Episode 42: Cheer, College Football, and Suffering as Virtue with Amanda Mull

To begin the episode, Nathan and Johanna acknowledge the current actions of two groups: 1) the very brave University of Michigan graduate students @geo3550 who are currently striking for a safe and just Covid response from the university and for the school to defund campus police, and 2) the Scholar Strike of college and university educators (Nov. 8-9 in the US and Nov. 9-10 in Canada), inspired by the athlete-activism (!) of the WNBA, NBA, and others against systemic racism and police brutality. Solidarity to everyone involved as they fight for the most important issues of our lifetime! For this episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by the wonderful Amanda Mull, a writer on health in all its varieties for The Atlantic. We chat about the Netflix docuseries Cheer and Amanda’s incisive piece in The Atlantic about it, “Cheer is Built on a Pyramid of Broken Bodies.” Amanda shares with us her MO and approach to selecting, researching, and writing her pieces, and elaborates on why she “felt pranked” when she started watching Cheer. We discuss the series’ portrayal of the horrific incidents of physical harm and emotional damage throughout the show (back injuries, concussions, etc.) and how coach Monica Aldama’s self-presentation as the ‘parental figure’ to athletes with vulnerable backgrounds ultimately reinforces her abusive coaching tactics. Amanda insightfully explains how, in cheerleading and football (and other sports in American culture), athletes’ suffering is glorified as an act of virtue that pays off not only for athletes, but for American society as well. In the second half of the episode, we discuss the role that the NCAA could play in (gasp!) mitigating the violent harm by making cheerleading an NCAA sport, and explore how to hold Aldama accountable for her abusive tactics as a female coach. Amanda shares her take on the narrative that Netflix aimed to present to viewers in the series, as well as the reasons why the sports media complex such as with ESPN refuses to see the obvious way that harm and abuse are foundational to American sports culture. Finally, we discuss with Amanda her background as a lifelong college football fan and how she grapples with her fandom and critical perspective of the sport. Amanda Mull is a writer for The Atlantic covering health from a wide variety of perspectives, such as beauty, nutrition, work-life habits, and sports. Her work has appeared in Racked, Rolling Stone, Elle, Glamour, and others. She can be found on Twitter @amandamull. Check out one of her more recent pieces on college football that we mention, “College Football’s Great Unraveling.” And don’t forget about our most recent piece for Jacobin (which we mention in the episode) on harm and the anti-Communist propaganda in recent portrayals of abuse in US gymnastics, “Red-Scare Rhetoric Isn’t Gone From Histories of American Sport.” For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Credit @punkademic) After listening to the episode, check out our most recent pieces: “Red-Scare Rhetoric Isn’t Gone From Histories of American Sport” in Jacobin Magazine "Canceling the College-Football Season Isn't Enough" published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “'We are being gaslit': College football and Covid-19 are imperiling athletes” in The Guardian “Canceling the college football season is about union busting, not health” also in The Guardian __________________________________________________________________________ As always, please like, share, and rate us on your favorite podcast app, and give follow us on Twitter or Instagram. @Derekcrim @JohannaMellis @Nkalamb @EndofSportPod www.TheEndofSport.com