AUSTIN: This is Devil Town. I’m Austin,
MITCH: and I’m MITCH,
AUSTIN: And welcome to Devil Town.
MITCH: This is Devil Town.
[both laughing]
[Devil Town theme music]
AUSTIN: We just watched the episode Black Eyes and Broken Hearts. Is that what it’s called?
MITCH: Yeah, Black Eyes and Broken Hearts.
AUSTIN: Episode seven… sixteen?
MITCH: Sixteen or seventeen. It is the follow up to the episode we watched last week.
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: We didn’t… Our plan was never to, like, go in order and look at it episode by episode, but-
AUSTIN: No.
MITCH: we’ve kind of done that a little bit.
AUSTIN: Well with this episode it’s… it is very much a part two to the first episode.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And I felt like there’s enough information on both of those for us to be able to pull things.
MITCH: Yeah. For the same reason the two episodes follow each other in the show, I wanted to… Like, after a week of talking about the problem, I wanted to talk about - not the solution, but what that leads to.
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: But like, that’s what they did in the show and that’s the topic that I was interested in looking at.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah.
MITCH: Mainly the fact that the main plot point of this episode is Smash and all the Black players walking out of the team.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: And we wanted to see, you know, has that happened in real life? What are the parallels? Is the way it happened in the show realistic? The way it plays out in the show, what does it say about the idea of protests in sports?
AUSTIN: Right. Well, first off, we can just talk about the episode.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: I love that episode.
MITCH: Yeah, it's one of my faves.
AUSTIN: It's a solid, solid episode. And it... I can sit here and I can say that I don't like certain things about the episode, and when I think about it, the only thing I can really put a criticism on is the way the characters handled things. Not... Certain characters.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And it's not because I think that that's a bad thing for the show.
MITCH: No.
AUSTIN: I think that it's incredibly realistic.
MITCH: I'm frustrated watching the show because characters that I like made choices that I don't like.
AUSTIN: Yes.
MITCH: But that's a compliment to the show. They made me like these characters so much that it frustrates me when they...
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: If I have one complaint with the show, which I don't really, but for being a story arc that is so much about the, like, inherent racism in this kind of town, Smash doesn't really get that much screen time.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: I don't necessarily think he needed more, because his is a very internal story this week. But, you know, like I've said before, we only really have room to get to know three or four football players at a time in the course of the show. There's like ten main characters, three or four of them are football players. Smash is the only Black player that we actually know as a character.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: We know Waverly a little bit, we know his mom a little bit. But when we saw those, like, eighteen players walk out, we don't know most of their names.
AUSTIN: No.
MITCH: I do think, you know, they had to tell a bunch of different stories and they got it all done in a two episode arc, but had they a little bit more time, I would have like to have seen more from the actual players who were doing the thing,
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: and less time on people talking about them doing it.
AUSTIN: Right. I feel like that, obviously they have to put some time and effort into, um, into the way that Smash is taking things, and seeing how he's reacting to what Waverly's telling him and what everybody else is telling him.
MITCH: Yeah. They did kind of the same thing with Smash that they did with Eric, where the way his character is, he doesn't react right away to things. So we get to see a bunch of scenes of him being the silent half of a conversation, and then finally by the end we see him process all that and do something or say something.
AUSTIN: Well, it's, it's...
MITCH: But he had a lot of scenes where he's not really active.
AUSTIN: That's why I feel like this is... It is definitely one story, these two episodes. You have the whole inciting incident with Mac,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: and then you have, in that first episode, the way Smash and the rest of the Black players on the team react to that.
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: And that's all in the first episode. It is very much Smash-centric.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And Waverly-centric, and the Black players on the team-centric, and you don't hear much from Eric, at all.
MITCH: No, we hear nothing from Eric.
AUSTIN: And we talked about that last episode. In this episode it is more of a situation where you are now seeing the aftermath of how they're going to react to this. And you have a team that is basically kinda like reeling in this situation because they have no idea what to do.
MITCH: A lot of sports stories, a lot of sports, like, movies and tv shows, you have the team banding together against some outside force.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: This is one of the only stories I can think of where the two sides of the conflict are both inside the organization.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So we're seeing and rooting for, big picture, both sides. Obviously I'm not on Eric's side on this particular issue, but I'm on Eric's side generally.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And it's weird to see, like, you know, there is no - until we get to the end and they go to the other town where they are, like, outright villains, the only people involved in this conflict are our main characters.
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: And the other interesting thing about this episode, we hear Eric and Mac and Tammie talk a lot, we hear Smash and his mom and Waverly talk a lot, they don't talk to each other until the very very end of the episode.
AUSTIN: I know.
MITCH: Which... That was a choice on the coaching staff's part. Like, Eric's really frustrated with how difficult this all is, I can't help but think, like, maybe it wouldn't be so difficult if you'd have reached out to your players before now.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: But he didn't. He like, he put a line in the sand in a weird place for his character.
AUSTIN: Very much so.
MITCH: And it could've come back to bite him a lot harder than it ended up doing.
AUSTIN: I know, yeah. And as much as I wish there would have, there should've been a definitive thing that happened, in reference to this whole situation, I wish that there was... I wish that Mac got fired.
MITCH: I do too.
AUSTIN: I do.
MITCH: I think Tammie summed it up pretty perfectly in her speech from the three points of view, no matter how she approaches it it's pretty clear that he should be fired.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah. "The three of you scare me."
[both laughing]
MITCH: That's a great scene though.
AUSTIN: It is a wonderful scene.
MITCH: But it is, like, Tammie, she's right as his wife, and as the counselor, and just as a person.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: All three, there's a reason to fire him. And that's what the show doesn't really get into, but is also worth thinking about. We see the little, you know, mini-conversations and the glances and the communication between Eric and Mac and Smash, and we know that they have moved forward. Everything has not been fixed, there are still problems, but the three of them in relation to each other have come a little bit farther than they were before. That doesn't do anything for all the other Black players on the team, for everybody else in the school, for the white players on the team who... There are probably a lot of white players who are frustrated with the Black players for ruining their season. And they've got nothing from Smash or the coaches as resolution to this. You know, Smash's walkout was effective, in that it made everybody else think about the power that the Black players had. But because it wrapped up so anticlimactically, we don't know where it goes from here. And we don't know how all the other players on the team feel about it at this point.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, and that, like you said, that's kind of a little bit of a critique on this episode, is... We don't know much about these other characters.
MITCH: And that's the nature of the show the whole time. We only know the players we see and we only see a few.
AUSTIN: Right,
MITCH: Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but when you're talking about a subject as big as this one, those limits become more obvious.
AUSTIN: Yeah, and that kind of... It lends itself to, in this situation, there's pros and cons to that obviously. You don't get a ton of perspective, but the moments that you do get are super important.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Because you now know who these characters are, especially with the situation at the very end of the episode, with Mac.
MITCH: With the police?
AUSTIN: With the police. You have that entire fight go down on the field, Tim comes to kind of punch that dude in the mouth, pretty much.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And then the police come right after the game, right after it's called, and have this bogus, just, bullshit excuse to pull them over. And then Mac, basically just stepped in front of them. I mean, "Get a warrant, do what you need to."
MITCH: Mac uses his privilege in about as concrete a way as you can.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And that's the, that's the best... I love the fact that they did not go the way of a Disney made for tv movie,
MITCH: Yeah, no
AUSTIN: or anything like that.
