In this special episode, Nathan first has the chance to talk again to NLRB GC Jennifer Abruzzo, this time about the college athlete organizing developments prompted by her September 2021 memo. Abruzzo talks about Dartmouth men's basketball's recent unionization and the ongoing case at USC before explaining why she finds the term 'student-athlete' so objectionable--even as universities continue to double down on it. Then, Nathan goes for a deeper dive into all these issues with former NLRB chair Mark Gaston Pearce in order to analyze why these cases have played out the way they have, what's really at stake, and where we are likely to go from here. Jennifer Abruzzo is current General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. Mark Gaston Pearce is a visiting professor and the executive director of the Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. He is a former Board Member and Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board who served by appointment of President Barack Obama for two terms, concluding in August 2018.   The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Guy Harrison joins Nathan for a discussion of the Netflix sports doc as genre and its increasing influence in shaping how we understand sports. Then the two delve into the all-time definitive ranking of the best and worst Netflix sports docs/docuseries.   Guy Harrison is Assistant Professor and Director of Access and Engagement for the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Media where he studies diversity, inclusion, and representation in sports and new media. He is the author of On the Sidelines: Gendered Neoliberalism and the American Female Sportscaster (University of Nebraska Press, 2021).   The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique is Assistant Professor of History at UMASS Amherst where he studies the British Empire between the 17th and Early 19th centuries. He is the author of the manuscript The Experience of the Archive: Knowledge and the Making of the Early Modern British Empire (currently under contract with Yale University Press). His public-facing work has appeared in outlets such as The Daily Beast, Inside Higher Ed,and Teen Vogue. Joe Darda is Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University where he studies post-1945 American literature, culture and politics. He is the author of three books on the reconfiguration of race in the age of civil rights: The Strange Career of Racial Liberalism (Stanford University Press, 2022), How White Men Won the Culture Wars: A History of Veteran America (University of California Press, 2021), and Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War (University of Chicago Press, 2019). With the historian Amira Rose Davis, he coedited a 2023 special issue of American Quarterly titled “The Body Issue: Sports and the Politics of Embodiment.” In this conversation, Asheesh, Joe, and Nathan unpack what it means to talk about higher education in 'crisis' today. We discuss how athletic department exploitation has served as a model for the university writ large, the ghastly restructuring and cuts at major public US universities, administrative bloat, artificial intelligence, the value of the humanities, and so much more.   The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Liz Knox returns to the show to discuss four years of developments in the world of women's hockey and the rise of the PWHL from her perspective as an insider in the process and fierce advocate for just working conditions in the sport. Liz Knox is a retired professional hockey goaltender, CWHL Clarkson Cup champion, CIS Brodrick Trophy winner, CWHL all-star captain, former co-chair of the CWHLPA, former member of the board of the PWHPA, and, crucially, member of the current executive committee of the PWHLPA. Check out Lix Knox's podcast The Knoxy and Kax Show here. Check out Liz Knox on building the PWHL from the inside here. Check out a breakdown of the PWHL collective agreement from The Victory Press here.   The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Johanna is joined by journalist, short story writer, and translator Karim Zidan to discuss how Israel's war in Gaza and genocide of Palestinian people has impacted, and been shaped by, people's sporting politics. We urge listeners to subscribe to Karim's substack Sports Politika if you don't already. He begins by contextualizing a scary, recent incident: when he was targeted by Israeli far-right MMA fighter Haim Gozali, who responded to Karim's accurate reporting of his horrific statements by writing Karim's name and that of a news site on artillery shells destined to kill Palestinians. The Israeli military created a "dystopian nightmare" per Palestinian artist Hazem Harb by turning Gaza's oldest football stadium, Yarmouk stadium, into a site of horror and dehumanization: it rounded up Palestinians, stripped them to their underwear, and detained them in the stadium. The historical precedents abound.    Karim complicates "what an athlete's actions are worth" regarding various kinds of athlete activism and political engagement. Although we are glad for the collective ceasefire statement from John Carlos, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Kenny Stills, Layshia Clarendon, and more. And we wonder: how many people had to die before it came out? We end by critiquing Western sporting imperialism and racism in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere for claiming to "lift up women oppressed by Islam" through sport. People are capable of liberating themselves using sport, such as Palestinian female karate champion Nagham Abu Samra tried to do by teaching girls and women in Gaza. Samra was murdered due to injuries from an Israeli airstrike in December.

In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, Nathan and esteemed football scholar Tom Oates have a ranging conjunctural discussion about the state of American football, masculinity, and their place in the broader political economic and cultural landscape of US society. Tom Oates is Associate Professor at the University of Iowa, where he holds a joint appointment with the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is the author of the 2017 book Football and Manliness: An Unauthorized Feminist Account of the NFL(University of Illinois Press) and co-editor (with our friend Zack Furness) of The NFL: Critical and Cultural Perspectives.

