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
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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
Episode 100: Critical Sports Scholars on Parenting and Youth Sport
Episode 99: Towards a Public Sociology of Sport
Episode 98: Dehumanization and the NFL Draft with Ben Natan
Episode 97: Universities Are *Choosing* Not To Pay Academic Bonuses to Athletes
Episode 96: On UCLA Gymnastics, Iowa Football, and Ted Lasso
Episode 95: On Transphobia in Capitalist Sport with Karleigh Chardonnay Webb
Episode 94: Pandemic Sport, Convoys, and the Anti-Trans Movement in Sports
Episode 93: Hard Truths about Football with Chris Borland
Episode 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part II
Episode 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part I
Episode 91: The Wide World of Surveillance in Sport with Courtney M. Cox
Episode 90: Football and Fairness with Johnny Stanton
Episode 89: The NLRB Memo with Jennifer Abruzzo
Episode 88: Athletic Labor and #Striketober
Episode 87: Fighting for #FairBall in the Minors with Harry Marino
Episode 86: On Coercion and Resistance in College Sport
Episode 85: #Striketober with Max Alvarez
Episode 84: The Sports Media Problem with Adam H. Johnson
Episode 83: Progress for Whom? With Britni de la Cretaz
Episode 82: Higher Ed is Imploding! with Asheesh Kapur Siddique
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