In this special episode of the show, all three hosts sit down with two public health experts to investigate the very premise of the podcast itself: how a global pandemic is impacting the world of sport. Gavin Yamey is Associate Director for Policy at the Duke Global Health Institute, Professor of the Practice of Global Health and Public Policy, and Director of the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health. His public health interventions appear in venues such as Time and the British Medical Journal, among countless others. Zachary Binney is an epidemiologist of sport and Assistant Professor of Quantitative Research and Methods at Oxford College of Emory University. He is a staff writer at Football Outsiders and perhaps the most relied-upon quote from journalists during the pandemic looking for an epidemiological take on sport. The episode begins with a discussion of the basics of understanding the pandemic. What exactly is Covid-19 and how does it affect the human body? From there we move through an examination of fatality rates, complications, 'herd immunity,' and transmission as we attempt to sift through myth and fact about the virus and implications for how we might move forward. With a capacious understanding of the virus in mind, we then turn to sport and the varying ways sport organizations in the college and professional realms, particularly in North America, have attempted to navigate the virus. We get into the question of protocols and the best and worst of pandemic sport policy. We also take a close look at university campuses and the way that the pandemic has been handled, both from an athletic perspective and otherwise. This is a comprehensive discussion of the pandemic, sport, and US universities. If you have an interest in any of these things, we think you will really enjoy it. You can find Gavin Yamey on reopening universities in the British Medical Journal here. Gavin Yamey writes about how we can reopen universities more safely next semester in Time here. Gavin Yamey writes about caring for long-haul Covid patients here. You can find Zach Binney's interview with Fangraphs on MLB and Covid here. Zach Binney writes in Neurology with friend of the show Kathleen Bachynski on CTE prevalence in football here. Zeynep Tufecki's brilliant recent Atlantic story on Covid transmission is here. 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

This week, Derek and Nathan have the honor of being joined by Otito Ogbonnia to talk about the life of a college football player and a summer of gridiron labor organizing and resistance. Otito is a Junior defensive lineman at UCLA, U20 USTF national champion in shot put, and bronze medal winner in the discus. He is also one of the organizers of the PAC-12's #WeAreUnited movement. In the first half of the episode, Otito shares his nuanced views on questions of exploitation, coercion, and harm in college football, both from his personal experiences and conversations with countless other players across the country. Then, in the second half, he walks us through how the pandemic fomented labor activism on his own campus at UCLA and then in the PAC-12 more broadly, from the writing of the Players Tribune #WeAreUnited manifesto to meeting with Larry Scott and the cancellation (at the time) of the PAC-12's season. Finally, he shares where #WeAreUnited stands today after the news that the season will indeed be played. You can find Otito on Twitter at @otitoogbonnia12. You can find the #WeAreUnited open letter/manifesto to the PAC-12 here.  Our piece from the summer on athlete labor organizing is here. Our piece on the cancellation of the PAC-12 season as union-busting is here.  Our argument against college football during a pandemic is here. As mentioned off the top of the show, a big shoutout to friend of the show @Ryan_Reilly78 and his wife for putting in the work to shed light on the truly harmful and violent rhetoric that comes out of all things Barstool Sports. Ryan and his wife were publicly doxxed on-air which, predictably, led to a massive troll job on Ryan’s family. Please give him a follow on Twitter @Ryan_Reilly78 and show your support! Solidarity forever!   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

In this week’s episode, Johanna, Derek, and Nathan are joined by Jessica O’Beirne, host of the *must* listen Gymcastic podcast, to talk about harm and abuse in gymnastics, the racial and racist dimensions of the sport, and Jessica’s wonderful work in the public sphere. In the first half of the episode, we talk about Jessica’s efforts to uncover abuse within the sport and how she approaches sensitive and controversial topics and guests on her own podcast, Gymcastic. The second half of the show then shifts attention to the sport’s long history of abuse and harm as well as the racialized dynamics of US gymnastics. Jessica O’Beirne is a former gymnast and coach and a creator and host of the GymCastic podcast, which since its creation in 2012 has been the most popular gymnastics podcast in the world. As someone who has been deeply involved in gymnastics for most of her life, Jessica is known as a fierce critic of the abusive nature of gymnastics. She’s a supporter of athletes’ and victims’ rights amidst the many scandals that have rocked the sport in the 2010s. If you haven’t already, check out “Gymnastics Week” on The End of Sport, with interviews with Georgia Cervin, and two with Geza Pozsar, or our interview with the Producer of Netflix’s Athlete A, Jennifer Sey. You can follow Jessica and Gymcastic on Twitter @OtotheBeirne @Gymcastic and check out some of her written work here: “Opinion: Larry Nassar duped me. He would have duped you too. Here’s how to stop the next abuser from taking his place” in the Los Angeles Times The Gymcastic blog 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

