The End of Sport Podcast

Episode 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part I

On this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Nathan sit down with Kim Shore for the first part of a two-part episode to talk about different forms of abuse that persist in Canadian gymnastics as well as how we as fans, parents, and onlookers can prepare for it and prevent it.
Kim Shore is a certified Corporate Leadership Coach, Workshop Facilitator, former member of the Gymnastics Canada Board of Directors, chair of the first ever GymCan Safe Sport Committee and was a gymnast for her entire childhood and competed at national and international competitions. She ultimately achieved a full ride scholarship to a Division I NCAA school, CIAU individual and team national championships, and a 7th place finish at the Sport Aerobic World Championships.
This is a really special episode that will continue past conversations we’ve had with Ciara McCormack and many others. We hope that this interview will help equip parents with approaches, questions, and demands they should make of their coaches and teams, and national governing bodies of sport, governments. Parents want to know what they should do, should they even enroll their parents in more intense sport environments to begin with? How do they need to prepare themselves and their children to recognize warning signs? These are all such difficult questions. But we hope to continue talking through some answers that we got from Ciara about a year ago, and dive even further here. 
We want to make it very clear that we are rejecting the premise that athlete abuse is an acceptable part of modern sport. It absolutely is not. It needs to be rooted out. Infuriatingly, many sportspeople seem to have accepted the existence of sporting abuse. We say they seem to have accepted it due to their reporting and response to abuse as a ‘bad apple’ phenomenon the way they view racism. This is evidenced by the horrific pervasiveness of sporting abuse, with cases in every single sport from the youth level to the pros and Olympic Games, which is abetted and promoted by sport orgs, universities, etc. who refuse to properly investigate, create pathways to reporting abuse, etc. And as we’ve seen with the NCAA and other orgs: some even reject any responsibility for protecting child athletes. This all means that parents of children of all genders are practically sending their kids to sports with a high possibility that they could be abused. Parents basically have to cross their fingers and toes that coaches, other athletes, etc. won’t abuse their children. This is institutional and governmental failure at numerous levels. Hopefully this episode will help provide a guideline of sports to help parents and athletes navigate the dangerous nature of modern sport.
Children should be able to compete in sports without worrying that they’ll be abused and harassed; parents should feel completely comfortable signing their children up without having to be hypervigilant about predators. But as we’ve talked about, the people who created modern sport decided to control athletes’ bodies first and foremost under the guise of acceptable and even laudable behavior.
And since sport orgs have decided that their actual purpose is not to protect athletes - but to protect the image and liability of the organization and powerful people who control it – then athletes’ bodies are mere pawns in the sport orgs’ game for control.
The following discussion is absolutely not a sign that we are accepting of the status quo, nor that parents and children should accept the status quo. This is about fighting back.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com
 

Episode 91: The Wide World of Surveillance in Sport with Courtney M. Cox

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by University of Oregon Assistant Professor Courtney M. Cox for a wide-ranging conversation about the ethics of the sports industry. Courtney interrogates the ever-proliferating surveillance practices in the world of sport and the ways they are connected to exploitation and harm for athletic workers. She also dives into her fascinating experiences inside the sports-media complex at ESPN and as a professor at the University of Nike and the ways they have informed her thinking about sports. 
Check out Courtney's collaborate project The Sound of Victory, which focuses on the historical relationship between music, sound, and sport and how musical and sporting intersections (in)form historical and contemporary understandings of space and place, on Twitter or Instagram!  
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 90: Football and Fairness with Johnny Stanton

Johanna, Nathan, and Derek are joined by Johnny Stanton, a Cleveland Browns fullback and Athlete Ally ambassador, to discuss the politics of football, from gender and sexuality in the locker room, to race-norming in the concussion settlement, and exploitation at the college level. We also engage the always difficult topic of what it is like to perform a job that comes with such exceptional physical risks.
You can check out Johnny's work with Athlete Ally here.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 89: The NLRB Memo with Jennifer Abruzzo

On this very special episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Jennifer Abruzzo to discuss her September 29 memo entitled “Statutory Rights of Players at Academic Institutions (Student-Athletes) Under the National Labor Relations Act.” That memo has been widely interpreted as open season for the organizing of campus athletic workers, so we went to the source to ask about its implications for college sports and what exactly it means for college athletes who want to organize.
 
For any listeners who are unfamiliar, we begin the show by sharing the most salient passages of the memo and explaining the function of the NLRB. From there, we talk to the General Counsel about why she felt the memo was necessary, what it means for college athletes, whether it applies to non-scholarship athletes, and if the NLRB has jurisdiction over public universities. We also get at the tricky question of NCAA rules about compensation and what that means for bargaining with a university over wages. Finally, Johanna and Nathan conclude by breaking down the implications of the conversation and what it means for college sport.
 
You can find the full memo here.
 