MITCH: Mac didn't get some kind of public, um, redemption.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: He got a step, and a sign in the eyes of Smash and Eric only, that he is invested in trying.
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: That's good. That's something that only Erica and Smash are really... I mean, the other people on the team also saw it, they know.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: And I wouldn't have like it if Mac had gotten some kind of big public redemption arc.
AUSTIN: I would hate it.
MITCH: It wouldn't have, it wouldn't have been as realistic.
AUSTIN: We're naive to think that Smash is not gonna tell the other guys on the team.
MITCH: Well they were also on the bus. We just saw Smash's reaction because he's who we were watching.
AUSTIN: Right. And that's the small moments that I'm talking about.
MITCH: All the fans at home, they don't know any of that.
AUSTIN: Oh, they have no idea. And I think that it's smart. In this way, we don't have a full on villain, somebody to, just, revile. We don't, I mean, Mac-
MITCH: I mean, the cops.
AUSTIN: Well yeah, definitely.
[both laughing]
AUSTIN: They show up so late in the game. But Mac is incredibly human. Definitely flawed, don't get me wrong, he's-
MITCH: Well, his redemption - and it makes it stand out from other shows - his redemption isn't that he fixes his problem,
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: his redemption is that he acknowledges that he has a problem.
AUSTIN: And he knows exactly where it came from.
MITCH: Which is nice to see in a show, that like, it would be ridiculous to think that he could erase all this, or fix it overnight.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It's nice to see a grown man in a position of power acknowledging that he has messed up and he needs to do better.
AUSTIN: Yeah. And then he takes the responsibility and says, "Yeah, I screwed up, I deserve this, and I'm walking away."
MITCH: Yep
AUSTIN: And I know that he didn't want to do that, but he's, at that moment he takes responsibility. You don't see that.
MITCH: No
AUSTIN: You don't see that now, in real life. You don't ever see that. And it's an idealized situation. That's probably happened before, but-
MITCH: Honestly, Tim Riggins is the one who gets the "put a bow on it, nice feelings" ending.
AUSTIN: He does, yeah.
MITCH: In that he is extremely not supportive. Does not take the racism problem seriously at all. But when a fight breaks out on the field he gets to come in and hit somebody, which is a signal that like, "Oh we're all, where it counts on the field, we're all on the same side at the end of the day." That's the moral that most tv shows would tell big. Tim's the only person who gets that treatment.
AUSTIN: He gets it, but they don't ever talk about it.
MITCH: I know, but I'm saying that he-
AUSTIN: No, yeah, that's what I love about it.
MITCH: He is ending this little arc thinking that, like, "Well yeah we disagreed on the whole racism thing but out there on the field where it matters we're on the same side."
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That's frustrating. And I want more for Tim because I like Tim, but like...
AUSTIN: Yeah. And just talking about, with the whole Mac situation, I... Coming away from him giving his letter of resignation at the Taylor's house, I... Part of me is... I don't wanna sympathize with somebody that is, like, that says things like that.
MITCH: Oh no no no
AUSTIN: But at the same time they do a really good job of putting him in a situation where he is able to reflect on who he is and his past and things like that.
MITCH: And you can, I mean, you can sympathize with it even if you make it not about, like, a racial issue. He's just... He already has the embarrassment of - he has to work under somebody that he thought he'd be in charge of based on seniority. I can definitely identify with, you know, like, "Oh, I realize that I have been doing something wrong and now I have to acknowledge that." You know? Like-
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There's a fork in the road where you can either, like, dig your heels in and pos- It might be easier to, like, never acknowledge it, or leave, but sometimes you have to, like, own up to the fact that you've been wrong about something. And that is tough.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Especially when you add in the fact that it's to Eric and it's about such a sensitive topic. That part of it, I think they did a good job of, like, humanizing it in a way that, like- He is having to do something that is hard. And acknowledging that it's hard isn't saying that it's not his fault, or having sympathy for him.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: But it is a difficult thing that he didn't have to do. Like, it's a bad thing that he was in that situation in the first place, but at least he was brave enough to try to deal with it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Because a lot of people would just never engage with it, or never acknowledge that it was real or there was any truth to it.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah.
MITCH: Especially doing it when most of who he was talking to were not encouraging him to get better. We only see him really talk to Eric and Buddy, and Eric and Buddy at the end of their conversations are both like, "Look, Mac, we know you're not racist. Just say the right thing." And he goes a step better than that. Like, if he had taken their advice, it would not be this happy ending. Because their advice was shit.
[both laughing]
AUSTIN: Well and then Eric basically rips up his resignation letter in front of the press. And, god, that's...
MITCH: And this is, honestly, in the entire show you have the little arc where Eric pretends he has a problem with the Voodoo thing but he goes along with it anyway, and now this two episodes, is the most wrong I think Eric ever is. He really doesn't do or say a whole lot of things right in this two episode stretch.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: 'Cause - much less important, but the stuff that's going on with Julie in this episode - he's not really in a great spot there either.
AUSTIN: Oh no, no.
MITCH: He's pretty much wrong and ineffective and unlikeable, this whole time.
AUSTIN: Well, his whole situation with Julie, and when they pick her up from the police station - and this is a... there's a lot, like, there's some smaller side plots that we could talk about, but that's not the issue that we're talking about with the episode, so we're not going to touch on it a ton, but especially with him with Julie, and they've just picked her up from the police station. And Tammie is lighting into her, just on the verge - she's not screaming but she is definitely getting in her face.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And she kind of tags off to Eric and Eric's like, "First off, we're glad you're safe." And what hurt me so much was that this is the exact situation that my family would be in.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: If I got in trouble and I got picked up from somewhere, my dad would be like, "First of all, we're glad you're safe," and my mom would be like, "No! Jeff, no! This is wrong!"
MITCH: 'Cause that's the easy thing. That's the easiest time to be the good guy,
AUSTIN: [laughing] Yeah
MITCH: is when you're doing it instead of doing what needs to be done. I... Like, maybe this isn't... the analogy definitely does not work completely, but there's a little bit of a connection in the way... One of the things that makes the Smash storyline so compelling is that Smash is far from perfect in a lot of ways.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So he's trying to learn how to see himself as a leader and figure out when to take a stand in things like institutional racism, when he knows that he's not, he doesn't have... There are a lot of ways that he could be revealed and embarrassed. The steroids, and... You have this situation where he is trying to fight this prejudice, while also, some of these prejudiced things seem to have some basis in reality in his specific instance. And that makes it complicated. That makes it hard for him. It is definitely some, you know, inherent racism labelling Black players as cocky, but also Smash has been incredibly cocky. It's a little bit the same with Julie and Tyra. Like, Julie knows that Tyra has gotten in trouble and she's done things bad. That doesn't mean that the way that Tammie is judging her is not wrong.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: Like, it would be easy to be like, "Oh Tammie you're being prejudiced," if Tyra was perfect, but she's not.
AUSTIN: No, she's not.
MITCH: And that makes it complicated. It makes it more real. They're not in completely different situations, where, like... It's easy to make a stand when the place you're making a stand from is a hundred percent solid and perfect, but it never is.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: There's always something that's gonna... There's always gonna be the chinks in the armor that you're aware of that are tempting you to be like, "Well, I can't take a stand because someone's gonna point out this, you know, hypocrisy, or this inconsistency." It's a tightrope.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, I was just thinking. I just found another villain, and it's out of pure naiveté, is Landry. He was the reason that they got put in the can. [laughing]
MITCH: But it's just 'cause he was feeling so much pressure to perform heteronormativity.
