The End of Sport Podcast

Episode 107: Abuse and Harm in Canadian Sport with Jennifer Fraser and MacIntosh Ross

In today's episode we are joined by Jennifer Fraser and MacIntosh Ross to discuss the pervasive abuse and harm in the world of Canadian sport and the efforts of athletes and academics to push the federal government to initiate an independent judicial review despite resistance from within. 
Jennifer Fraser is an educator, consultant, and author of The Bullied Brain: Heal your Scars and Restore your Health.
MacIntosh Ross is Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at Western University and organizing member of Scholars Against Abuse in Canadian 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 106: Historicizing and Theorizing Harm in Youth Sport w/ Dionne Koller

Johanna and Nathan are joined by Dionne Koller, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore, to discuss her fascinating new paper "Identifying Youth Sport." The conversation explores the historical development and particularities of the US youth sport system, and the ways in which US youth sport can be theorized through a Marxian framework as a site of harm. Tune in for this fascinating discussion. 
 
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 105: Racial Capitalism and Football with Joshua Myers

Nathan is joined by Joshua Myers, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Howard University and author of Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition and  We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989, to talk about Cedric Robinson, racial capitalism, and how we cannot understand football without grappling with intertwined histories of racialization and capitalism. 
 
The conversation explores Josh's brilliant essay in Catapult on his experiences in high school football as a prism for understanding how racial capitalism shapes and constrains those who participate in US football at the high school, college, and professional levels.
 
You can find Josh's essay in Catapult 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 104: We’re back!

In this catch up episode, Nathan, Johanna, and Derek talk about what they have been up to for the past six months before diving into some of the latest issues in sport and society, including the downfall of Twitter, the NLRB regional office in Los Angeles’ ruling that USC, the PAC-12, and NCAA are joint employers of revenue-generating football and basketball players (and it’s direction to pursue unfair labor practice charges), mass harm and violence in Canadian sport, and the seemingly increasing ties between right-wing and anti-trans movements and groups.
 
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 103: Sport and Empire

In the newest episode of our EOS Panels series, Johanna and Nathan talk to Tyler Shipley and Nikhil Pal Singh about what imperialism is, why it is a crucial concept for our understanding of the world system today, and how imperialism advances and is advanced through capitalist sport. 
Tyler A. Shipley is a Professor of Society, Culture and Commerce in the Department of Liberal Studies at Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and author of the books Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination (Fernwood) and Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras (AK Press).
Nikhil Pal Singh is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at NYU and Faculty Director of NYU Prison Education Program. He is also author of the books Race and America’s Long War (UC Press) and Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Harvard University Press).
 
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 102: On Critical Sports Fandom

In this third episode of our End of Sport Panels series, Johanna and Derek sit down with Amanda Mull, Steven Salaita, and Kevin Gannon to explore how some of our favorite anti-racist/anti-capitalist critics, folks whose focus in their work is not on sport, come to engage with sport and experience fandom. The conversation explores what the panelists get out of their engagements with racial capitalist sport and how their experiences with and through sport inform their politics.
Amanda Mull is a three-time guest on the show and staff writer at The Atlantic.
Steven Salaita is a former Associate Professor at Virginia Tech and should-have-been professor at the University of Illinois, before having his position revoked in an actual instance of ‘cancel culture,’ for principled comments about Israeli apartheid. He is the author of eight books, including 2015’s Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.
Kevin Gannon is Professor of History at Grandview University and author of the recent book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto.
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 101: Athletes Reimagining College Sport

In this second episode of the End of Sport Panels series, Johanna and Derek are joined by current and former college athletes to discuss the changing dynamics of the US college sports system and to explore how they would change college sport if they could.Kaiya McCullough is a former UCLA and Washington Spirit soccer player, Chairwoman of the Anti Racist Soccer Club, and Athlete Ally Ambassador.Colin Anderson is a former linebacker for Vanderbilt University.Sophie Carmosino is a rower at Indiana University.Andrew Cooper is a former track athlete at Cal Berkeley and lead organizer of #WeAreUnited and co-founder of United College Athlete Advocates.
 
 
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 100: Critical Sports Scholars on Parenting and Youth Sport

This special 100th episode of the show marks the beginning of a new series on The End of Sport: EOS Panels. The EOS Panels are meant to capture the very best of the academic conference panel--free-flowing discussion among experts on a common theme, but without the cursed academic conference paywall that inhibits access.
In the first of this series, we had the pleasure of being joined by Louis Moore, Lucia Trimbur, and Ryan King-White to discuss how they navigate the tensions of being critical sports scholars with children who participate in sport. This is a wide-ranging discussion that delves into fundamental questions about the value of youth sport, potential forms of harm, and even interrogates the very nature of competition itself. We think you'll enjoy it!
Lou Moore is Professor of History at Grand Valley State University, co-host of the Black Athlete Podcast, and author of the books I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood and We Will Win the Day: The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Athlete, and the Quest for Equality.
Lucia Trimbur is Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at CUNY’s John Jay College and the Graduate Center and a Global Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Come out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym and is currently working on her second book, Lights Out: The Creation of the Concussion Crisis, under contract with Columbia University Press.
Ryan King-White is Associate Professor of Kinesiology at Towson University and editor of the book Sport and the Neoliberal University: Profit, Politics, and Pedagogy.
 
