In this episode, Nathan has the privilege of speaking with Elizabeth Williams, a center-forward for the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA and, until as recently as one unattended game during the beginning of the pandemic, Fenerbahçe in Turkey. She is sixth in WNBA history averaging 1.8 blocks per game and was the league's 2016 Most Improved Player. She is also a former Duke University Blue Devil. Most importantly, she is Secretary of the WNBPA.Nathan and Elizabeth discuss the WNBA's new collective agreement and how it improves compensation and working conditions for players. They also deep-dive into the day-to-day life of women's professional basketball players both in the United States and overseas, and the physical and emotional impact of being in-season for nearly 350 days per year. They also touch on the differences between college and pro women's basketball, fandom in the WNBA and abroad, and the future of the game. You can find Elizabeth on Twitter @E_Williams_1 and Instagram @e_williams_1! __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this episode, Derek and Nathan are joined by Victoria Jackson and Andy Schwarz to discuss amateurism in the NCAA and recent name, image, likeness developments that have been getting a lot of ink.  Victoria Jackson is Clinical Assistant Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University where her work focuses on the history of sport and a former NCAA 10,000 meter National Champion. Andy Schwarz is an antitrust economist and partner at the economic consulting firm OSKR where he consults on complex litigation matters in antitrust and sports. He is also the Co-Founder of the Professional Collegiate League and serves as its Chief Innovation Officer. Victoria and Andy provide a comprehensive primer on amateurism in the NCAA. Victoria breaks down the history of amateurism and how it has produced a fundamentally racialized system of exploitation. Andy then explains recent legal developments that frame the current flexible usage of the term. They then explain how both the NCAA's April 29 press release on NIL and full working group recommendations fail to substantively improve the rights of college athletic workers. Andy explains how the PCL offers an alternative model for a more just version of college revenue sport. Finally, both offer their readings on what the future holds for college sport in the face of this pandemic and the shifting legal and competitive landscape.   You can find Victoria on Twitter @historyrunner and Andy @andyhre. __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this unusual episode, Derek and Nathan talk with Maximillian Alvarez and Ryan Boyd, two leading commentators on higher education, work, and precarity about where sport and fandom fit in their lives. Maximillian Alvarez is a dual-Ph.D candidate in Comparative Literature and History at the University of Michigan. His work has appeared in countless venues, including The Nation, The New Republic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Boston Review, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, Dissent, and The Baffler. He is also the host of the incredible Working People podcast -- check this out, like...right now. Ryan Boyd is Assistant Professor of Writing at the University of Southern California. His work appears frequently in venues such as Los Angeles Review of Books and Public Books. He is a must-follow on Twitter, where he is an outspoken and much-needed critic of the adjunctification of higher education and its toll on the academic precariat.   This is a wide-ranging discussion of fandom, identity, and labor that, frankly, could have continued for hours longer than it did. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.   You can find Ryan on Twitter @RyanABoyd and Maximillian @maximillian_alv. Ryan's most recent essay in Public Books on why college is worth fighting for is here. Maximillian's recent discussion in Dissent of why he left his conservative roots is here.   __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this episode, Derek and Nathan conduct their first *athlete interview.* They chat with Liz Knox, a retired professional hockey goaltender, CWHL Clarkson Cup champion, CIS Brodrick Trophy winner, CWHL all-star captain, and former co-chair of the CWHLPA, and, currently, one of nine players on the board of the PWHPA. The interview breaks down the complex world of women's hockey and frankly examines the harsh conditions therein. It also explores how Liz and her colleagues are reconceptualizing labour action in high-performance spectator sport. You can find the Hockey in Society article by Courtney Szto here and Liz's comments on the CFL here. __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this episode, Nathan goes solo and sits down with Dr. Christine Baker-Smith, the Managing Director and Director of Research at the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice in Philadelphia and member of the Department of Education at Temple University to discuss the pervasiveness of homelessness and food insecurity among undergraduate students in the United States, including college athletes. They take a close look at the results of a brand new report released in the last few days by Dr. Baker-Smith and her colleagues at the Hope Center entitled “Hungry to Win: A First Look at Food and Housing Insecurity Among Student-Athletes” and consider what the results mean for athletes such as college football players already stretched far too thin by the demands of school and their athletic work. __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In episode four, Derek and Nathan chat with Jules Boykoff, Professor and Department Chair of Politics and Government at Pacific University. He is the author of four books on the Olympics, including Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics (Verso, 2016), Activism and the Olympics: Dissent at the Games in Vancouver and London (Rutgers University Press, 2014), Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games (Routledge, 2013) and the just-released NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Beyond (Fernwood, 2020). He has published countless pieces of public scholarship, including recent op-eds in the NY Times and on NBC, and is a former college soccer player at the University of Wisconsin and University of Portland and former professional indoor soccer player. Jules systematically takes us through the myriad problems with the Olympics as an institution and the Tokyo games in particular, including the lingering radiation in Fukushima (which he visited last year with Dave Zirin). He also explains the activism of the DSA against the LA games and where activism and public scholarship fit in his own life. Finally, as a bonus, he shares his views on the NCAA and the extent to which his experience as a scholar, activist, and athletic laborer have shaped his outlook on sport. You can find the editorial he co-authored in the BJSM with Robert Mann, Bryan Clift, and Sheree Bekker here. Nathan's academic journal article on the Vancouver Opening Ceremonies is here. __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this episode, we have the great and highly unlikely pleasure of speaking to Michael Hsu, a Regent at the University of Minnesota since 2015 representing Congressional District 6. As a leader in higher education, he is one of only three Regents in the United States to publicly speak out against the system of compensation in college sport, including in a column he published on Deadspin. This wide-ranging interview delves into labor activism in college sport, recent NIL developments, the surveillance of athletes and faculty, and the unsustainability of football as a cultural practice, among many other subjects. __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

In this episode, Derek and Nathan dig in to the place of athletic labor and fandom in the midst of global health and economic crisis. What does it say when Dr. Anthony Fauci is calling for a return to sport even as he tries to protect the rest of US society? The hosts zoom in on professional baseball and college football to examine the health and economic stakes of restarting sports at the expense of athlete health and safety and raise the question of what might happen if more athletes' voices are included in decision-making.   Thanks to everyone for their support of the show. Many exciting interviews with players, journalists, academics, and others are coming soon. If you're into it, please pass it along and rate the show on your favorite podcasting platforms. Follow on Twitter and Instagram @endofsportpod and share your feedback by email at theendofsport@gmail.com.   You can find the full story of "Curtis" here, and Andrew Boselli's statement on his experience with coronavirus here, and Joshua Clover's brilliant essay on biopolitics here.   __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**

Welcome to The End of Sport Podcast! In this first episode of the show, Derek Silva and Nathan Kalman-Lamb introduce themselves to listeners and explain the project of the show. Derek is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King's University College at Western University. You can find some examples of Derek's recent scholarship on sport, national identity, and crime and punishment here, here, and here. Nathan Kalman-Lamb is a Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University. You can find his book Game Misconduct  and recent scholarly articles here and here. In the first half of the show, Derek and Nathan discuss the MO of the podcast and address why they started it in the midst of a global pandemic when sport has ceased to exist entirely. The genesis of the name of the show, then, is a gesture to that absence and the opportunity it produces to interrogate what capitalist sport is and means, and perhaps to imagine sport beyond the instrumental and dehumanizing institution we have come to know.   In the second half of the show, they discuss what sport means to them personally and how they wed that with their academic interests, including their theoretical frameworks (we find out if Derek is a Marxist). The hosts also foreshadow their on-going critique of US college sport with an appraisal of what exploitation means in that context (for more on this, check out Derek Van Rheenen's illuminating piece).  Finally, the show discusses what listeners might expect moving forward – topical commentary, interviews with a range of figures in the world of sport, and readings of salient popular culture texts on sport.  Derek and Nathan would love to hear your feedback at theendofsport@gmail.com. You can also follow on Twitter @endofsportpod @derekcrim @nkalamb and Instagram @endofsportpod. If you are interested in any paywalled links from the show notes, please feel free to get in touch at any of these places and we will be happy to hook you up with the readings.     __________________________________________________________________________   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   **For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**