The End of Sport Podcast

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

Episode 82: Higher Ed is Imploding! with Asheesh Kapur Siddique

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by historian Asheesh Kapur Siddique to issue blistering critiques about how universities are full-fledged corporations whose number 1 aim is to exploit the labor of graduate students, all faculty (not just contingent ones), and athletic workers—as well as students’ loans—to earn profits.
After walking us through his research on how the British empire governed their colonies through paper and archives in the 18th century, we shift to how we are governed inhumanely by our universities: by business people and executives who often have right-wing political and capitalist interests. Asheesh details his phenomenal Teen Vogue piece from May 2021, “Campus Cancel Culture Freakouts Obscure the Power of University Boards,” about how our universities and colleges are run by Boards of Trustees filled with corporatists and not academics, from Harvard’s racist ‘Board of Overseers’ to even supposedly left-leaning Oberlin College. We discuss the people who are most vulnerable to higher ed’s corporatization especially during Covid – from graduate students and contingent faculty, to athletic laborers and even cutting permanently-employed faculty. Asheesh importantly details the huge potential impact of The Chair discourse (sarcasm), and the threats that we all face in higher education if we continue to ignore our exploitation.
During our conversation we mentioned pieces on how universities are becoming hedge funds with schools attached, and how universities diverted billions of government CARES Covid funds away from educational support to athletics.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is currently working on his book, Rule Through Paper: Archive and Language in the Governance of the British Empire. His work has appeared in numerous academic journals, as well as Teen Vogue and The Daily Beast, Inside Higher Ed, and more.
You can find Asheesh via his website here, as well as on Twitter @AsheeshKSi.
 
 
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

Episode 81: ‘Family,‘ Race, and College Football with Tracie Canada

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by anthropologist Tracie Canada to interrogate the ways in which familial discourses are deployed in the world of college football to obfuscate exploitative power relations and also the ways in which that rhetoric is reappropriated by Black players to fashion their own forms of kinship and care. The conversation also explores the methodological dimensions of ethnography in the world of power five college football and Tracie's fascinating research findings from her work with Black college football players.
Tracie Canada is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. She is currently working on her first book Tackling the Everyday: Race, Family, and Nation in Big-Time College Football. Her work has appeared in Sapiens, Scientific American, and Black Perspectives.
Check out Tracie's analysis of Covid and college football for Sapiens here. Check out Tracie's co-authored discussion of race-norming in the NFL concussion settlement as an after-life of slavery for Scientific Americanhere. Check out Tracie's work on how Black college football players care for one another in Black Perspectives here. You can find Tracie on Twitter @tracie_canada.
 
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

Episode 80: Inside/Out of the Sports Media Complex with Joel D. Anderson

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by Joel D. Anderson for a rich conversation about the labor of college football, the tensions of fandom, and the challenges of being a critical voice in the sports media complex. 
Joel D. Anderson is a writer and podcaster at Slate, where he co-hosts the show Hang up and Listen. He has previously worked for ESPN, Buzzfeed, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and played football for two years at TCU.
You can subscribe to the Hang up and Listen podcast here. You can find Joel's brilliant reporting on Liberty University athletics here. You can find Joel's story on Chuba Hubbard's protest at Oklahoma State in the context of Grambling State's 2013 labor action here. You can find Joel on Michael Jordan and The Last Dance here.
Follow Joel 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