 
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 99: Towards a Public Sociology of Sport

This episode is quite different from our normal releases – rather than an interview or monologue about harm in contemporary sport, we are actually publishing a panel session on the importance of public sports scholarship, particularly in the context of a global pandemic. This episode was recorded in Montreal on April 22, 2022 at the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, or NASSS as you’ll hear in the episode.
The episode starts with Derek urging us to consider the place of both academic conferences – and more specifically, the role that in-person only conferences hold in our fields. In the lead up to organizing this panel, we had been thinking about ways in which we can make our work more accessible and more widely available for folks who may not have access to the ivory tower and/or the ability to attend NASSS – not to mention the desire given that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. Since this panel was focused on the importance of critical public scholarship, we thought….how can we have such a panel that is entirely paywalled in the ivory tower and inaccessible for folks who are not comfortable returning to in-person events? We decided the only way to actually put such a panel on was to – despite a lack of support from the association – put the event on in a hybrid manner. 
We think that we must start resisting the decisions of the academic communities in which we are part of – and doing it vocally and loudly. When thinking of the ways in which we can mobilize against an academic system that contributes to inequality, I think we need to look at small forms of resistance and disobedience to build momentum. The academy has LONG been willingly complicit in erecting some of the most harmful systems of oppression and discrimination, so taking that on requires a concerted effort from us all. So I will simply close with a call to all scholars on conference planning committees, association executive boards, or editorial boards, or any other influential position in our disciplines, to loudly object to exclusionary decisions that are made even if it puts our positions at risk. 
Huge thanks to our panelists! Please check out their brilliant work. 
Letisha Brown, assistant professor at Virginia Tech and incoming assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati. Letisha has published numerous brilliant public pieces in First and Pen, Engaging Sports and The Shadow League and has appeared on podcasts including Crossing the Lane Lines, The Black Athlete Podcast, and is also a friend of the EoS show!
Courtney Szto is an assistant professor at Queens University and author of the 2022 NASSS Outstanding Book Award for Changing on the Fly: Hockey Through the Voices of South Asian Canadians published with Rutgers University Press in 2020. Courtney is managing editor for Hockey in Society, Associate Editor for Engaging Sports, and executive producer of “Revolutions,” a documentary on bike waste and the circular economy premiering tomorrow here at NASSS at 3:30 in Salon 1. Courtney has also appeared on or published in The Globe and Mail, Sports Illustrated, Rabble, Interrupt Magazine, CBC’s The Current, and on a number of podcasts. 
Jules Boykoff is a professor of politics and government at Pacific University and author of NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond, published in 2020 with Fernwood, Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics, published with Verso in 2016, among many others. Jules has also been an active public scholar, publishing on myriad topics in outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York times, The Nation, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, NBC News Think and many others. Jules has also appeared on television on the BBC, Democracy Now, CBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera. 
Victoria Jackson, a Clinical Assistant Professor at Arizona State University who has published in the Los Angeles times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, The Independent, and the Athletic, where she has recently joined as a contributor to the culture vertical. Victoria has also appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss American college sports and is a frequent podcast, radio, TV, and documentary film commentator on sport and society. 
Tracie Canada, is an assistant professor of Anthropology, concurrent faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliated with the Initiative on Race and Resilience at the University of Notre Dame. Tracie is finishing her book about the lived experiences of Black college football players, tentatively titled Tackling the Everyday: Race, Family, and Nation in Big-time College Football. Tracie has published a number of public pieces in outlets like Black Perspectives, Scientific American, SAPIENS, Fieldsights, and Anthropology News. 
And finally Nathan Kalman-Lamb is a Lecturing Fellow at Duke University. Nathan is the author of Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport, published with Fernwood in 2018, and has authored a number of public pieces in outlets such as LA Times, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, Jacobin, and many others. Finally, Nathan is a co-host of The End of Sport Podcast. 
 
 
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 98: Dehumanization and the NFL Draft with Ben Natan

SB Nation writer Ben Natan joins Nathan to discuss the NFL Draft, how it suppresses wages, and the ways in which the process generally dehumanizes and exploits players. The conversation also roves into some current issues in college sports, including a potential partnership between universities and the military to subsidize scholarships in exchange for service and the newest moral panic around NIL.
Check out Ben's piece on the shortcomings of NIL here. You can find him on Twitter @thebennatan.
 
 
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