“Anti-Blackness is woven into the fabric of our society” - Jamal Hill In what might be one of our most self-reflective episodes yet, for the last installment of Swimming Week Johanna and Derek are joined by Jamal Hill, a Black Paralympic swimmer who is currently training for the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. We talk to Jamal about what it was like growing up not only as a Black person in the US—where he suggested he only felt comfortable speaking openly about his feelings about racism in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020—but as a black swimmer with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease in a predominantly white sport. Jamal credits the YMCA in providing opportunities for Black and other minoritized Americans to learn how to swim, and discusses the challenges that CMT poses for his training and the importance of advocating for sporting opportunities for children with disabilities. Importantly, Jamal’s grasp of the broader, 600+ year history of Black swimming thanks to Kevin Dawson and Jeff Wiltse’s historical works, underpins his perspective on the extent to which American swim has or has not changed (hint: not much). In the second half of the episode, Jamal shares his thoughts on a wide variety of topics, from what it meant to learn about and present to public audiences on IG TV about Dawson’s historical work on the African diaspora’s rich aquatics history, to the limitations of white swimmers’ activism today (with huge props to Simone Manuel, Naomi Osaka, and others). He moreover offered a compelling perspective about elite swimming’s future in the US: should it remain an NCAA sport when it does not generate revenue, or should swimmers branch out and pursue different training opportunities beyond the college model? You might be surprised at his answer! You can find Jamal Hill on Instagram @swimuphill and on Twitter @swimuphill, and his foundation to teach one million children how to swim, Swim Up Hill, here. Jamal Hill’s fantastic IG TV video for the USA Master’s Swimming Instagram account can be found here. Jamal references Kevin Dawson’s Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora, which can be found here, and also Jeff Wiltse’s Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America, here. 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

In the third instalment of swimming week here on the pod, Johanna and Derek are joined by Matt Hodler, Assistant Professor of Sports Media & Communications at the University of Rhode Island and former D1 swimmer at the University of Miami (Ohio), to discuss racialized nationalism in swimming, representations of hegemonic masculinity in cultural images and discourses surrounding Michael Phelps, and, as always, even a little bit of “amateurism” in college athletics. The first part of this wide-ranging interview focuses on Matt’s recent work on racialized nationalism within the sport before we shift our attention to his work on representations of Michael Phelps. Then we get Matt’s thoughts on amateurism in swimming and how the sport may be an important part of the brilliant labor mobilization taking place in the athletic world. Matt Hodler is an Assistant Professor of Sports Media & Communications in the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. As a sport scholar, his wide-ranging research interests include racialized nationalism, gender, the Olympics and international sport structures, mediated representations of sport, internet memes, and swimming. He was also a D1 swimmer at the University of Miami (Ohio).   You can follow Matt on Twitter and check out Matt’s work here: “Real Men Stand for Our Nation”: Constructions of an American Nation and Anti-Kaepernick Memes in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues The $100-Million Dollar Man: Michael Phelps, the Olympic System, and USA Swimming’s Shifts in “Eligibility” in Sports History Review “The Mother of All Comebacks”: A Critical Analysis of the Fitspirational Comeback Narrative of Dara Torres in Communication & 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

***Content warning: In this episode, we discuss sexual assault and abuse endured by athletes and the impact that has on their lives.***   In the second episode of swimming week, Johanna sits down with 2-time British Olympic swimmer Katherine Starr to discuss her experiences of harm within the sport, the structural conditions that make sexual abuse so rampant in swimming, and the work she is doing with Safe4Athletes to help athletes who have endured abuse and trauma from coaches and teammates. In the first half of the episode, Johanna asks Katherine about the experiences of sexual abuse she endured during her career and how that led her to speak out publicly and create programs to help athletes of all sports who have withstood abuse and trauma. In the second half, Katherine talks about how abuse is perhaps endemic in modern sport and how organizations like Safe4Athletes can at once help athletes deal with trauma but also hold coaches, administrators, and even policy makers accountable for allowing abuse to permeate the sporting landscape.   Katherine Starr had a successful collegiate career at UT-Austin before winning two silver medals at the 1986 Commonwealth Games. In 2011, she founded the incredible organization Safe4Athletes as a result of her experiences of sexual abuse, in order to help other athletes who have endured similar abuse and trauma from coaches and/or their teammates. She has spoken publicly about her experiences and advocacy work on popular media outlets and is very actively involved in pressuring national governing bodies of sport and athletic departments to create safer environments for athletes.   Articles referenced in this episode include: Scott Reid’s piece on Starr from 2012 (probably has the most clear details on what happened): https://www.ocregister.com/2012/03/18/athletes-who-survived-abuse-join-together-as-advocates/ Scott Reid’s episode on The End of Sport – “Hypocrisy is Their Middle Name” “SoCal Olympic swimmer travels to London” (more background): https://www.scpr.org/news/2012/08/09/33749/socal-olympic-swimmer-travels-london-urge-athlete-/ “Breaking Down Sexual Abuse in Sports”: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/breaking-down-sexual-abus_b_2500956 2016 HuffPost piece, seems to be in response to Brock Turner: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/im-embarrassed-and-ashame_b_10559164   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

