound like a p-chant was homophobic, that using homophobic slurs was in fact not homophobic, but fun and traditional. And now that that's been proven wrong in every single instance by scholars and regular speakers and footballers themselves and LGBTQ+ community members themselves, their new explanation is that FIFA has not done enough to recognize the ways in which they've tried over the last six months to undo this homophobic chant that they allowed and encouraged for 20 years.
So, Yon de Luisa is now undergoing what he calls a “war against FIFA,” which is funny because he sits on the executive committee of FIFA and is organizing FIFA’s World Cup 2026. But the war that he's waging, this war that he considered so justified, is to maintain Mexico's ability to play in front of fans, no matter how many times they're homophobic. That’s the kind of war that he wants to fight, and he's willing to go all the way to CAS, which is of course the Court of Arbitration of Sport in Switzerland that is above FIFA. And if you think for a second that some people at FIFA haven't encouraged this, then you would be very new to FIFA, very naive, and probably don't have faith in vaccination either. [Amira laughs]
So, you know, all of this is so gross. I thought it'd be quick. But then I guess this is quick given that it's a 20 year process. So, I want to burn the behavior of Yon de Luisa. I want to burn the way in which this has been portrayed as a crusade against the unfair people asking for basic respect and protection for LGBTQ+ communities, to not normalize violence against gay people, which has been rampant and horrible in Latin America. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: After all that very necessary burning, it is time to highlight some torchbearers of the week. We'll start with our honorable mentions. Jess?
Jessica: Pro disc golfer Thomas Gilbert, the top ranked Canadian athlete in his sport, posted a photo on Instagram on January 8th, and above a picture of himself he simply wrote, “I'm gay.” Gilbert is the first male athlete at the elite level in pro disc golf to publicly disclose that he is gay. Go, Thomas!
Amira: Brenda, who you got?
Brenda: Michelle Kang, who outmaneuvered the terrible dudes, terrible dudes, that didn't want to sell her the Washington Spirit, even when she was willing to pay more than those guys. And she has, over the last two weeks, it's on Twitter, done tons of cool, smart, strategic moves. And she now apparently is set to gain control of the NWSL's Washington Spirit. Woo!
Amira: Woo woo! It is 2022, which means Sonja Stills is now officially the new commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference. This is the first time that a Black woman or a woman in general will be the commissioner for a Division I HBCU conference. She was appointed to the role in the fall and her tenure has now begun. So, welcome, Commissioner Stills! Jess?
Jessica: I love this one. Brittany Charbonneau won all four runDisney races at the Walt Disney World Marathon in Florida. She's the first person to ever do so. These four races together are called the Dopey challenge, and it consists of running a 5k/3.1 miles, 10k/6.2, a half marathon/13.1, and a full marathon/26.2 miles, four days in a row. That's 48.6 miles in four days. They’ve been doing this for 29 years and she's the first person to sweep those events. That is wild, that someone can be the fastest in a 5k and in a marathon, and that only be four days apart.
Amira: And at the Disney marathon, which are amazing because people run in tutus and princess crowns. So she won that while appearing in marathon costumes of Cruella de Vil, Elsa from Frozen, Joy from Inside Out. And it's amazing. And their medals are sick. All right, can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Brenda, who is our torchbearer of the week?
Brenda: Natalie Simon, the first Black woman to earn a FIFA badge. That's the highest badge that there is out there for referees, for those of you who don't know. She is one of four US women to hold such a badge, and the first Black woman. It has taken her 32 years. She described it “as almost a miracle,” and given the kinds of obstacles – and the burn that I just did – you can understand that it is really pretty miraculous that someone had that kind of perseverance. So, really excited. Congratulations, Natalie Simon, finally, finally getting recognized.
Amira: Alrighty y’all, what is good in your worlds? Bren, I know you are a big fan of this segment, so I will start with you.
Brenda: [laughs] Well, this week it's easy, and I've already talked about it, which is AFCON and all the upsets and everything I learned in all the rabbit holes I go through, because I really don't get that many opportunities to just sit there and look up the history of head coaches of Algeria, you know what I mean? And then I get into it and I'm like, oh my god…And then there was this coup…And this guy's nephew took over…And then there were elections…You know? History, I love history, and when I can sit there and kind of rabbit hole out. So, I've loved it. Sierra Leone tying Ivory Coast and maybe goes on to the next round of 16. Like, I already talked about Equatorial Guinea beating Algeria 1-0 – biggest upset in probably the tournament's history!
And just getting into, you know, getting into all of the drama. I really dislike Mo Salah. I love when I can have a bad take that everyone hates, you know what I mean? Like, because I'm such an easy, like, “I love Messi,” you know? How boring is that? You know what I mean? So I love getting to say like Mo Salah annoys me. He tries to use his star power to get fouls that he doesn't deserve. He's annoying, and Egypt's annoying. And so I like having bad takes like that. It's really fun. So…And oh, I should say, oh! This is what's good too. I have a job that pays for fubo! [laughter] So, I've never gotten to watch AFCON at these stages in my life. Yeah, yeah!
