The End of Sport

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by anthropologist Tracie Canada to interrogate the ways in which familial discourses are deployed in the world of college football to obfuscate exploitative power relations and also the ways in which that rhetoric is reappropriated by Black players to fashion their own forms of kinship and care. The conversation also explores the methodological dimension...

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by Dr. Erin Hatton to discuss her brilliant intervention Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment and how status coercion shapes working conditions in college sport. Erin Hatton is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Buffalo and also author of The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America. Too often, the conversati...

Here is the second part of Johanna’s interview with Dvora Meyers where they talk about America’s role in gymnastics’ abusive history, what (certain) responses to Suni Lee’s gold medal tells us about the sport, and the impact of name, image, likeness (NIL) developments on college gymnastic athletes. Dvora Meyers is a writer and freelance journalist (formerly of Deadspin), and the author of the book...

In part one of a two-part episode, Johanna is joined by Dvora Meyers to talk about the antiquated and problematic roots of gymnastics, systemic racism in the sport, athlete activism, and the ways in which the gaze of observers and fans hurts athletes within the sport and reproduces various forms of harm and exploitation. Dvora Meyers is a writer and freelance journalist (formerly of Deadspin), and...

On today’s episode, Johanna and Derek are joined by NOlympics LA coalition member and community organizer Jonny Coleman to talk about the LA28 Olympic bid, the powerful people behind the Games, the harms associated with LA28, and how the Olympics may be quite far beyond any possibility of reform. Jonny Coleman is a writer and organizer based in Los Angeles and a member of the NOlympics LA coalitio...

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by Kaiya McCullough, a former UCLA soccer player and former member of the Washington Spirit and Wurzberger Kickers, Athlete Ally ambassador, host of the Unfiltered Podcast, co-founder of the United College Athlete Advocates. The first half of the conversation ranges from why college athletes need representation to Kaiya's views on the working conditions...

All three hosts are joined by show favorite and Professor and Chair of Politics & Government at Pacific University Jules Boykoff to talk all things Tokyo Olympics, principally why they shouldn't be happening at all. The conversation ranges from why the Tokyo Olympics should have been cancelled in the first place, to overarching problems with the Olympics as an institution, to the racial politics a...

**our apologies for the audio issues at the r beginning of this episode!** On this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek chat with Naji Ali, producer and host of Crossing the Lane Lines podcast, to discuss the role that swimming has played in his life, the rich aquatic history of the Black diaspora, and the white supremacist history of modern swimming and USA Swimming’s complicity. Naji p...

For this episode, Johanna interviews two experts from the UK: rugby player and diversity and inclusion leader for the International Gay Rugby and other organizations, Verity Smith, and scholar of trans- and nonbinary sporting inclusion and exclusion, Abby Barras. The discussion focuses on the barriers that trans and nonbinary athletes face broadly and specifically within the UK, what we need to be...

In this very special episode of The End of Sport, Johanna is joined in co-hosting duties by friend of the show Dr. Georgia Cervin to interview founders and co-hosts of the Half In, Half Out podcast, Blake and Kino, the only LGBTQ+ focused gymnastics podcast, to discuss the genesis of the show and LGBTQ+ culture in the gymnastics world. The discussion focuses on how despite the labor of folks acros...

It's been one year for us here on The End of Sport and we can't thank all of you enough. Whether you have listened once or tune in weekly, have come on the show, followed us or engaged with us on Twitter, or supported us in any way -- THANK YOU!  Here are some of our thoughts on the origins of the podcast, reflections on the last year, what it has meant to us, and what we hope to do in the future....

This week on The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek are joined by Dr. Frank Guridy to talk about his hot-off-the-press book The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of Athletics, the place of Texas in the reconfiguration of American athletics, and the role of athlete activists in such reformations. The first half of the episode goes through some of the key takeaways from the book and tell...