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: If he wasn't so deep in the closet he wouldn't have to, like, performatively act out his straightness in a strip club.
AUSTIN: I mean, he ends up with Tyra, so.
MITCH: Yeah, this is... I don't like this episode because if you only watch the first fifteen episodes of the show, there is no proof that Landry is, uh, straight. And then this episode is the one where it's like, ok, we see him acting straight when no one else is around. You can't deny it. It's set in stone, it's canon now. Which is a bummer.
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: I love Landry.
AUSTIN: Yeah, he's the reason, out of pure stupidity.
MITCH: Oh, yeah yeah yeah, he's kind of a villain.
AUSTIN: Stu-pi-di-ty. Ok, now that we've recapped the entire episode, [laughing] we promised this wouldn't be a podcast about recapping episodes, but-
MITCH: It's not a podcast about recapping every episode, but it is a podcast about recapping this episode.
AUSTIN: This one's pertinent.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: What we're planning on doing is kind of cherry picking things from actual, uh, from real life, outside of the show, and kind of putting them up to what happens in the show, if they're even similar.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: I know that you have quite a few.
MITCH: I have a bunch of little stories, some are similar to the show, some are not at all.
AUSTIN: Right, and yours are more, kind of like, not like throughout history, but-
MITCH: Oh, different times periods, different sports, professional, amateur-
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Honestly, I was looking at it as - uh, which this is one of the things I think Smash had to deal with when he was talking to him mom in this episode - he has a lot of power as a player, as a captain, as a popular player, as one of the best. But when you really, really get down to it and you're trying to do something, your options are play or don't play. You know?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: The only thing he can do that really, really makes someone else feel it and take it seriously is either playing or not playing. Statements are great, and like symbols, and doing stuff, are good and can be effective, but the most effective thing you can do is not play when people want you to, or play when they don't want you to.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So I looked at a bunch of times in history that like... If that is the most effective form of protest, where are there other examples of people doing that? Playing when they're not supposed to or not playing when they're supposed to, and how has it worked out?
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Has that been an effective form of protest?
AUSTIN: You have those, and then I - we'll talk about these later on in the episode because I feel like yours are a little more pertinent -
MITCH: Hmmm, maybe
AUSTIN: Mine are more, uh, recent.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It is almost, almost exclusively associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
MITCH: In the last few years, I mean-
AUSTIN: Well in the last six months-
MITCH: Sports protest have been in the news constantly.
AUSTIN: Yeah, almost all of mine are associated with that. Because I know that there's a lot that has happened.
MITCH: Oh, yeah.
AUSTIN: And it's all college football based.
MITCH: I mean, your stories are. What I think is interesting about this is we have seen, it's kind of like a case study in, we've seen all the different types. In the umbrella of Black Lives Matter in the past, you know, ten years, we've seen every type of, you know, symbol or walk out or... Any way that you could protest something has been done somewhere by somebody.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: So we can kind of see what has stuck around, what has not. What has gotten the right kind of attention, what has not.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah.
MITCH: Um, 'cause it is so universal. Like, there are protests from the middle school level through the pros, in every single sport, men and women.
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: Do we wanna go all the, all the way back to 532 Roman Era?
AUSTIN: I'm interested in that one.
MITCH: It's not a, it's not... Ok, the reason I pulled this is because a writer that was really good included it and it was just fascinating to me. I found this little, like, wrap up, by Steve Wulf, called Athletes and Activism: The Long Defining History of Sports Protests. He was essentially, he wasn't going super in depth on any of these, but he kind of cherry picked, kind of what we're doing,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Cherry picked a bunch of different examples throughout history in chronological order. What I think is interesting is I've heard - you know, you read stuff from, you know, the sixties when it was Muhammad Ali avoiding the draft, and now with Black Lives Matter, and any time in history, one of the critiques is, you know, "You're just an athlete. Don't make it political, just get out there and play."
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: That's never been valid.
AUSTIN: No, it never has.
MITCH: Sports are a part of culture, you cannot participate in culture without participating in all the things that make up culture.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Your people, participating in community.
AUSTIN: You can't expect to make money off of people and expect them to stay, to be quiet.
MITCH: And, you know, racism or whatever issue it is, if it's sexism or whatever, it does affect those players on the field in lots of ways, but even if it doesn't, you can't expect players to ignore the parts of their lives that aren't professional athletes.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: There was some NBA player who was harrassed by the police in the past couple of months.
AUSTIN: Oh, what was his name? He played for the Milwaukee Bucks?
MITCH: So how can you... You can't be like, you know, "Your job is just to play, just shut up and play." When the minute he steps off the court he has all the same risks of being a Black man in America he would if he wasn't a basketball player.
AUSTIN: Well, even then, the people that have that argument just let that argument disappear when it's their own political beliefs.
MITCH: Oh I know. It's a, it's, it's not a legitimate argument but I've heard it a lot.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well, Lebron James is one who just gets the brunt of it.
MITCH: Mhmm. It's not even just sports. Country music has always been extremely political until it's the Dixie Chicks and then it's "shut up and sing," you know.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But, this story, he included it and I thought it was a good example of, like, you can't find a time in history when sports were important in culture when they weren't also participating in whatever was going on. The year is 532, Constantinople, Justinian I is the emperor. And the Nakia Revolt started as a direct result of chariot races.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: I didn't know any of this. I knew that like, obviously there's chariot racing. I didn't know that in the city at the time, there were essentially, there was essentially one league, four teams. They were colors, so you had Blue, Green, Red-
AUSTIN: I did not, I didn't know there was an organization. I thought it was just-
MITCH: I don't know how close to a modern organization it would be, but there were four factions. They were four colors. They were every sport. So if you were a fan of the Blues, you were a fan of them in chariot racing, but also in-
AUSTIN: Wrestling
MITCH: foot racing, wrestling, whatever else was going on. And they kind of took on this thing where they became kind of stand in political parties/gangs. If you were just a random citizen, you didn't have a whole lot of political power. But you could support this team that did have some political power, and your supporting of them could be, you know... Yes, I support them in the chariot race, but also they align with my political beliefs, or cultural or social -
AUSTIN: That... Oh wow, I did not know that.
MITCH: Yeah, I didn't either.
AUSTIN: That's awesome.
MITCH: So at the time it was very, like... there was no, "Oh it's just a game." Like, it was... politics was sports.
AUSTIN: Right.
MITCH: You have these four teams. They are kind of stand ins for political parties. From what I can tell, at this time, the Greens were... most of the supporters who were, like, nobility, old money, who were, you know, political power, were supporters of the Greens.
AUSTIN: So the Yankees
MITCH: Maybe
[both laughing]
MITCH: The Blues had a lot of the, like, the peoples' support. Justinian was one of the few emperors who was not of noble birth, and in his time as emperor he was really doing a lot to chip away at the privileges that wealthy people had had up to that point.
AUSTIN: So like the aristocracy?