Jessica: Look how happy Brenda is! Yay!
Amira: She got very happy!
Brenda: I do love the football.
Amira: Jessica.
Jessica: Yeah. So, we got our bathroom renovated over the last month– [laughs]
Amira: I was about to say, she’s gonna talk about her bathroom! [laughter]
Jessica: And I just…They were wonderful. They did it in a month, and it looks beautiful. We've been in this house for, I don't know, 14 years, and we've hated that bathroom since the day we moved in. So, that feels wonderful. I just like to go stand in it. [laughter] I just go stand in the bathroom sometimes. I wanted to shout out two friends of the show, Kaillie Humphries and Elana Meyers Taylor. They both qualified for the US bobsled team going to China. [Amira and Brenda cheer] I interviewed Elana in February 2020 on episode 145 and Kaillie in March of 2021. And I saw just today that they had made the team, and I was very excited.
And also what's good, hopefully you guys listened last week, I talked to Amira about this project that we've been working on. I have to say, like, it's just been really fun to work on it. There’s hard stuff in the podcast, you know, the subject matter and stuff, but just the entire thing is…It’s been such a joy for me over the last eight months or so. And it's fun to finally share it with the world and be able to say, this is the thing that has been good for me over the last eight months. So, if you haven't listened, I hope you go back and listen to that.
Amira: Yes, I concur. We're getting really close to the release and so it's starting to feel real, like we've done this thing and it will be out in the world. And so we will continue to remind you of that before American Prodigies season three on Black gymnastics drops on February 21st. One of the best things that has been good for me has been watching Alexis absolutely return to form and shine at LSU. I sobbed in the stands when she hit her high of 30 points against her former team. The joy that she used to play with is back, and that means more to our family than you could possibly ever know. Like, it's been a treat to watch.
And me and Samari and Michael binged Yellowjackets last night on Showtime. I won't say anything more except it's fucking wild. But it…Well, actually, I will say one more thing. It's no spoilers! Jess is looking at me like I'm going to spoil anything. I'm not! I'm just going to say, I love that they were a 90s era women’s soccer team, because it was just like, I love 90s period dramas, like when we can get into the 90s, because I'm like, oh, so 90s! It’s so…And they’re just a bit older than me, but it was still enough of the 90s that I could latch on to. And of course, growing up and playing in the 90s, it was a lot of fun. Yes, you should watch it, Brenda. It is intense, and wild. But Christina Ricci’s in it!
Brenda: I like her.
Jessica: And Juliette Lewis.
Amira: And Juliette Lewis.
Brenda: I like her too.
Amira: And then also, I will get to see Brenda and Lindsay this week over in Portland at the Independent Supporters Council's meeting and conference in which we will be very messed up and super fascinated. [laughter]
Brenda: Oh yeah.
Amira: And I am happy to see Courtney, and also Sam Coffey, who just signed her two year contract with the Portland Thorns. It will be cold and COVID-y, but I'm happy to see the people I love. So, I just need to see Shireen. I'll have seen all of my co-hosts in a single week, and it will be like…I’m like the only person that gets to do that, and I feel very special because of it, okay? And shoutout to Shireen, who was just announced as a new senior contributor to the CBC, and we are so, so, so, so proud of our Shireenie. So if you haven't checked out her latest pieces over there, please go do so. They are as wonderful as she is.
There is a bunch of sports happening. So, broadly speaking, there's NFL playoffs. I told you, you could find the games on Nickelodeon. Women's college basketball is rolling merrily along. Some games that you might want to check out: #13 Texas at #9 Iowa State at 7:30 ET on Wednesday, January 19th; a huge game on Thursday, the 20th: Louisville and NC State, currently #3 and #4 in the nation, will face off at 7:30 ET. You also have a big game with Oklahoma and K State at 2:00pm ET on Sunday, January 23rd. We're in conference play, so almost every game is huge at this point. Olympic trials are happening and/or wrapping up, because guess what? The Winter Olympics are almost here. The Premier Hockey Federation is still in season, and AFCON, as Brenda has told us, is amazing and infuriating, but also amazing. They're finishing group work this Thursday and on Sunday the 23rd they kick off the round of 16. So stay tuned to Burn It All Down. Maybe some watch parties on the horizon.
That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is on our web and social media. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. You can follow Burn It All Down on all your social media platforms. Listen, subscribe, rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Of course, for show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldown.pod.com. You'll find a link there to our merchandise at our Bonfire store, and right now through the entire month of January you can use the code FLAMES2022 for 22% off of your qualifying merchandise purchase. That's over on our Bonfire storefront. And thank you of course as always to our patrons and to our all in our flamethrowing family. And as Brenda says, burn on and not out. Welcome to the new year!