The End of Sport

Matthew Hodler is Assistant Professor of Sports Media and Communication at the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. Kyle Kusz is Professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island. We sit down with Matt and Kyle to discuss their 2023 publication “‘Saturdays Are For The Boys’: Barstool Sports and the Cultural Politics of...

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...

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...

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 B...

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, f...

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 M...

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 Commu...

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 b...

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 famo...

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...

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...

All three hosts get together to discuss an apocalyptic summer in college sport. Our conversation begins with an in-depth analysis of Northwestern and the hazing/abuse culture that permeates college football and then ranges to a discussion of conference realignment and gambling. This is a conversation both for those who have been following closely and anyone who has not been paying close attention...

In this short episode, Nathan shares his Canadian Sociological Association conference presentation on the book manuscript for The End of College Football: Exploitation and Harm in the Academy and on the Gridiron, co-authored with Derek. The manuscript has just been submitted (yay!) to the University of North Carolina Press for peer review (and only 100% longer than promised!). This seventeen-minut...

On this episode, @kristi_allain joins @Derekcrim and @nkalamb to comprehensively explore what's wrong with the culture of Canada's favourite game. Kristi Allain is Associate Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Physical Culture and Social Life at St. Thomas University. Her work examines physical culture and its complex relationships with national identities, perhaps no more obvious...

In this episode, Johanna is joined by repeat guest and close friend of the show, interdisciplinary scholar extraordinaire Kelly Wright. We discuss and compare the media's reactions to Angel Reese during 2023's March Madness to a white German commentator's remark about the Moroccan World Cup team's gesture last summer. After recapping for us what happened with and against Reese, Kelly shares her ag...

Zack Furness is Associate Professor of Communications at Penn State Greater Allegheny. He is the author of One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Temple University Press, 2010), editor of Punkademics (Minor Compositions, 2012), and co-editor of The NFL: Critical and Cultural Perspectives (Temple University Press, 2014). Importantly, he is also author of the excellent journal art...

Chen Chen is Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. He is the absurdly published author of seemingly countless high quality academic journal articles that interrogate the themes of capitalism, racism, imperialism, and settler colonialism both in the discipline of sport management and in high-performance sport. In this second instalment...

Chen Chen is Assistant Professor of Sport Management in the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. He is the absurdly published author of seemingly countless high quality academic journal articles that interrogate the themes of capitalism, racism, imperialism, and settler colonialism both in the discipline of sport management and in high-performance sport. In this episode, Derek and...

Member of the legislative assembly for Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore and leader of the Liberal Party and official opposition in New Brunswick Susan Holt joins Nathan to discuss the controversy in the province over educational Policy 713 and anti-2SLGBTQIA+ developments in the province's politics.   Check out Nathan's commentary piece on these issues in NB Media Co-op here.

Theresa Runstedtler is Associate Professor of History and Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies at American University. She is the author of Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line (UC Press, 2012) and, this year, Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA (Bold Type Books, 2023). She is also a form...

In this episode, Johanna talks with repeat guest and one of our favorite sports journalists, Frankie de la Cretaz, about their incisive piece for The Nation, "How Women's Swimming got so Transphobic." Per Frankie's research, "Almost no other sport is as hostile to trans athletes - and that's because its culture created the perfect conditions for transphobia to take root." Frankie first discusses t...

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by one of our all-time favorite journalists and a repeat guest: Joel Anderson from Slate. Joel came on to expand on his argument for what prospective Black athletes might do regarding Florida from his February 13th episode of Hang Up and Listen in the "Afterball" segment. We begin by laying the landscape of the FL state's discriminatory policies, incl...

Today we have a special episode which is actually a recording of a symposium panel session Johanna, Nathan and I participated in. The symposium panel was part of William & Mary’s Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice spring symposium series called “Level the Playing Field: How Sports Both Advance and Hinder Social Justice Goals,” and was hosted by William & Mary JD Candidate Eric Beinhart, w...

On today’s episode, Derek is joined by Ian Kennedy, critical sports journalist and writer for The Hockey News and Yahoo Sports, and author of On Account of Darkness: Shining Light on Race and Sport (Tidewater Press). This wide-ranging discussion covers On Account of Darkness and what it can tell us about racism in sport through the lens of athlete’s experiences, Ian’s work as a critical sports jou...

In today's episode we are joined by Jennifer Fraser and MacIntosh Ross to discuss the pervasive abuse and harm in the world of Canadian sport and the efforts of athletes and academics to push the federal government to initiate an independent judicial review despite resistance from within.  Jennifer Fraser is an educator, consultant, and author of The Bullied Brain: Heal your Scars and Restore your...