MITCH: Uh huh
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: He was taking away a lot of their power. He was lessening the power of these political factions in general. Made him a real big enemy of the, uh, the status quo organization as a whole,
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: specifically the Greens. There was a, uh, riot after a chariot race. A bunch of Blues and Greens were arrested for murder after this riot. Probab- Maybe happened, we don't know. But they executed most of them, one Blue chariot racer, one Green chariot racer were kept as prisoners. That riot continued and the people started demanding, uh, their release, and like, commute their sentences. That morphed into just a general riot for - it was one of those things where you had the, the... The people were mad that he was seemingly persecuting their favorite athletes, and then you had all the senators and rich people who were using it as an opportunity to be like, "Oh this is our chance to get him out of power." So they were like, fueling it, and keeping it going.
AUSTIN: Oh man.
MITCH: Because he had been shrinking their power, he had been restructuring. January 13th, 532, a chariot race devolved into a riot, which devolved into a city wide riot and a siege on the palace. Half the city was burned, including the Hagia Sophia, the famous -
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: That was burned in these riots. Um, senators staged a full on coup, where they attempted to kill Justinian and replace him,
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
[both laughing]
MITCH: with Hepatius. At least 30,000 people died.
AUSTIN: Thirty thousand?
MITCH: Thirty thousand. And when it was all ended, pretty much all of the senators who had been participating in it were executed. So when we say, like, sports have always been political, there have been times when sports were political in like, overthrowing countries and regime changes, political. Thirty thousand people died!
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: As a result of these riots after a chariot race.
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
MITCH: Um, I thought that was interesting. That was not, you know, germane to this, because that was not a protest players were making. It really has no connection, I just thought it was interesting.
AUSTIN: Well, no, it does have, it does have, uh, a tie to it, just because it's... These protests are not in a vacuum.
MITCH: Oh yeah yeah. That's what it is. It's... when you have people and money involved, there's always gonna be a power imbalance of some sort. There's always gonna be, you know, someone's gonna be winning and losing, not on the field, but winning and losing in power and money.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And that is political.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: Fast forwarding a ton, 1906 Olympic games. Peter O'Conner was an Irish long jumper. He went to the 1906 Olympic games in Greece thinking he was representing Ireland. He didn't know until he got there that because Ireland was not officially part of whatever committee submitted the applicants, when they got there they just lumped them in with England and Great Britain.
AUSTIN: Ohhhhh, oh yeah.
MITCH: So he goes to the Olympics thinking he's gonna be Irish, 'cause he had registered with an Irish team, like they had sent him from Ireland with his teammates. And then he got there and they were like, "Surprise, no. There is no Ireland." So when he gets second place in the long jump and goes to the medal ceremony, they raise the Union Jack British flag and play the...
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Whatever the national anthem... God Save the Queen maybe? I don't know what they play.
AUSTIN: I don't know, sure.
MITCH: [laughing] So, his form of protest, he had snuck in a flag with the gold harp and the shamrocks and Erin go Bragh, and while everybody was at the medal ceremony, his teammate Con Leahy stood and guarded the flag pole for him and he just climbed up the flag pole and took the flag down and replaced it with his own flag.
AUSTIN: Yeah!
MITCH: [laughing] And there wasn't a lot of... Like, I read the follow up, and he, you know, he made this big statement, he put up the Irish flag at the top of the flag pole at the medal ceremony. People weren't happy, but it wasn't a big thing.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And then he just kinda went back to Ireland and he was, like, a coach and he kept participating in track and field.
AUSTIN: That's punk as fuck, though.
MITCH: Yeah, 'cause like, he was obviously unhappy, and he was like, "The only option I have is I'm gonna climb up this flag pole, I'll do it right this second." [laughing]
AUSTIN: Also, that's incredibly hard.
MITCH: Yeah. But he did it.
AUSTIN: Ughhh
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: There's a little snippet, it's also from Steve Wulf, the 1936 Summer Games. I was aware of the 36 Summer Games in Germany because of Jessie Owens, the people who had gone.
AUSTIN: Yes, yes
MITCH: That was the games where Jessie Owens won the 200 meters. I didn't know that second place in that race that Jessie Owens had won, the 200 meter, um, the second place was Mack Robinson, who was Jackie Robinson's older brother.
AUSTIN: I did not know that.
MITCH: Yeah? I didn't either. Jessie Owens and Mack Robinson decide to go, to race, to prove Hitler wrong. It was very effective.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: There were a lot of athletes who sat that one out. There was another track start named Milton Green. A fencer named Albert Wolf. All of the basketball players from Long Island University would have gone to the Olympics and sat it out as a boycott. I hadn't heard about them as much.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But it wasn't... there were people boycotting it at the time. One thing I pulled from this Steve Wulf article, Mack Robinson came back from the Olympics, had a silver medal, still living in America when it was very racist, and, and, uh, what's his name, Owens - I've read quotes from him about that, like, yeah it's great that he could go give the middle finger to Hitler and prove racism wrong, but he came back to America where he still had to live under it,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: for thirty more years until segregation was officially ended. Mack Robinson, the only job he could get when he came back to the US was as a street sweeper. But his form of protest was he went out and did his street sweeping every night in his Olympics jacket. And the people in the mostly white neighborhoods he was doing this in hated him and this. To the point that, uh, they called the cops and had the jacket, like, forcibly removed. That's what it is in America, like, we love these two guys as, like, symbols to go over there and like, you know,
AUSTIN: Stick it to Hitler
MITCH: fight the Nazis.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And then they came home, and just the act of wearing his Olympics jacket, that he has earned, that he went there for America and won.
AUSTIN: Yes
MITCH: Him wearing it while he was performing the kind of blue collar job that white people thought he should do, that was too cocky and too in your face. I love that he did it. I hate that it was so brutally shot down, but [laughing] you know?
AUSTIN: [sighing] This coutry's hard to like sometimes.
MITCH: It is.
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: Everything else I have comes from 1967, 68, 69.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: A lot happened in that period of time.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah.
MITCH: 1967 was the story of Katherine Switzer, um, and the Boston Marathon. This comes from an ESPN article by Greg Garber. Switzer had wanted to be just, like, a general athlete when she was a kid. She wanted to play field hockey. And she was encouraged by her dad to just run as conditioning. She wasn’t a runner, per se, but she ended up being a super talented runner. So when she got to college, she played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse at Lynchburg, but she transferred to Syracuse to do journalism. When she got there she didn’t have all these sports that she had grown up playing. And they didn’t have a women’s cross country team. I don’t think anybody had a women’s cross country team at this time. But she befriended Arnie Briggs, who was the cross country coach, and trained with the men’s cross country team.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: So you have this kind of, for being a super talented athlete, an amateur athlete. She is in it for purely the love of the game. She wants to go run with the men’s cross country team even though she knows that she’ll never compete, just because she loves to run. But Switzer was, you know, he had run the Boston Marathon fifteen times, she expressed interest in running it someday. And he told her, “A woman can’t run the Boston Marathon. Women are too weak and fragile for 26.2 miles. No dame ever ran no marathon.”
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: This is like her mentor, her coach, the guy who was more than happy to let her train with his team. Even the best ally, that’s still the attitude at the time.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Um, but, you know, she gets this kind of feedback from him and she’s like, “Ok well if I can, will you take me?” And he’s like, “Yeah, if you can run it, I’ll take you.” So she does. They train, she runs a full marathon with him in Syracuse to prove that she can do it. In the story I was reading from her, it’s Syracuse, it’s winter, uh, it’s like snowing and cold, and they run their first twenty-six full miles and get to the end of it and she’s scared that maybe they had miscalculated. So she convinces him to just keep going a little bit more to just give them some wiggle room in case they had counted wrong, and runs like thirty-two.
