The End of Sport Podcast

Episode 97: Universities Are *Choosing* Not To Pay Academic Bonuses to Athletes

Well, it's been a minute! In this episode of The End of Sport, Nathan, Johanna, and Derek catch up on some recent cases of harm in sport, including a preview of our latest piece for The Guardian on how many of our esteemed institutions of higher education are *refusing* to pay entirely permissible academic bonuses for campus athletic workers, abuse and harm in Gymnastics Canada, and the recent putatively 'independent' review of the NHLPA's handling of Kyle Beach's reporting of sexual abuse. 
See our latest piece on universities refusing to pay academic bonuses to campus athletic workers in The Guardian. 
For more on Kim Shore's work, brilliant athlete mobilization, and recent news on abuse and harm in Gymnastics Canada, click 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 96: On UCLA Gymnastics, Iowa Football, and Ted Lasso

In this catch up episode, Johanna, Nathan and Derek sit down to talk about recent developments in the world of capitalist sport, including the failures of the UCLA athletic department to protect gymnasts from targeted racism (and the brilliant social media mobilization to shed light on it), the racist culture in the Iowa football program, and (at long last) we offer some of our critical thoughts on the cultural product of Ted Lasso. 
See Dr. Letisha Brown's piece on UCLA Gymnastics in First and Pen 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 95: On Transphobia in Capitalist Sport with Karleigh Chardonnay Webb

In this episode, Johanna and Derek sit down with Karleigh Chardonnay Webb to talk about the transphobic moral panic surrounding Lia Thomas, exclusionary practices and discourses of ‘fairness’ and ‘competition’ in capitalist sport, and how allies and put in the work to make sport an inclusive space for trans folks.  
Karleigh Chardonnay Webb has been working as a sports journalist including for ESPN for over 27 years. She currently writes for Outsports and hosts a podcast called The Trans Sporter Room, which we *highly* suggest listeners check out. She is also an athlete of many sports, and a staff operator forTrans Lifeline which is the first and only peer support line run entirely transgender people.
Check out Karleigh’s latest piece on the NCAA not immediately adopting USA Swimming’s trans policyand on allyship and solidarity from other athletes, both for Outsports.  
 
 
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 94: Pandemic Sport, Convoys, and the Anti-Trans Movement in Sports

In this episode, Johanna, Derek, and Nathan catch up on the last week of sports and politics. Of course, it isn't really your typical 'catch up' on the week of sports podcast. Tune in as we discuss the normalization of the pandemic and the role that sport plays in it, the so-called 'Freedom Convoy' in Canada, and the illogic of the anti-trans movement in sport (and the trend of seeking ally ship with right-wing news organizations).
Athlete Ally Responds to USA Swimming Trans Athlete Policy (feat. Johanna Mellis). 
Check out Lou Moore and Derrick White's discussion of the NFL's racism targeting Brian Flores and other coaches on The Black Athlete.
Check out Letisha Brown's piece on racism in the UCLA gymnastics program for First and Pen.  
Katie Barnes Piece on support for Lia Thomas. 
 
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 93: Hard Truths about Football with Chris Borland

In this rather searing episode, Derek and Nathan sit down with former San Francisco 49er and Wisconsin Badger Chris Borland to discuss the football industrial complex. Chris explains why he decided to retire at the very beginning of an exceptionally promising NFL career, how the Care Consortium is profoundly understating the danger of football in concussion research, and what makes college football so fundamentally exploitative. 
You can find Chris' full testimony before Congress on the prevalence of concussions in college football here. You can also follow Chris on Twitter to keep up with everything he is working on!
 
 
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 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part II

On this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Nathan sit down with Kim Shore for the second 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 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