In this week’s episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek chat with Dr. Letisha Brown, assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Tech, to talk about Black feminism(s), gender, sport, and the sports media industrial complex. Grounded in a discussion of Dr. Brown’s published work, the first part of the episode centers on the importance of using Black feminist approaches to sport and sporting...

On this episode of The End of Sport, Nathan, Johanna, and Derek talk about the plantation dynamics of revenue generating college sports and higher education. This episode accompanies a recent piece published in The Guardian, entitled "'I Signed My Life to Rich White Guys': Athletes on the Racial Dynamics of College sports," that explicitly tries to amplify the voice of athletic workers on the raci...

On this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek sit down with historian Dr. Andrew McGregor of Dallas College to talk about the history of American football, public historical work, and (some) of the problems with sports media and its complicity in reproducing harm in sport.  How did Oklahoma remake itself through football in the post-Cold War period? We dive into this question in a fascina...

So, it's been a week for The End of Sport Crew.  This episode had to happen. We have some thoughts on the college sports media problem.  Thank you to everyone who has Tweeted as us, sent us supportive DMs or messages, or otherwise retweeted any of the threads posted over the past week. Your support means the world to us.  In solidarity,  Johanna, Nathan, and Derek     For more on this developing s...

In this episode of The End of Sport, Derek and Johanna are joined by USA Today’s For The Win editor and columnist Hemal Jhaveri and Natalie Weiner, weekly columnist of Good Form on Fanbyte, to discuss everything that went down over the past week in Women’s hockey. More specifically, the episode provides a deep dive into what happened with the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), Barst**l Sports...

In this episode, all three hosts are joined by Jordan Bohannon to discuss exploitation and injury in the context of men's college basketball. Jordan Bohannon is a redshirt senior point guard on the top five ranked University of Iowa men’s basketball team, school record holder in three pointers made, and sixth player in school history with more than 1000 points and 500 assists. He is also co-host o...

In this episode of The End of Sport Johanna is joined by Drs. Christienna D. Fryar and Matt Hodler to break down the white supremacist terrorist actions of swimmer Klete Keller in the January 6th attack against the US Capitol building and the white sport media’s apologist portrayal of him. Dr. Fryar is a Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London where she teaches about...

In this episode of The End of Sport Nathan and Johanna speak with Dr. Lucía Trimbur, an Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at John Jay College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and a Global Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Trimbur talked with us about her forthcoming ethnographic work about the concussion crisis in football, and interweaves ins...

In this episode of The End of Sport, Nathan and Johanna speak with Dr. Lucía Trimbur, an Associate Professor of Sociology and American Studies at John Jay College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, and a Global Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Trimbur talked with us about her forthcoming ethnographic work about the concussion crisis in football, and interweaves i...

**Content warning: this episode discusses physical, sexual, and emotional abuse within Canadian soccer.** In this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek are joined for a second time by Ciara McCormack, a former professional soccer player with the Vancouver Whitecaps and whistleblower on abuses within the Canadian soccer system, about the physical emotional abuse that former coach Bob Birar...

**Content warning: this episode discusses physical, sexual, and emotional abuse within Canadian soccer.** In this episode of The End of Sport, Johanna and Derek are joined by Ciara McCormack, a former professional soccer player with the Vancouver Whitecaps and whistleblower on abuses within the Canadian soccer system, about the physical emotional abuse that former coach Bob Birarda inflicted upon...

In this episode of The End of Sport, Derek, Johanna, and Nathan are joined by David West and Ricky Volante, co-founders of the Professional Collegiate League — an upstart professional basketball league that aims to enable athletes to benefit directly from their labor by offering both an education and compensation – to talk about recent developments in the league, what is happening in college baske...

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan have the pleasure of talking to philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò about racial capitalism, elite capture, epistemic deference, and sport. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and author of a boatload of crucial scholarly and public interventions, including recent work in Boston Review, Dissent, Foreign Policy, Aeon, The Nat...