AUSTIN: Oh my god
MITCH: [laughing] And she’s like, “Now I can quit and know that even if I mismeasured, I’m probably still ok.”
AUSTIN: Six more miles.
MITCH: Yeah
[both laughing]
MITCH: No, so they go through the rulebook for the Boston Marathon. There’s nothing in the rule book that says anything gender specific. They didn’t have any women registering, but there was no rule against it.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: So she registers under her initials, K.V. Switzer, and they go to the race.
AUSTIN: Pulled a real J.K. Rowling on that one.
MITCH: This lady’s fascinating. I watched an interview with her from pretty recently. She claims that she wasn’t trying to trick anybody, she just didn’t like when people misspelled her first name. She’s like, “When I write my first name people spell it wrong, so I just used my initials.” And I was like, is that true, K.V. Switzer? [laughing]
AUSTIN: See, even if that was the case, like… I don’t care that you were trying to trick ‘em. I love it.
MITCH: But she…. Like, her’s is a little bit of the thing like she is looking back on it now, she realizes how big of a symbol it was,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but I think it’s pretty genuine that she, she was not trying to take a stand as a symbol, she just wanted to run this race.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And like, that was her main goal. It turned out that she did become this big symbol for women’s sports, but that wasn’t her goal.
AUSTIN: Let’s just hope that she doesn’t turn into a real transphobic J.K. Rowling.
MITCH: I don’t think she is. She does do… She works with a bunch of like, women’s running organizations now.
AUSTIN: Good, ok. I thought you were gonna say -
MITCH: No [laughing]
AUSTIN: she, she, uh, she does funding for, uh -
MITCH: Oh my gosh. I can’t say she doesn’t because I didn’t search it, but most people aren’t as transphobic as J.K. Rowling so we’re probably safe.
AUSTIN: I thought you were gonna say funding for Focus on the Family or something.
MITCH: Oh my gosh, no.
AUSTIN: I was about to throw my microphone through the window [laughing]
MITCH: Switzer goes to the marathon - I didn’t know this part of the story until I was reading about it - it’s in Boston in the winter, it’s pretty cold.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: When they started the race, everyone was wearing, like, she said she was wearing, like, garbage bags underneath her hoodie. You can’t tell if someone’s a man or a woman when everyone’s wearing hoodies and gloves and face covers and everything. So when she started the race, everybody looked the same, and she said it was a few miles in when, like, people started shedding their clothes. When she finally took her hoodie off and her hair was loose, that’s when everybody realized it was a girl. And all the other runners in her group were, like, happy to see her. Like, nobody was talking ‘cause they’re running a marathon,
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: but she said when she took her hoodie off and her hair was down, she saw a bunch of surprise on peoples’ faces around her, but it was all smiles and, like, high fives and encouragement.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: A few miles in, she’s taken the hoodie off, the press truck comes by, and the press is who notices that, like, oh this is something, there’s a girl out there. And they start like making a big deal out of it and taking pictures. And following them is the truck with Jock Semple and Will Cloney, the co-race directors. And they are furious. They’re not necessarily furious that woman is running the race, because they are very aware that women can run marathons, they’re mad that one has a number and is sanctioned. If she had just ran the race without a number, probably wouldn’t have gotten told off by anybody. It’s the fact that she is potentially gonna be in the standings and has a number and is on paper. Semple and Cloney jump out of their truck, go stand out in the middle of the road, and try to, like, block her path and not let her by. And there’s like a really famous photo - ‘cause like, also, they did this right by the press truck.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So, like, professional photographers like, ready to take the picture. There’s really great photos of them like, trying to pull her off the race course. And her, like, older coach and her boyfriend are, like, shoving them off and she just, like, keeps on running past ‘em. She’s like dodging ‘em. That was a few miles in, and she said it was like, crazy stressful and, like, scary. And then she realized, like, she had all that adrenaline, all that stress right at the beginning, and she was like, “Well now I can’t quit because it has become this thing. Now it has become this struggle.”
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So then she had - she’s like, “I have to finish the race now. There’s no way I’m quitting now.”
[both laughing]
MITCH: But she did. She ran the Boston Marathon eight more times after that. She ran the New York City Marathon four times, and she won the New York CIty Marathon in 1974. And she started the Avon Series of women’s races, which are the races that eventually led to the first Olympic’s women’s marathon in 1984.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: So there was like… I believe her when she says that she wasn’t trying to make some big statement when she started it. It clearly became one. And after that she kind like really took women’s distance running to be taken seriously. Like to the next level.
AUSTIN: That’s really cool. Like, she realized that this was actually a thing,
MITCH: Mhmm
AUSTIN: and then she ran with it.
MITCH: Yeah, literally.
AUSTIN: [laughing] I hate you.
MITCH: I mean, you said it.
[both laughing]
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: 1968, one year later, completely unrelated. Um, 1968 was another Olympics that had, kind of, a contentious, yes or no boycott situation. Um, I’m not gonna go through every single detail, but I’m going to link to the story because this is a extremely well written and well researched article I pulled this from. It was on theundefeated.com, and it was written by Johnny Smith.
AUSTIN: That’s a really good website.
MITCH: Yeah, this article is incredible.
AUSTIN: I like The Undefeated.
MITCH: It’s called The Reign of Lew Alcindor in the Age of Revolt. Is that how you say his name?
AUSTIN: Lew Alcindor?
MITCH: Alcindor?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Ok, Kareem Abdul-Jabar.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: This is a long essay, kind of, on -
AUSTIN: I love Kareem.
MITCH: No, yeah, I do too.
AUSTIN: Ugh, he’s so…
MITCH: And I was aware of Kareem now. Like I’m aware of… He’s an incredible writer, obviously very, like… He’s one of the most thoughtful voices on these types of issues now. I knew that about him. I hadn’t read anything from his early days.
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: This article is all about his early days. It’s fascinating.
AUSTIN: I think he’s a coach for the Clippers?
MITCH: I don’t know. I don’t actually care about sports. [laughing]
AUSTIN: Now that the bubble’s a thing, I’m actually, like, watching NBA.
MITCH: Oh, keep him safe.
AUSTIN: I know.
MITCH: We need to keep Kareem safe.
AUSTIN: [laughing] But apparently he’s like the post coach for the Clippers or something like that.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And Zubat, he’s a, a… He’s their post player, said that now that he’s been practicing with Kareem he has a sky hook.
MITCH: [laughing]
AUSTIN: And nobody’s seen it actually happen, so they don’t, like… I don’t believe he actually has one.
MITCH: Some day, he might.
AUSTIN: ‘Cause Kareem was, he was just… God he was good.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Just watching him play.
MITCH: Oh, he is one of those, like… I don’t really know anything about basketball, but whenever I have seen clips of him, he’s just fun to watch. Also he was incredible in Airplane.
AUSTIN: [laughing] I think maybe I’ve seen airplane once.
MITCH: He’s in it. He’s good. He’s funny.
AUSTIN: I don’t remember. [gasps] He’s the copilot.