Johanna is joined by Jules and Dave to discuss the moral imperative against allowing Israel and Russia to participate in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games based on their recent article in Jacobin that so persuasively makes this case. They discuss how the Russian and Israeli states' absolute violence in Ukraine and Gaza respectively demand our immediate attention to add to the growing protests against both leading up to the Paris Olympics. Included in the growing protests and activism were the efforts of four runners at the U.S. marathon and half-marathon Olympic Trialsin authoritarian Florida: Jesse Joseph, Aidan Reed, Julian Heninger, and Nadir Yusuf, with the assistance of Olivia Katbi and others. We talk about how the US's weighty role within the IOC appears to act as a kind of shield against criticizing Israel the way that the IOC has (imperfectly) critiqued Russia. Jules explained his analysis of the IOC's idealistic Olympic Charter compared to the organization's professed "neutrality." We ended the show by hearing about Dave's fantastic recent interview with former NBA player and basketball coach Tariq Abdul-Wahad, particularly how his French background influenced his politics and how the moral clarity of his thoughts continue to motivate us to act.  Jules Boykoff is Professor and Chair of Politics & Government at Pacific University and is one of the preeminent public scholars of the Olympics. He is also author of What are the Olympics For, as well as the books The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Race, Power, and Sportswashing, and Power Games, among countless others.  Dave Zirin is sports editor at The Nation, host of The Edge of Sports podcast, and author of an incredible number of books on the politics of sport, including 2021’s The Kaepernick Effect, 2019’s co-authored Things That Make White People Uncomfortable with Michael Bennett, and so many more. Check out Dave’s TV show on The Real News Network!

Frankie de la Cretaz is a writer focused on sports, gender, and queerness. They are the co-author of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the NFL from Boldtype Books. Frankie's work appears everywhere, including The Nation, Sports Illustrated, The Daily Beast, Teen Vogue, and on and on.    Frankie joins Nathan to deconstruct the epic popular culture collision between Taylor Swift, perhaps the most famous person in the world, and the NFL at the Super Bowl.   Check out some of Frankie's recent work on Taylor Swift, including a discussion of the toxic framing of the Tayvis relationship, the question of representing Taylor Swift as queer, and the PR mastermind behind the superstar.

In this episode, our return from an extended absence, we have the great privilege of sharing a conversation hosted by the University of Connecticut entitled "Complicity and Solidarity: Sport, Higher Education, and Palestine/Israel" moderated by Dr. Chen Chen (UConn) andDr. Roc Rochon (UConn) and featuring speakers Dr. Anima Adjepong (University of Cincinnati), Dr. Munene Mwaniki (Western Carolina University), Dr. Aarti Ratna (Northumbria University), Dr. Daniel Sailofsky (University of Toronto), Dr. Nicola De Martini Ugolotti (Bournemouth University).Before the panel, Nathan, Derek, and Johanna speak openly about their positions on the genocidal violence being wrought against Gaza by the Israeli state with the full support of Canada, the United States, and so many other countries.

It's September 24th, 1988 -- a warm, sunny and dry day in the Olympic Stadium in Seoul, South Korea. It also happened to be the final of the men’s 100 metre sprint to decide the Olympic champion and world’s fastest man. The top contenders, Carl Lewis from the United States, and a Canadian sprinter named Ben Johnson, lined up in lanes 3 and 6 respectively in one of the most highly anticipated races of the year. The gun goes off -- and almost immediately Johnson had a step on every other runner, including the defending Olympic gold medalist from the US. By 50 meters it was clear that nobody could keep up with the Canadian runner. As Johnson approached the finish line, he iconically raised his hands in victory, pointing his right index finger to the sky and then to stands toward thousands of screaming fans. With a time of 9.79 seconds, Ben Johnson had completely smashed his own World Record and was now an Olympic champion. Three days later, Johnson was stripped of his gold medal and world record by the International Olympic Committee after he tested positive for the banned performance-enhancing substance stan-o-zolol.   Why am I telling you about an Olympic final that happened over 35 years ago? Well, the events that would transpire after the IOC announced that it would strip Johnson of his gold medal and world record, would send shockwaves through the Canadian sport system – the reverberations of which would be felt in our cultural, political, and social systems as well as our collective memories. Johnson’s disqualification spurred something of what sociologists might call a moral panic regarding the unethical grip that had apparently taken hold of Canadian sport – a deviation from the stereotypical perception of Canada as a wholesome, equitable, and polite geopolitical nation. And perhaps most relevant for this talk today, I argue that this was a fundamental precursor to the current moment that we find ourselves in Canadian sport – a moment, as I hope to convince you, that is riddled with harm and abuse. In this episode, Derek walks us through why Canada needs a judicial inquiry into harm and abuse in sport and, more importantly, why that's nowhere near enough to give justice to survivors. If we want to do justice for survivors of harm and abuse in Canadian sport, we need a judicial inquiry. But that’s nowhere near enough. We also need to act, and we must act now, to ensure there are effective mechanisms for oversight, accountability, and, perhaps most importantly, reparation for the harms already done and the harms being done literally right now across the country. Anything less is a metaphor for action – it’s an obfuscation of the long-history of harm and abuse that we know about in this space, and that we know is only a small snapshot of the true reality of abuse in Canadian sport – and it’s a surface level attempt reinforce and replicate a system of sport that inevitably produces and endorses abusive spaces within a project of winning-at-any-cost. For if we continue to allow and obfuscate violent abuse in sport, and sport is supposedly integral to our national identity, one concludes that violent abuse is indeed part of Canada. I don’t want sport to be about violent abuse, and surely you don’t want Canada to be about violent abuse. So let’s do something about it, and let’s do something now. Video of a version of this talk at McGill University can be found here.  Please read Kim Shore's brilliant piece on the crisis of abuse in Canadian sport here. Our podcast episode with Kim can be found here.  Ciara McCormack's piece "A Horrific Canadian Soccer Story" can be found here. The End of Sport episode with Ciara can be found here. Mac Ross' piece on the importance of external investigations into Canadian sport can be found here. Our interview with Mac and Jennifer Fraser can be found here.