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan speak with historian Kevin Dawson about how his book, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora completely debunks the historical and contemporary white supremacist myth about Black people’s innate inability to swim. Dawson explains how from about the 1400s-1800s African peoples were some of the biggest swimming, canoeing, diving, and surfing experts worldwide because they taught their young children to swim and find communal meaning in the water. The aquatic sphere defined their ways of living, occupations, and leisure activities. When white European colonizers – who feared the water - approached West African shores in the 1400s, they were amazed to find African people frolicking in the ocean and diving to great depths. As whites colonized and enslaved Black peoples in subsequent centuries, the two groups used the latter’s aquatics skills to negotiate their power vis-à-vis one another. Whereas enslaved Africans did things such as only selectively save white people during maritime disasters, work more slowly, and find prestige in their success in water competitions, white slaveholders in North America especially exploited Africans’ swimming skills through the same water competitions and other tactics. Until the post-Civil War era, white Europeans and American slaveholders framed enslaved people’s aquatic abilities in racist terms by describing them as animal-like, in comparison to their own white, “civilized” way of living.  You will not want to miss the second half of the episode! Dawson explains how the shift to our present-day white supremacist ideas about Black people’s innate inability to swim began in the early 1900s, when whites transformed sites of water to sites of trauma for Black Americans. They segregated public pools under the guise of needing to protect their white wives and families from Black and other minoritized groups’ “filth” and “criminality.” Particularly traumatic moments such as the lynching and dumping of Emmett Till’s body in the river reinforced the water as a site of death for the Black American community, such that the latter began to understood swimming and the water as sites of white leisure and “un-black.” At the end of the episode, Dawson details his work engaging with public audiences and swim team by educating them about his work. He also explains his surprise and joy at seeing Black Paralympic swimmer Jamal Hill discuss Undercurrents of Power to viewers in an IG TV video for USA Master’s Swimming, as well as the limitations of Team USA’s current attempts to tackle the history of anti-Black racism in American swimming history.  You can find Kevin Dawson’s groundbreaking book, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora, here. Black Paralympic swimmer Jamal Hill’s fantastic IG TV video for the USA Master’s Swimming Instagram account can be found here. Hill will be our guest for a future episode of Swimming Week, so stay tuned! Team USA’s limited attempt to confront our racist history of swimming can be found here (note too that no scholars of color are cited), and its beautiful IG post can be found here. 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

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

In this week’s episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by co-authors of the hot-off-the-press Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Sports Fan, Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson, to chat about what it means to be a fan as moral and ethical dilemmas complicate the sports that we seem to love so dearly. In the first part of the episode, Jessica and Kavitha walk us through the compelling connections between the books key arguments and everything we are currently witnessing in sport – from the pandemic to racial injustice and white supremacy and to the powerful labor mobilizations we are seeing in the sporting world. The discussion then shifts to where sports fans and fandom fits into all of this as we ask, “what responsibilities do fans have in this moment?” The episode concludes with reflections form Jessica and Kavitha on harm done by the Olympics and its governing bodies and their own fandom as it relates to sport. This is an episode you surely do not want to miss. Kavitha Davidson is a sportswriter for The Athletic, and former writer for ESPNW and Bloomberg. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and NBC News Think, and among many others. She is also the host of The Athletic’s podcast, The Lead. Jessica Luther is a journalist, co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast, and Ph.D candidate in Physical Culture and Sport Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. Her work has appeared in countless venues such as ESPN Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Buzzfeed, and on and on. She is the author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape (2016, Akashic Books). Together, they are the authors of the BRAND NEW book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Sports Fan (2020, University of Texas Press). Check this book out! You can follow both on Twitter @KavithaDavidson and @JessicaLuther, and while you’re at it follow @BurnItDownPod! 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

In this unexpected episode, Johanna, Nathan, and Derek do a deep dive into the powerful player strikes this week in the WNBA, NBA, WTA, MLS, and MLB. In the first half of the episode, the hosts give their take on everything that has gone down and what this means for sport moving forward. The discussion then shifts to some of the connections between this powerful athletic labor mobilization and other areas of the sporting world and society. Of course, we couldn’t stop ourselves from talking about the pandemic and the ongoing impact it is having on college athletic laborers.   For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Credit @punkademic) After listening to the episode, check out our most recent pieces on the college football: "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