MITCH: Yeah. Well, he’s one of them.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: I didn’t know much about his early life. Have you read anything about the, like, summit with Muhammad Ali in Cleveland?
AUSTIN: Nnnnnoooo, no I haven’t. Uh, the extent of my knowledge of Cleveland and, like, racial protest is pretty much just Jim Brown taking it to that governor. Is it the Alabama governor?
MITCH: I don’t know.
AUSTIN: Oh, dude, there’s an interview on some, like, late night tv show and the governor just like walks off stage because Jim Brown just takes him to task.
MITCH: I did not know that.
AUSTIN: It’s so good.
MITCH: I’ll have to watch that. This was in nineteen-sixty-something, something early in the sixties. Jim Brown the football player organized this summit in Cleveland, pretty soon after Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his, uh, title. And he invited, I think, six professional athletes. Lew Alcindor was the only college athlete who was invited. He considers the Harlem race riots when he was a teenager and this summit to be like his political awakenings. He had these two very formative experiences when he was pretty young, and it kind of set him on a path where he couldn’t not be politically engaged after experiencing those two things.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Muhammad Ali’s, his protest was not sports related, but it obviously had a massive effect, impact on his sports career. He’s one who stands out as, like, putting his money where his mouth is, even when it didn’t benefit him. Like, he… As much as he cared about boxing and was the world’s greatest boxer, he proved that he cared about -
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: justice and fairness more than boxing.
AUSTIN: Right, yeah.
MITCH: Uh, so, Alcindors-
AUSTIN: Was he… He was Muhammad Ali at this point, right?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah, not Cassius Clay.
MITCH: He was Muhammad Ali at this point, and he -
AUSTIN: I don’t know a ton about his, like, about Muhammad Ali’s history. I don’t really follow boxing all that much.
MITCH: I don’t either. Um, at this point in history, the mid-sixties, he is opposed to the Vietnam War for religious reasons, he, uh, refuses the draft.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: And gets all of his titles and everything stripped away.
AUSTIN: [laughing] In this world, also, we have a president that did the same thing, not for religious reasons -
MITCH: Oh I know, I know, I know.
AUSTIN: but is now president.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah
AUSTIN: If that says anything, just in general.
MITCH: Yeah. Lew Alcindor, in 1967 he’s a college player, he goes to this workshop on the Olympic Project for Human Rights at San Jose State University, organized by Harry Edwards. And it seems like this was kind of just like a big rally. Most of the people, I don’t think, were like directly involved in the Olympics. But it was a very big and public demonstration of anti-Olympic sentiment. One of the first in the sixties.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: While he’s there, he makes a speech at this meeting. It’s very, you know, uh, committed and strong. He says, here’s a quote, “Somewhere each of us has got to take a stand against this kind of thing. That’s how I take my stand, using what I have, and I take my stand here.” That’s a pretty strong statement.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: At a very passionate event. A few days later the Los Angeles Times questions him about it, and he says, “I haven’t made up my mind. All I can say is that everybody can agree that it would be a good idea to boycott, but there’s no boycott as of now.” I thought this was interesting because, like, it’s easy to look at the adult Kareem Abdul-Jabar who is so confident and eloquent. He was a kid. Like, when we see Smash in the tv show, trying to toe a line and not a hundred percent being confident in his choices when he doesn’t know how it’s gonna play out, that’s super understandable.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: And in one of his first big public, you know, stands that he took, he wasn’t very confident. He didn’t know from the beginning exactly what he was gonna do, and did everything perfectly and eloquently. But he still did it anyway.
AUSTIN: Well he’s also in college.
MITCH: I know. And when he’s in college, his hero at that time is John Wooden, who, like, was his best friend to the end.
AUSTIN: UCLA
MITCH: He has a lot of quotes about how incredible Wooden was, but at the time, John Wooden was not supportive of this kind of thing.
AUSTIN: No.
MITCH: He was, he was, he was, you know, Alcindor’s biggest influence, and he wasn’t supportive. So it would be doubly hard to go against that.
AUSTIN: Right. Yeah, and well he’s in college, I mean… This is where Smash has, kind of a leg up in this situation. Kareem is in a situation where he is now off on his own. And I know he has a lot of people to back him up and things like that. But Smash had his family with him,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: he had all his friends. And I’m not saying that Kareem didn’t have that. But he is so much more out in the open.
MITCH: Yeah. And he was definitely the most paid-attention-to athlete in college sports.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Everybody was paying attention to every single thing he said and did. He does end up boycotting the Olympics. So do several of his teammates from UCLA. But they told the press, he told Life Magazine, that they boycotted because they didn’t, because they didn’t want to delay their graduation. And said, “We didn’t want to get caught up in the middle of anything.” So even while he is doing the boycott, he was still kind of hedging it in the press and didn’t, like, want to make a big political stand. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing, or he was wrong. I just think it’s interesting.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: It was clearly, you know, hard, and not clean and not easy.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Where it really kind of blew up is - kind of like we see in the show with Smash - that kind of equivocating is completely understandable because it's scary, but it doesn't work. Like, when the people have decided that they're gonna have an opinion on what you do, they're gonna have an opinion whatever you do.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: So he makes these statements where he's trying to, like, not piss anybody off, and it just makes people angrier. And people are, you know, getting more and more riled up at everything he says. And people are like... hate him at this point. Uh, so he goes on the Today Show to promote an organization he was working for on the offseason called Operation Sports Rescue. He's supposed to be talking about this, like, basketball clinic organization, and the interviewer keeps asking him about the Olympics. And he finally says, "Yeah, I live here, but it's not really my country." Which, in 1968, was like a... Like, that is when he finally said on a national stage, like, let me take a stand.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: From everything else I've read, he got more committed and more eloquent as he got older. But he's been that passionate since he was in high school. It was just a little bit, uh, there was just a little more - trying to figure out how to do it most effectively at that age, which I think is interesting to read about.
AUSTIN: Yeah. Well I like that. It's... It's good to show the way that people, like, progress in those types of things.
MITCH: Especially when it's, you know, like, he didn't have it all figured out at that time, he wasn't fully confident or fully prepared to, you know... He wasn't sure about where he wanted to take a stand or how strong to be, but he still did it.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: You know?
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: We wouldn't be talking about him if he had let those doubts make him do something he didn't want to do. At the end of the day, he still stood by his convictions, and put his money where his mouth is and didn't go to the Olympics when he very well could've been the star of the Olympics.
AUSTIN: Yeah
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: Similar, the last ones I have are the Syracuse Eight, which is about the same year, 1968-1969. They're the closest I found in the stories I was reading about to what we see on the tv show. This comes from a writer named Courtney Carr on BlackPast.org. I didn't know until I read her article, the Syracuse Eight were actually nine students.
AUSTIN: Yeah, there were nine.
MITCH: And it's the newspapers at the time, they just wrote down Syracuse Eight and it stuck.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: But they had -
AUSTIN: You said... What year was it?
MITCH: Sixty-nine
AUSTIN: Sixty-nine, seventy
MITCH: Yeah, sixty-nine into seventy. They were nine football players: Gregory Allen, Richard Bulls, Dana Harrell, John Godbolt, John Lobon, Clarence McGill, Alif Muhammad, Duane Walker, and Ron Womack. They came to their coaching staff at Syracuse with four demands. They wanted equal access to academic tutoring. At the time, they automatically sorted Black athletes into the remedial classes, whether they should've been there or not.