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 88: Athletic Labor and #Striketober

In this episode, all three hosts sit down to discuss where athletic labor fits in the flurry of labor action that has been called "#striketober." Among other things, we delve into the place of athletes in the labor movement as a whole, the vaccine mandate debates in the context of sport, and concussion consensus statements in relation to the occupational health and safety conditions of athletic labor.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 87: Fighting for #FairBall in the Minors with Harry Marino

In this episode we are joined by former minor league baseball player and executive director of Advocates for Minor Leaguers Harry Marino to discuss the unconscionable working and living conditions minor league baseball players are subjected to. We discuss the impact of the pandemic on minor league baseball, recent developments around housing, and how Advocates for Minor Leaguers are trying to organize players and build solidarity.
For more on the housing struggle of MiLB players, check out this story. For more on the brutal conditions in MiLB, check out this fabulous expose by Joon Lee. For previous End of Sport coverage, check out Nathan's Jacobin conversation and this really good early episode with Dirk Hayhurst.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 86: On Coercion and Resistance in College Sport

In this episode, Nathan draws from a recent discussion at the American Studies Association to lay out his conception of the coercive conditions that frame participation and resistance in college sport. Derek and Johanna respond with their own meditations on the future of college sport and the challenges that continue to confront campus athletic workers.
Check out our recent Guardian piece on why NIL doesn't address the fundamentally exploitative plantation dynamics of college sport.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 85: #Striketober with Max Alvarez

Johanna and Nathan are joined by Max Alvarez, editor-in-chief of The Real News and host of the Working People podcast, to break down the state of the labor movement and class warfare in the United States. Max walks us through the intricacies of some of the most prominent strikes this month and situates them within political economic developments in recent US history. He also draws on his experiences in Alabama to situate Amazon as a front in the class war. 
 
For more on the recent flurry of strikes, check out this piece by Jonah Furman and Gabe Winant, this piece on NY taxi drivers by Luis Feliz Leon, and all of Max's incredible coverage on the Real News and Working People, including this conversation with Robin DG Kelly and this discussion with Dan Osborn about Kellogg's.
 
Follow Max and Working People on Twitter. 
 
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 84: The Sports Media Problem with Adam H. Johnson

In this week’s episode, Nathan and Derek are joined by Citations Needed co-host Adam H. Johnson to talk about sports media within the broader landscape of US media commodity spectacle, problems within the exploitative NCAA athletic system and the complicity of sports media, pandemic sport, and, of course, how Adam reconciles all of these problems within the context of his own fandom.  
Adam H. Johnson is co-host of the essential Citations Needed podcast (w/ Nima Shirazi) and one of our most important public critics of media discourse. He is also author of a brand new substack newsletter called The Column.
You can follow Adam on Twitter!
 
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested, you can support the show via our Patreon!
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com

Episode 83: Progress for Whom? With Britni de la Cretaz

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan interview one of our favorite critical sports journalists,  Britni de la Cretaz, about their tireless work spotlighting trans and non-binary athletes and critiquing sporting discrimination. They have written for a phenomenal array of outlets, including the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and many more, and have a co-authored book with Lyndsey D’Arcangelo coming out in November 2021: HAIL MARY: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League.
Britni begins by sharing how they got into sports journalism. They pinpoint why mainstream sports media remains loathe to hire and include critical analyses of sport like their work and why hustle culture absolutely is exhausting for them and other freelance journalists. We transition to Britni’s Vice analysis in “Why Can’t WNBA Broadcasters get the Players’ Names Right?” Britni walks us through various tools available to broadcasters, racism, as well as the role played by the decentralization of the league’s coverage on the mispronunciation of Black, Brown and international basketball players in the WNBA. The work that broadcasters’ pronunciation forces onto the players is of crucial importance. Our discussion of Britni’s superb work on nonbinary athletes such as Layshia Clarendon and others in Sports Illustrated last summer continues this theme by highlighting how the questions that Clarendon and other nonbinary players have to ask themselves just to keep playing constitutes additional labor that we often forget about. The WNBA’s collective efforts to support her in an inclusive announcement about him provide ideas for how leagues can support nonbinary athletes’ humanity first and foremost.
The conversation explores what can make sport unsafe for trans and nonbinary people (such as cishet white feminists who argue for segregating cis athletes from trans and nonbinary ones), and to what extent sport can be reformed or recreated to make it safe for them. Britni also takes us through their Bitch Media piece about the NBA’s hiring and preference for male coaches with known assault and/or predatory qualities like Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups over Becky Hammond. The possibilities and limits of representation for women – namely white and white-passing women - in sport organizations, broadcasting, and teams continue to prevent altruistic inclusion, as they analyzed in ‘progress for whom?’
Britni’s work explores the intersection of sports, gender, culture, and queerness. Their website is here where you can (and should!) subscribe to Britni’s newsletter. You can follow them on Twitter here @britnidlc.
 
For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)
Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.
__________________________________________________________________________
You can support the show via our Patreon.
As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram.
www.TheEndofSport.com