AUSTIN: Oh my god.
MITCH: It's what it seemed like to me. So like, you know, all of the athletes have tutors that are provided to them by the school to help them be athletes and students. They were giving Black players the easiest and the least important of all the academic stuff. And they were like, you know, "We're here as athletes and as students, if we can do better, let us do better." They essentially weren't being allowed to meet their full potential academically.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: They wanted better medical care across the board, for everybody. But at the time, specifically, Syracuse football's on staff doctor was an older guy, he was a gynecologist by training, and the players say he was clearly not comfortable touching Black bodies.
AUSTIN: I read that.
MITCH: So no matter what they came in there with, he just told 'em to ice it and they'd have to figure it out on their own.
AUSTIN: In contrast, my - the doc at my high school was uncomfortable with touching anybody.
[both laughing]
MITCH: Which is also a problem, but at least it’s not a racist problem.
AUSTIN: So he just said “Ice it” and that was it.
MITCH: Yeah yeah yeah. They wanted starting assignments-
AUSTIN: I would rather have a misanthrope than a racist.
MITCH: Yeah, amen.
[both laughing]
MITCH: I’d rather have no trainer than a racist trainer. They wanted starting assignments and play time based on merit. At the time, the coaching staff not only were, like, putting limits on their play time and their starting, they had a cap on how many Black players could be on the field at one time in practice. So they weren’t even getting as much practice time as everybody else.
AUSTIN: It’s 1970.
MITCH: Yeah. And they wanted to integrate the coaching staff. They had had zero… They had had no non-white coaches since 1898 when the program started. In the players eyes, and I think it’s pretty legitimate - some of these problems are a lot easier to fix if you have an advocate in the coaching staff. So that is probably the most effective change. It’s also the one that was the easiest for the coaching staff to dismiss. So they attempted to meet with head coach Floyd Schwartzwalder. Met with him in 1969, he didn’t listen, tried to meet with him again, he wouldn’t even have a meeting with them after the first one was a fiasco. So in the spring they walked out of a practice and went and met with some journalists and told them they were walking out in protest. They were immediately suspended from the team, all nine of them. But they had some support from other university employees that weren’t in the football program. And they had Jim Brown, the football player, who had gone to Syracuse, come in on their behalf kind of as a, like, intermediary. Which was good. So they walk out, the coach is like, “Good riddance, whatever.” But they are able to keep their scholarships, stay in school, and graduate. Syracuse does hire a Black assistant coach, kind of, I think, against the coaching staff’s wishes. He wasn’t listed on the roster, he wasn’t included. But somebody was trying at some level to force this to happen. And this one… What I think is interesting about this one is, these are nine players who were, you know, college athletes. I don’t know if they were trying to go pro or not, but like, that’s about as high as you can go. These issues fed them up enough that they were ready to walk out, and when their demands weren’t met they didn’t come back. They graduated a couple years later, and never played football again.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Like, when you take this kind of stand, like… It wouldn’t be meaningful if it didn’t cost something, and sometimes it does cost. Like, for these eight -
AUSTIN: Yeah, it does.
MITCH: they eventually got what they wanted.
AUSTIN: Nine.
MITCH: Nine. They eventually got what they wanted, changes were made eventually, but they didn’t get to play football anymore.
AUSTIN: No, and they feel like that - I read this too - they feel like that the coaching staff actively told NFL, like,
MITCH: Oh yeah, I didn’t go deep into that.
AUSTIN: people that worked in the NFL that they should not draft them or sign them or anything like that.
MITCH: Everything I’ve read about them, they seem to have all, you know… It was for the best in the long term, but that was a really hard thing. I can’t imagine -
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: You work your whole life to make it in college football and you get there, to decide that it’s not worth it anymore, that’s massive.
AUSTIN: It’s… yeah, God… Oh my… Well-
MITCH: Not all those are directly related. Those are what I thought were interesting.
AUSTIN: Oh yeah, no, they are.
MITCH: I like noticing what all those have in common. Some of those protests were not playing, like we see in the show. Some of them were aggressively playing when people didn’t want you to play.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: What I pull away from it is, none of these people were ever a hundred percent sure but they did it anyway.
AUSTIN: Right
MITCH: Like, each one of those stories involves a moment where it’s not this, like, a hundred percent easy, righteous, you know, I’m gonna take a stand because it’s obvious what I have to do. There’s always a complication, and there’s always a level of uncertainty. But these stories stand out and they’re the ones that we remember, they’re the ones that led to real change, because the people did it.
AUSTIN: Yeah
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: We’re back. Another installment of Austin Answers Very Basic Football Questions for Mitch.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Ok
MITCH: We don’t have a title, we don’t have a jingle, but we will someday. My question today should be shorter and should be easier, and is simpler than last week’s.
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: ‘Cause that was a long one.
AUSTIN: You gave me [scoffing]. Wasn’t it the trade wire?
MITCH: Oh no no no, I was thinking two weeks ago when I was editing, about the running backs and stuff.
AUSTIN: Ohhh no.
MITCH: Just a can of worms. Waiver wire, I stumped you.
AUSTIN: Waiver wire. You did.
MITCH: You didn’t know.
AUSTIN: That’s because it’s about waivers and NFL bullshit.
MITCH: I didn’t know. This week, the thing that I don’t understand is: what are football pads? Are they all the same for every player?
AUSTIN: No
MITCH: That’s my… I thought it was a yes.
AUSTIN: No, they aren’t.
MITCH: Ok. Tell me what… Tell me, if I was gonna go play football, god forbid,
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: uh, let’s say I was gonna be a quarterback,
AUSTIN: Ok
MITCH: what are all the different pieces that you have to wear? And is there anything that is, like, optional?
AUSTIN: So, as a quarterback, most everybody has the same padding. Most of them are built differently for different players.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Pads on a skill player, quarterback, receiver, running back, whatever, are usually more, um, more sleek.
MITCH: You’re talking about the shoulder things.
AUSTIN: Shoulder pads, yes.
MITCH: The epaulets.
AUSTIN: Yes [laughing]. Now in college and in the pros, usually they’re… Pros don’t even wear any leg pads.
MITCH: Ugh, crazy
AUSTIN: Especially, uh, what’s it called, skilled players.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Receivers very rarely wear knee pads or thigh pads. College, you’re gonna see thigh pads, you’re gonna see knee pads. A lot of them are going to be, if you’re a skill player, hex-
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: like a hex pad. So it’s gonna be thinner, but it’s gonna be able to displace energy out. Some with on your thigh pad. You’re gonna have -
MITCH: I’ve seen the hip pads.
AUSTIN: hip pads, a butt pad. That’s general high school stuff. You have the padding right here. As a running back you can have a back plate, so that whenever you get hit in the back it’s not gonna hit your spine.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: But as a quarterback, if you were a quarterback,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: It all… Helmet wise, it just depends on the shape, like whatever helmet you want. Most of the time the facemask is going to be that’s going to be open, so that you can see the whole field while you are playing. But the biggest difference is the quarterback jacket. They call it the flak jacket. It’s so that whenever you’re sitting in the pocket, somebody doesn’t hit your ribs. It’s literally just a pad that attaches to the bottom of your shoulder pads.
MITCH: Only quarterbacks wear those?
AUSTIN: Most of the time. Now I have seen tight ends wear them before, I’ve seen other players, but almost exclusively it’s a quarterback thing.
MITCH: Is it because they’re the most likely to get hit from the side?
AUSTIN: From the side, yeah, in that area.
MITCH: ‘Cause you got your arms up for throwing.
AUSTIN: Exactly. So that’s pretty much the only thing that changes-
MITCH: No it is, you got shoulder pads that I see, they’re mostly the same just different size and shape.
AUSTIN: Yeah
MITCH: Pants pads, and quarterbacks can wear a flak jacket.
AUSTIN: Mhmm
MITCH: Is there… Are these things that are, like, in the rules, required and forbidden? Or do you have some flexibility on what you, like, can wear?
AUSTIN: So, I’m not… I’ve never read the rules, necessarily. And I don’t know what’s required and what’s not.
MITCH: Ok
AUSTIN: Now in the NFL obviously you don’t have to wear pants pads, so you can do whatever the hell you want to.
MITCH: But could you if you wanted to?
AUSTIN: Oh yeah
MITCH: Oh ok
AUSTIN: Definitely. There are people that do. It’s just whenever you’re a receiver and you run a 4.4, you don’t want anything that will slow you down.
MITCH: Yeah. But if a pro player wanted to wear knee pads,
AUSTIN: Oh he definitely, he definitely could.
MITCH: no one’s gonna tell him he can’t.
AUSTIN: No, definitely could. Now, if you’re a lineman, there’s a couple of extra pads that you could wear, hands wise.
MITCH: Hmmmm
AUSTIN: They get padded gloves a lot of the time, so when you’re, like, punching, or when you’re, like, using your hands a lot of the time you’re not gonna, like, bruise your hands up. Uh, elbow pads occasionally, if you’re, like, really-
MITCH: Got sharp elbows.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Yeah. I mean, and then you have braces, and things like that.
MITCH: Well yeah, that’s all sports.
AUSTIN: Yeah, that’s all sports.
MITCH: And as far as I’m aware, like, I was just curious if they were differentiated and if it was the kind of thing where each player got to kind of pick and choose what you wanted to wear.
AUSTIN: And, like, helmets change depending on what type of helmet you need. If you’re prone to, like head concussions, or, like, you’ve had a concussion before. They may get one that’s a little more padded.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Or something like that.
MITCH: I never played a sport that had any kind of… I played baseball, where you have a helmet. And I played before the era of the heart guard thing.
AUSTIN: I never even knew that existed until recently.
MITCH: Yeah. And I refused to wear a cup because I didn’t like it, and then I’d get in trouble.
AUSTIN: Balls are too big.
[both laughing]
MITCH: Maybe
AUSTIN: I didn’t wear a cup either, unless I was -
MITCH: I was supposed to, we were supposed to on our baseball teams, and I just didn’t ‘cause I hated them
AUSTIN: I never did unless I was a catcher.
MITCH: I never was a catcher.
AUSTIN: And I played catcher maybe twice.
MITCH: Strict top.
AUSTIN: [laughing]
MITCH: I’ll edit that out.
AUSTIN: No you’re not.
MITCH: That does surprise me though, with football having as many as they have, I just assumed that football players would also wear like a cup and a jock.
AUSTIN: Nope
MITCH: That’s insane to me. I would if I was playing football and I hate them.
AUSTIN: You know when I work out and I wear those sliders?
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: Yeah, almost exclusively just that.
MITCH: It’s just crazy to me to, like, put pads on your hips and your knees and your thighs and not [laughing]
AUSTIN: Well you can’t move.
MITCH: I know. You can move enough.
AUSTIN: Not… A lot of the time you can’t run as fast as you’d like to with that thing. It just gets in the way.
MITCH: Yeah, I mean that’s how I felt about it in baseball. I knew it would’ve been smarter to wear one. But I played second base and I was like, I gotta move… Like, it was a lot of, like, little twists and turns that really make it uncomfortable.
AUSTIN: Yeah. I never got hit in the balls.
MITCH: Yeah, I don’t think I ever did either, by a baseball.
AUSTIN: I got hit in the eye, that sucked.
MITCH: I mean, that would hurt.
AUSTIN: Oh, it was not fun.
MITCH: I was, I was, I was very scared of the ball, in a way that didn’t make me, like, you know, flinch or run away, but made me, like, on high alert. Like I was like, I’m going to field this ball because if I don’t it’s gonna hit me.
[both laughing]
AUSTIN: In little league I became scared of the ball.
MITCH: I was super scared of the ball.
AUSTIN: And what… I saw a dude - and I forget what his name was - but when he was twelve, thirteen years old, he could throw - no, he was twelve. He could throw close to eighty miles an hour.
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: And he hit one of the guys on my team in the head and it cracked his helmet.
MITCH: Yep
AUSTIN: I was like nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.
MITCH: Oh I was… As a batter, I was in my mind extremely scared of the ball. It didn’t matter except for, like, occasionally a coach would want you to crowd the plate. And I was like, I physically can’t. Like, evolutionarily,
AUSTIN: Fight or flight
MITCH: my body has a fight or flight response that will not let me crowd that plate.
[both laughing]
MITCH: I’m not sticking my elbows and knees where I know they’re gonna throw the ball, there’s no way.
AUSTIN: Well, I also kind of got like that in football. I was -
MITCH: Here’s the deal. Throwing a football at me, as an uncoordinated person who doesn’t like to catch things, footballs scare me because they are hard and they’re not shaped like balls. Like, I don’t know how to catch it.
AUSTIN: The ball didn’t scare me.
MITCH: The ball scares me. [laughing] If you throw me all the balls that exist, I can confidently catch a baseball, a basketball, everything else. Watching a football fly through the air, I’m like, what do I do with that? It’s pointed. It’s a projectile.
AUSTIN: [laughing] Footballs don’t scare me. Hitting people scared me.
MITCH: Well yeah, I wouldn’t do that.
AUSTIN: And it’s because I was tiny.
MITCH: I’m a pacifist.
AUSTIN: I was a little guy. So I wish, I wish I was the size that I am now,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: playing football then.
MITCH: Well yeah,
AUSTIN: It would be wonderful.
MITCH: It would be unfair [laughing]
AUSTIN: No it wouldn’t. There are guys that are -
MITCH: There are guys that are your size, yeah.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I played dudes that were like 6’2”, 6’3”, 215, as receivers.
MITCH: Yeah. You would fit in on a high school football team now.
AUSTIN: Now I could actually throw my weight around. But not then. No, I was forty-five pounds lighter and -
MITCH: So you weren’t, like, tiny. You weren’t like -
AUSTIN: I was 150 pounds.
MITCH: Yeah, small for a football player. But you weren’t like, short and like, tiny tiny.
AUSTIN: No no no no
MITCH: You were just small for a football player.
AUSTIN: Yeah, I was 5’11”, 6’. I’ve grown an inch since then,
MITCH: Yeah
AUSTIN: which is odd a little bit, but…
[Devil Town theme music]
MITCH: Thank you for listening to another episode of Devil Town. You can follow us on twitter @deiltownpod, or you can follow Austin @a_greenameyer, or me @organzapleats. You can go to deviltown.buzzsprout.com to find a transcript and show notes and links to everything we cited. And you can email us at deviltownpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks.