Speaker 1: Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're knee
Speaker 1: deep in Sangria, croquettas and patatas bravs.
Speaker 2: That's right, we're topis over here.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, November eighteenth, and while Alex and I are
Speaker 1: getting settled in Spain for the VJK Cup, we're focusing
Speaker 1: the show on.
Speaker 2: An interview with the authors of the books.
Speaker 1: Slaying the Trolls, Why the Trolls are very very wrong
Speaker 1: about women in Sports, the Great Nefert, D Walker, and
Speaker 1: David Barry. Before the interview, I want to tread you
Speaker 1: the blurb I wrote for this book, and I think
Speaker 1: this book might be a very useful tool in the
Speaker 1: arsenal of all use slices out there fighting the good fight.
Speaker 2: So here you go. I wrote.
Speaker 1: It can be difficult to move on from said ideas,
Speaker 1: stereotypes and talking points if we aren't fully educated on
Speaker 1: how we arrived at them and how things have changed,
Speaker 1: which is why a book like this is so important.
Speaker 1: Centuries of societal bias have created heuristics around women's sports
Speaker 1: that are not only inaccurate and harmful to female athletes, leagues,
Speaker 1: and fans of women's sport, but They also keep people
Speaker 1: from making a lot of money off a very viable product.
Speaker 1: In no other business do we reject or refuse to
Speaker 1: capitalize on multimillion dollar profit and rocket ship growth. We
Speaker 1: do that in women's sports, not just due to ignorance,
Speaker 1: but because of an unequal and unfair system that was
Speaker 1: actually built with intention. The authors recognize all the ways
Speaker 1: women's sports have been held back, and they see the
Speaker 1: incredible growth and profit that could happen if we actually invested, supported, watched,
Speaker 1: and understood the product. This book will not only slay
Speaker 1: the trolls, but educate the masses, and Nef and David
Speaker 1: will educate us all. Coming up next, it's time for
Speaker 1: another group chat where we take the t from the
Speaker 1: text and put it on the airwaves.
Speaker 2: Joining us.
Speaker 1: She's the Deputy VP for Academic Affairs Student Affairs at
Speaker 1: Equity for the University of Massachusetts, a tenured full professor
Speaker 1: in the Department of Sport Management, and a social scientist
Speaker 1: who studies organizational culture. She's a Research Fellow with the
Speaker 1: North American Society for Sport Management, signifying the top ten
Speaker 1: percent of researchers in her field. A former NCAAD one
Speaker 1: basketball player, at Georgia Tech and Stetson and was inducted
Speaker 1: into the Stetson UA Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2: It's Nef for TD Walker. What's up, Nef?
Speaker 3: How are you? Sarah? Good to be here, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2: Me, Thanks for coming on joining her.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of economics at Southern Utah University who
Speaker 1: has spent the last two decades researching sports and economics.
Speaker 1: He's the lead author of the books The Wages of
Speaker 1: Wins and Stumbling On Wins, the sole author of Sports Economics,
Speaker 1: and a co author of the Economics of the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2: He's been part of more than eighty.
Speaker 1: Academic papers published on the subject of sports economics, and
Speaker 1: has written for a number of popular outlets, including The
Speaker 1: New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, dot Com, Forbes, and more.
Speaker 2: It's David Barry, what's up, David?
Speaker 4: What's up with you? Sarah? Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: You know, living the dream is what I tell myself
Speaker 2: every day. It's got to be somebody's dream.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Thank you both for coming on.
Speaker 1: They are the co authors of the books Slaying the
Speaker 1: Trolls Why the Trolls Are Very Very Wrong About Women
Speaker 1: and Sports, which provides the arguments and the empirical evidence
Speaker 1: to demonstrate why responding to women sports news with nobody.
Speaker 2: Cares couldn't be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: The book gives folks the evidence and in photo back
Speaker 1: against outdated sexism and help support the current push for equity,
Speaker 1: investment and respect in women's sports. This book is so needed, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: more so every day it feels as women's sports is
Speaker 1: going in one direction and the trolls continue to push
Speaker 1: in another. So nef tell me how this book came together.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, So First, Dave is a really fast writer.
Speaker 5: I am not so much. But the book started because
Speaker 5: Dave and I colleagues writing together doing research together, essentially
Speaker 5: got tired of going on what was then Twitter now
Speaker 5: x and seeing these trolls make really ridiculous comments, not
Speaker 5: fact based comments, based on their small opinions about women's sports,
Speaker 5: and you know, we would go back and forth and
Speaker 5: text about it, we would talk about it when we
Speaker 5: saw each other. We're writing papers, we're talking about it,
Speaker 5: and we just sort of got fed up and was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what can we do about this. The timing was such
Speaker 5: that it was I believe twenty eighteen when we first
Speaker 5: began discussing the idea of this book, and then we
Speaker 5: started writing. We started, you know, meeting basically weekly and
Speaker 5: just talking about what we saw that week on Twitter,
Speaker 5: following folks like you and your other colleagues, Jamil Hill
Speaker 5: and others, and seeing the ways that you were wasting
Speaker 5: a lot of your very valuable time trying to not
Speaker 5: only you know, call out the trolls, but also provide
Speaker 5: some facts so that you're educating people along the way.
Speaker 5: And we just thought to ourselves, why are they, like
Speaker 5: they need to be doing the really good work that
Speaker 5: they do, Why are they wasting their time with these trolls.
Speaker 3: Can we do something to provide some.
Speaker 5: Tools for folks to be able to respond to trolls
Speaker 5: or at least just have more educated conversations about women's
Speaker 5: sports in general. So that's really that was really the
Speaker 5: genesis of this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does feel like such a waste of time.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, I think what we're
Speaker 1: seeing more often now is when research, which is what
Speaker 1: you guys focus in, comes up against ignorance, there isn't
Speaker 1: a great way for people to fully comprehend or vet
Speaker 1: which side is being accurate, right, Like you could go
Speaker 1: to someone's bio and see if maybe it tells you
Speaker 1: something about their expertise and their background and say, well,
Speaker 1: this person probably knows better. But we're also seeing some
Speaker 1: pretty disingenuous people in high places who are feeding misinformation
Speaker 1: with intent. And that is true of things all the
Speaker 1: way up to the presidential race, all the way down
Speaker 1: to things that are just entertaining for us or sports
Speaker 1: right in the middle there. And if I think part
Speaker 1: of that is why you do find folks in my
Speaker 1: position or Jamel or many others in the business who say,
Speaker 1: somebody has to inform, even if a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't going to pay attention or going to notice, somebody
Speaker 1: has to inform with actual facts. And I imagine as
Speaker 1: someone whose job is research, it's all the more frustrating
Speaker 1: when someone who looks to be or for all intensive
Speaker 1: purposes is on equal footing in a space like X
Speaker 1: can say something that's absolutely false and there's no repercussions,
Speaker 1: there's no accountability, it doesn't really matter. So how did
Speaker 1: you decide which things people were saying or which arguments
Speaker 1: people most often came with that you wanted to address
Speaker 1: in the book.
Speaker 5: So you're exactly right, it's frustrating when you see people
Speaker 5: say these things that aren't rooted in parical research are
Speaker 5: just sometimes common sense. They say it to infuriate folks
Speaker 5: that are deeply involved in women's sports, and it's you know,
Speaker 5: it's frustrating. So part of the reason, and I give
Speaker 5: all credit to Dave. The reason why we wrote this
Speaker 5: book the way we did is because we wanted it
Speaker 5: to be interesting to people, but we also wanted it
Speaker 5: to be able to be read at essentially a fifth
Speaker 5: grade level. If you go to Amazon, it says this
Speaker 5: book is you can it's a fifth grade level. Like,
Speaker 5: we didn't write it for academics. There's research in there,
Speaker 5: but we try to put it in playing terms, and
Speaker 5: we wanted it to be as accessible as possible. So
Speaker 5: I think that was really sort of our way of
Speaker 5: making sure that folks who needed to read this book
Speaker 5: and were interested in it could I think, in addition
Speaker 5: to your question that you asked to get back to
Speaker 5: that it was hard choosing. I mean, you see, the
Speaker 5: book is twenty chapters, right, like, it was very difficult
Speaker 5: for us to choose which stories to write on. And
Speaker 5: I think also because I am a painfully slow writer,
Speaker 5: we just it took so long that we kept adding stories, right,
Speaker 5: I mean weekly, Dave and I are meeting and Dave's like, oh,
Speaker 5: this just happened. We have to put it in the book,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, we don't have space, but we do.
Speaker 5: So we didn't really cut out a whole lot. We
Speaker 5: tried to add all of the stories in there. We
Speaker 5: tried to force them in there, but at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, it was whatever what was most relevant.
Speaker 5: What we saw on X that people were the stories
Speaker 5: that people were sharing that were false, that was rooted
Speaker 5: in data and empirical research that we had access to.
Speaker 5: We prioritize those so that we could tell really good
Speaker 5: stories that were interesting, but also stories that were rooted
Speaker 5: in literature and research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dave, you've been fighting this fight for quite some time.
Speaker 1: You've been alongside me and Jamelle and others on the
Speaker 1: Internet attempting to use facts and research to talk back
Speaker 1: to people who are trying to spread lies. How difficult
Speaker 1: was it to take that mindset of combativeness and marry
Speaker 1: it with your professorial research side that is probably wanting
Speaker 1: to get more into sort of empirical data. How do
Speaker 1: you find that balance, Like NEF just said of like
Speaker 1: getting the information to people in a way that they'll
Speaker 1: understand it, but also knowing how much it matters to
Speaker 1: be able to back that with saying this is facts,
Speaker 1: this is true, this is not subjective opinion.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the advantage I had as an academic
Speaker 4: is when my first book came out, I was asked
Speaker 4: to write for places like The New York Times, and
Speaker 4: I had editors sit me down and I would write
Speaker 4: something and they would say, okay, that nobody knows what
Speaker 4: the hell you're talking about. You can't say it that way.
Speaker 4: I had a New York Times editor tell me once,
Speaker 4: you can't use the word standard deviation. No one knows
Speaker 4: what that means.
Speaker 2: We all learned it, do we all remember?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No, and so, and you know. I had a
Speaker 4: radio host once get very irate because I dare to
Speaker 4: use the word econometrics on air. They were very mad
Speaker 4: about that. They're like, don't say words like that. Rather
Speaker 4: have you swear and have our license revoked, rather than
Speaker 4: have you say things and lose all our audience. So
Speaker 4: I was taught how to write things by by very
Speaker 4: patient editors, and they said, you know, you got it.
Speaker 4: You can't write these things like journal articles or not.
Speaker 4: People don't read things like that. So you learn to
Speaker 4: write things in a way that is accessible. And so
Speaker 4: because the objective is what we're trying to do is
Speaker 4: we're trying to reach out to the fans of women's
Speaker 4: sports who who It just feels when you're on social
Speaker 4: media and they're debating with the trolls, like there's this
Speaker 4: this level of frustration. It's like, I don't I know
Speaker 4: you're wrong, but I don't have the data and I
Speaker 4: don't have the research. It says, hey, you're wrong. I
Speaker 4: just know you're wrong. And so what NEPH and I
Speaker 4: are doing is saying, hey, this is this is how
Speaker 4: you say that, This is how you respond to that
Speaker 4: they say this, but this is why they're wrong, and
Speaker 4: this is how you can respond to them in a
Speaker 4: way that other people can under because really, you're probably
Speaker 4: not going to convert the trolls. That is unrealistic. We don't.
Speaker 4: It's not called the book isn't called converting the trolls.
Speaker 4: It's called we don't Convert them. But it's for it's
Speaker 4: for the fan of women's sports, and then for the
Speaker 4: people who don't really know who's right, and then you
Speaker 4: can say, hey, look look at it this way. Now
Speaker 4: do you understand why that person is wrong? And that's
Speaker 4: kind of where we're going with this.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I always tell people when they ask
Speaker 1: me how I decide to engage on social media. I
Speaker 1: often say, I wait until there's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: saying the same uninformed thing.
Speaker 2: I pick one.
Speaker 1: I use them as an example to be able to
Speaker 1: shout down whatever they're saying that's wrong headed, with no
Speaker 1: intention usually of expecting them to change their opinion. But
Speaker 1: for everybody in the middle, who's maybe not even posting anything,
Speaker 1: but they're all reading it to see, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: great point, that's actually right, that's wrong. And I've had
Speaker 1: a lot of people over the years say, I have
Speaker 1: to tell you, when you first started at ESPN one thousand,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, I thought X and Y. But I
Speaker 1: started following you and I read this, and I see this,
Speaker 1: and I hear this, and now I get it, and
Speaker 1: that's the intent here.
Speaker 2: So you're right, it's not really about converting the trolls
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 1: As it is about informing the people who know they're
Speaker 1: wrong and want to have the facts to back it up.
Speaker 1: And also everybody in the middle that maybe doesn't know
Speaker 1: and hasn't looked into it, who now gets this information
Speaker 1: that helps them potentially be more interested in women's sports
Speaker 1: at the very least, not believe the BS stuff that's
Speaker 1: coming out of the other side. Now, if I heard
Speaker 1: you describe in an interview this book as sas you
Speaker 1: said of the trolls, they don't deserve our calm and
Speaker 1: welcoming demeanor.
Speaker 2: They deserve a bit of sassiness. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: Was it clear from the beginning for both of you
Speaker 1: that that's the tone you wanted?
Speaker 2: And how does Nef's.
Speaker 1: SaaS and Dave's sas meet in the middle so that
Speaker 1: there's a through line in the actual composing of the book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's where the fun happened, right, trying to combine
Speaker 5: our sassiness. But really, honestly, the book, if you read it,
Speaker 5: and if you know Dave, the book is really right,
Speaker 5: and in Dave's voice, right, I mean, we got together
Speaker 5: and we began writing together, and you know, sometimes we
Speaker 5: would actually literally write as we're meeting. Oftentimes we would
Speaker 5: write pieces of the book and then come together put
Speaker 5: it together and then sort of talk through it. But
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, what we notice is
Speaker 5: that my writing was very much so academic focused, and
Speaker 5: I had a very difficult time transitioning from the academic
Speaker 5: style of writing to writing for a trade book, writing
Speaker 5: for a general audience, and writing, you know, essentially at
Speaker 5: a fifth grade level. Eventually I got it. But what
Speaker 5: we decided is that we needed to write it in
Speaker 5: one voice. If we wrote it in both of our voices,
Speaker 5: it would be confusing. It was disjointed. So the sassiness.
Speaker 5: Dave is sassy if you've met Dave in person, if
Speaker 5: you talk to Dave, if you see him on X, he.
Speaker 3: Is sassy in general.
Speaker 5: So the sassiness came from that, and then I'm far
Speaker 5: less sassy. But these people are so irritating that I
Speaker 5: found my inner sassiness and brought it out. So yeah,
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, you know, again watching
Speaker 5: folks like you and Jamil respond to these people and
Speaker 5: many others. Right, I use you into as an example,
Speaker 5: but there are many others that are out there just
Speaker 5: trying to do their job in the media and waste
Speaker 5: in almost all women, wasting their time that could be
Speaker 5: spent doing other important things responding to these people and.
Speaker 3: Doing it nicely, right, And I'm like, no, we don't
Speaker 3: have to be nice. This is in our field. We're
Speaker 3: not in the media. It doesn't matter what we say.
Speaker 5: We're academics, you know, we go back to our caves
Speaker 5: and right, like, we can be sassy in the public
Speaker 5: eye and continue on with our lives.
Speaker 3: So why not.
Speaker 5: And again, I don't think these folks deserve our calm
Speaker 5: or a welcomness because they're not being genuine in their
Speaker 5: responses when they're being trolls.
Speaker 1: I think sassy's the perfect word, though, because if you
Speaker 1: start to become cruel or dismissive, your message is lost
Speaker 1: because it's easier than to fight the attitude you're bringing
Speaker 1: instead of the information you're bringing. So the sassiness says, listen,
Speaker 1: we're tired of your bullshit and here's the real facts
Speaker 1: versus cruelty, which this just then adds to this sort
Speaker 1: of schism when nobody seeks to find common ground and
Speaker 1: to meet over the information, it's just about pushing the
Speaker 1: other side away. So I think SAS's like the perfect word,
Speaker 1: and that's what I aim for. I've had plenty of
Speaker 1: people reach out to me who are up and coming
Speaker 1: in the business and say, should I worry about getting
Speaker 1: hired if I clap back occasionally to trolls, And I
Speaker 1: always say, as long as you are not cruel and
Speaker 1: you are civil and the information that you're providing or
Speaker 1: the way you're clapping back is either just funny about
Speaker 1: grammar or spelling, because that is always a go to
Speaker 1: for me if somebody's coming after me or if it's informed,
Speaker 1: you're fine, just don't sync down to their level. We
Speaker 1: got to take a quick break more with Neph and
Speaker 1: Dave coming up. You know, Dave, you came on my
Speaker 1: old podcast. I've been following you for years. I learned
Speaker 1: a ton about how to see the women's pro sports
Speaker 1: space through an academic lens, in part because of the
Speaker 1: research that you would share and the important historical context
Speaker 1: that you would bring in. Some of your most compelling
Speaker 1: and important work I think is helping folks learn the
Speaker 1: realities of men's leagues at their inception, years before many
Speaker 1: of us were ever alive. Can you share what might
Speaker 1: be some surprising realities around, for instance, the NBA's lean
Speaker 1: early years, and how you can use information like that
Speaker 1: to help people understand why their opinions on women's sports
Speaker 1: are not correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, let's let's start with the NBA. I think
Speaker 4: the NBA. Most people don't know the story of the NBA.
Speaker 4: It starts in the in the forties. It is college
Speaker 4: men's basketball had been around for decades, had been was very,
Speaker 4: very popular. It had a huge audience, and naturally people thought, hey,
Speaker 4: let's take those same exact athletes, put them on professional teams,
Speaker 4: and we'll sell tickets. And they did that, and they
Speaker 4: did not there were no tickets to be sold, and
Speaker 4: they tried lots of things early in NBA history. They
Speaker 4: would they would schedule NBA games after high school games.
Speaker 4: You came to watch your kid watch a professional. Bob
Speaker 4: Goosey tells the story that when he was originally drafted,
Speaker 4: not by the Celtics, he was drafted by the Tri
Speaker 4: City Hawks. He's like, I did major geography at holy Cross,
Speaker 4: but I knew there was no such thing as a
Speaker 4: tri City Well, they couldn't get an audience in one city,
Speaker 4: so they put in three cities, and so they all,
Speaker 4: maybe if we run around, we'll find some audience. They
Speaker 4: had an early memo from the Commission. In the first
Speaker 4: you know, five or six years of the NBA, it says, hey,
Speaker 4: some of you are telling the media how many people
Speaker 4: are actually showing up to these games. Well, don't do that.
Speaker 4: You are free to pad the numbers, you know, you
Speaker 4: don't have to tell the truth. And so that's where
Speaker 4: the NBA starts. And we know from Congressional testimony because
Speaker 4: Congress investigated professional sports in the fifties men's professional sports.
Speaker 4: The NBA at that point in today's dollars was worth
Speaker 4: about fifteen million. So the WNBA is worth hundreds of millions.
Speaker 4: They were worth fifteen million. They were incredibly tighty. If
Speaker 4: you get up to nineteen seventy seventy two, that's when
Speaker 4: the NBA is the same age as the WNBA, same age.
Speaker 4: Their revenue in the late sixties early seventies jumps from
Speaker 4: one hundred million to two hundred million. The WNBA's revenue
Speaker 4: from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three jump from one
Speaker 4: hundred million to two hundred million, exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4: There was. There is a really big difference. The NBA
Speaker 4: at that point was paying Kareem Abdul Jabbar four hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars a year in nineteen seventy three. Nobody that
Speaker 4: of NBA is making four hundred thousand dollars a year now,
Speaker 4: So there is a huge difference in wages, but in
Speaker 4: terms of revenue, terms of attendance, in terms of how
Speaker 4: much people are paying attention to this, the NBA and
Speaker 4: the WNBA are following essentially the same path. They are
Speaker 4: adding fans just like you'd expect it. It just takes
Speaker 4: decades to build a fan base. Most people are born
Speaker 4: into their fandom. You don't. You don't become a rabbit
Speaker 4: fan of a lot of things as an adult. It's
Speaker 4: basically it's an addiction. So the way to think about
Speaker 4: it is, imagine all the people you know who at
Speaker 4: the age of forty took up smoking cigarettes. That's a
Speaker 4: bizarre thing to do, right, That would be bizarre. That's
Speaker 4: what a fandom is, right. You know, if you're forty
Speaker 4: years old, you're not going to suddenly say, hey, I'm
Speaker 4: going to be a fan of this sport I've never
Speaker 4: watched before. That's not realistic. You do it as a child,
Speaker 4: do you pick it up from your parents and your
Speaker 4: friends and your relatives, and it grows gradually as that
Speaker 4: network gets bigger and bigger, and so everyone investing in
Speaker 4: a women's sports league, whether it's National Women's Soccer League
Speaker 4: or the WNBA, should expect this will take decades, but
Speaker 4: eventually fans will get addicted and then you'll have the
Speaker 4: greatest business ever imaginable, because there is no business like sports.
Speaker 4: Sports is a business that you can disappoint your fans
Speaker 4: every single year and they never go away. Right, Chicago
Speaker 4: Bears fan, you know this, Yeah, we.
Speaker 1: Talked about this before. You use the restaurant example. Being
Speaker 1: a Chicago Bears fan is like going to the same
Speaker 1: restaurant over and over and they serve you like a
Speaker 1: plate of shit, and you're like, thank you, I'll be
Speaker 1: back next week.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And and then you get convinced of this.
Speaker 4: You go to the owner and the owner says, I
Speaker 4: understand that this food has been crap for so long.
Speaker 4: But here's what I did. I got a new bus boy,
Speaker 4: and it's going to change everything. And you would be like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, a new bus boy.
Speaker 1: Oh I believe I'm it's going to be different now,
Speaker 1: Oh it's gonna be I didn't know you got a
Speaker 1: new busboy.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll be back for sure. And that's exactly how
Speaker 4: sports fans are. You know they you know, they draft,
Speaker 4: they draft a brand new offensive guard, and every fan
Speaker 4: is like, oh, well, that is all the difference that's
Speaker 4: gonna change every reason.
Speaker 1: And it's so true though, and it's something I've talked
Speaker 1: about so much with women's sports, is how do you
Speaker 1: recreate things that can't be done organically, like nostalgia and tradition.
Speaker 1: So much of what brings us together around sport is
Speaker 1: when you go to a game, you know what the
Speaker 1: chants are, and you know what everybody always does when
Speaker 1: this thing happens. And if that existence hasn't been there
Speaker 1: for longer than a couple of years, that's not going
Speaker 1: to exist yet. So how do you either be intentional
Speaker 1: about creating it or how do you offset that with
Speaker 1: other things that make it exciting. One thing I'll point
Speaker 1: out about the NBAWNBA comparison is, of course, the WNBA
Speaker 1: benefits from an NBA that is financially helping them, that
Speaker 1: has existed and created a sort of path and model
Speaker 1: that is part of a larger cable and streaming and
Speaker 1: massive sports entertainment industrial complex that didn't exist for early NBA,
Speaker 1: but it also suffers from that because of comparison. It
Speaker 1: also suffers from centuries of patriarchy. It also suffers from
Speaker 1: expectations about women and what lane in which they belong.
Speaker 1: So it's not in apples to apples comparison, but it
Speaker 1: is so useful to look back at some of the
Speaker 1: moments that we herald in NBA history and be remind
Speaker 1: I did that eight thousand people were there for them, right,
Speaker 1: these great players, these moments of scoring, and in our
Speaker 1: minds the stadium is full and everyone's watching on TV,
Speaker 1: when in fact it was on tape delay and almost.
Speaker 2: No one showed up to watch it. Those are important
Speaker 2: things to remember.
Speaker 1: Nef I mentioned in your intro you were a Division
Speaker 1: one basketball player yourself. You're a talented female athlete who
Speaker 1: has lived the life of trying to be given respect,
Speaker 1: afforded resources and facilities. How did the negative noise around
Speaker 1: athletes when you were hooping inform your perspective now? And
Speaker 1: how much have you seen it change?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Man, it absolutely informed who I am, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think and I say that, But also I kind
Speaker 5: of lived in a bubble where I played in a
Speaker 5: part of Atlanta where women's basketball was very popular, girls
Speaker 5: basketball was very popular. Growing up, I was coached by
Speaker 5: a black guy who played college football at a high level,
Speaker 5: played some basketball, and he just he had a lot
Speaker 5: of daughters. He just did not see the gender barriers
Speaker 5: to success in the ways that a lot of other
Speaker 5: girls may have experienced it at a young age. I've
Speaker 5: told the story before that we played against boys at
Speaker 5: a very young age and routinely beat them. So as
Speaker 5: a you know, thirteen year old ne f thought she
Speaker 5: could beat anybody that was thirteen, right, it wouldn't matter
Speaker 5: if you.
Speaker 3: Were a girl or a boy.
Speaker 5: And that just, you know, that followed me throughout my career,
Speaker 5: both athletically and academically. I do I will say that
Speaker 5: when I got to college, you could see the differences, right.
Speaker 5: I mean I also went to a high school where
Speaker 5: the girls and boys team was treated similarly, but also
Speaker 5: the girls team was much more successful winning state championships
Speaker 5: than the boys team. So again, it just it was
Speaker 5: it didn't occur to me until college that you are
Speaker 5: treated the genders are treated differently based on just gender. Right,
Speaker 5: Women's and men's basketball are not treated the same. I
Speaker 5: got to Georgia, Tech and it was night and day.
Speaker 5: The experiences that the men team got versus the women's
Speaker 5: team wasn't even comparable. And you know, I say this often,
Speaker 5: is it's not just isolated in sports, and I think
Speaker 5: we have to acknowledge that. I think this moment right now,
Speaker 5: we've seen, you know, two of the most qualified political
Speaker 5: candidates in the history run for being women, run for
Speaker 5: presidencies and lose. I think we have to acknowledged the
Speaker 5: fact that there's always this undercurrent of sexism and hegemonic masculinity.
Speaker 5: Not to get too nerdy and theoretical, but these ideas
Speaker 5: that there are negative stereotypes about women that are at play,
Speaker 5: and it's very easy for leagues and organizations to fall
Speaker 5: back into those when they don't want to actually just
Speaker 5: share the fact, like the NBA or WNBA that they're
Speaker 5: not necessarily valuing women's sports or women's teams or a
Speaker 5: whole league, and the way that they have valued and
Speaker 5: treated the men's league over time. So that's a very
Speaker 5: long way, long winded way of saying I didn't acknowledge
Speaker 5: that these gender inequities exist until I was in college,
Speaker 5: and then very quickly I began to acknowledge it and
Speaker 5: sort of dig into why this is happening.
Speaker 3: I was coaching and training.
Speaker 5: Boys, you know, in college. I played with boys my
Speaker 5: whole life. So just being a basketball player and playing
Speaker 5: in a city where the girls and boys are playing
Speaker 5: together pickup games are But you know, all folks, if
Speaker 5: you show up and you can play, then you can play.
Speaker 5: You're not getting kicked off the court because you're a girl.
Speaker 5: In Atlanta and similar in a lot of big cities
Speaker 5: right especially for at least my experience is being in
Speaker 5: black neighborhoods as well.
Speaker 3: It's just not happening.
Speaker 5: If you can play, you can play, and then going
Speaker 5: to organize basketball at the collegiate level and saying no,
Speaker 5: if you're good and if you're better, and if your
Speaker 5: team's better than the men's team, it doesn't matter. You're
Speaker 5: still not going to get the same resources that they're
Speaker 5: getting even though they haven't won a game all year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something I've talked to mothers and especially women
Speaker 1: who coach younger girls, is what is the balance between
Speaker 1: telling young girls you can do any thing, believe in yourself,
Speaker 1: you're just as great, versus saying just so you know
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the same resources, You're not
Speaker 1: going to get the same facilities. You're going to have
Speaker 1: to demand equality because otherwise you won't get it. Thereby
Speaker 1: sort of bursting their bubble too early, but also maybe
Speaker 1: creating activists out of younger women before they get to
Speaker 1: the collegiate level and start to look around and realize.
Speaker 2: Well, this is messed up.
Speaker 1: Because I feel the same way, like so many of
Speaker 1: us also become so conditioned to that that it isn't
Speaker 1: until later in life that we realize that technically, per
Speaker 1: Title nine, we could have suit our schools, or we
Speaker 1: could have complained about getting less than. But because society
Speaker 1: seemed to so endorse the idea that we deserved less than,
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to us that we should ask for
Speaker 1: anything otherwise until you get to later in life.
Speaker 2: And then it's sort of beyond your control.
Speaker 1: So yet, that's a conversation I guess for people with
Speaker 1: kids and coaches. You know, there's so many passionate, informed
Speaker 1: fans of women's sports, there's so many smart people investing
Speaker 1: in women's pro leagues. But there are folks at the
Speaker 1: highest levels of brands and networks and media outlets that
Speaker 1: are essentially more akin to the trolls that you're speaking to.
Speaker 1: They're stuck in the past when it comes to the
Speaker 1: economic opportunity offered and the realities of the interest in
Speaker 1: women's sports. How do we get the trolls in high
Speaker 1: places to be more educated and up to date?
Speaker 4: Dave, Yeah, let me. I'll get that fixed for you
Speaker 4: by lunch.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, link with lunch, probably martini lunch
Speaker 1: a couple hours.
Speaker 2: We're dealing with the trolls of our places.
Speaker 4: When Enough was talking, she said hegemonic masculinity, and I
Speaker 4: would point out that book that works do not appear
Speaker 4: in our book. The way we say that is the
Speaker 4: way we put it is in sports men really love men.
Speaker 4: That's that's effectively the same sentiment, but it's said it
Speaker 4: a more accessible way because and that's actually true. The
Speaker 4: problem is in sports and when you look at these
Speaker 4: companies when it comes to sports, men are really in
Speaker 4: love with men, and they treat women. And we say
Speaker 4: this in the book. Women are treated as if women's
Speaker 4: sports are a cardboard factory and all that matters is
Speaker 4: the latest financial statement, and men's sports are treated as
Speaker 4: if this is my passion, I am living my life
Speaker 4: through these men. I don't give a damn how much
Speaker 4: my money they spend. I just want to win because
Speaker 4: this is everything to me. And the problem is getting
Speaker 4: the investors to be as emotionally connected to what they're
Speaker 4: investing in. And there are WNBA owners and I think
Speaker 4: Mark Davis with the ACE is a good example of this,
Speaker 4: who goes to the games. He clearly is emotionally involved.
Speaker 4: He wants his team to win. He will break rules
Speaker 4: to make his team win. And we don't like that,
Speaker 4: but that's a good sign. You want to see people
Speaker 4: doing that, that they're so involved that they're willing to
Speaker 4: do stuff like that. And that's the problem is. I
Speaker 4: think one of the ex that holds back women's sports
Speaker 4: is so many people trying to treat this as a
Speaker 4: financial statement for this month. And it's not if you're
Speaker 4: going to be an investor. It's it's long term. But
Speaker 4: also you got to get investors who are passionate about
Speaker 4: the actual sport and and you know, but if you
Speaker 4: can't get that, I do. I will point this out.
Speaker 4: As Neph and I were working on this book, go
Speaker 4: back to twenty eighteen where we started, where women's sports
Speaker 4: was in twenty eighteen where it is today. You know,
Speaker 4: one of the things I said, I think and I
Speaker 4: were saying when we were writing this book is is
Speaker 4: this book allows us a lot of I told you
Speaker 4: those and so as we go through time, neph and
Speaker 4: I just go, I told you so. And here's a
Speaker 4: fun little stat. W NBA ratings this last year average
Speaker 4: a million fans across all platforms on ESPN one point
Speaker 4: two million, NBA ratings right now on ESPN one point
Speaker 4: six million. The difference is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Speaker 4: And yet the NBA totally ripped off the WNBA in
Speaker 4: terms of the media deal. It's a seventy five billion
Speaker 4: dollar deal. The NBA gave them ninety seven percent of it.
Speaker 4: They're not getting ninety seven percent of the ratings. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: And so you know the NBA talks about how they
Speaker 4: gave so much money to the WNBA. Well you look
Speaker 4: at that media deal. They are taking more. They're going
Speaker 4: to be taking if you do the math, they're going
Speaker 4: to be taking back every loss that they made up,
Speaker 4: and the losses I believe are made up. They're going
Speaker 4: to take back all the losses they made up. And
Speaker 4: more every single year of that deal, every single year
Speaker 4: they're going to be getting all that money back, and
Speaker 4: so it's a huge The NBA is going to make
Speaker 4: billions off the WNBA, billions of dollars off of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk us through this, and we don't have
Speaker 1: too much time, but I do. This is something that
Speaker 1: always comes up. People will talk about how the WNBA
Speaker 1: doesn't make any money, how the WNBA is just relying
Speaker 1: and sucking off the teed of the NBA. Meanwhile, we
Speaker 1: will have NBA teams that openly claim losses for the
Speaker 1: year that will never be you to point to the
Speaker 1: product being a problem on the NBA side. So, as
Speaker 1: an economist, quickly, if you can walk us through how
Speaker 1: that's just a matter of presentation, particularly when it comes
Speaker 1: to things like tax write offs and where the money
Speaker 1: goes and how it's spent and how it's delivered.
Speaker 2: Because to your point, yeah, we do hold up.
Speaker 1: Women as this black and white, and then on the
Speaker 1: men's side, it's this mirage of how are we reporting
Speaker 1: things versus what's actually happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So quickly, the NBA, which is the one calling
Speaker 4: the shots in the WNBA, has claimed the NBA is
Speaker 4: losing money since at least the late nineteen sixties early seventies.
Speaker 4: There was senate testimony in the early seventies where they
Speaker 4: said we're losing money, and economist Roger and Nole looked
Speaker 4: at their financial statements and said, well, depends on how
Speaker 4: you look at it. I can look at it this way,
Speaker 4: and you're making a ton of money. So it's just
Speaker 4: the way you're presenting it. And the NBA has been
Speaker 4: doing this, and they do it because every time they
Speaker 4: claim they're losing money, players give them concessions and take
Speaker 4: less money. So it's a very good labor negotiation strategy.
Speaker 4: So WNBA has suffered the same kind of fate. NBA
Speaker 4: owners keep claiming it loses money. The amount of money
Speaker 4: they claim it's losing is ridiculous compared to the NBA.
Speaker 4: It's a very very tiny amount of money that they
Speaker 4: even claim. There's no reason to think that what they
Speaker 4: claim is true. We don't see the financial statements. We
Speaker 4: have too many reporters, especially at the New York Times
Speaker 4: New York Post, who report an assertion of losses as
Speaker 4: a fact. If somebody tells a reporter, I am doing
Speaker 4: something and there's no evidence for that. You don't report
Speaker 4: it as a fact. That's not how reporting works. But
Speaker 4: the NBA gets that, they get that treatment. They say,
Speaker 4: WAA is losing forty million. New York Post writes, WNBA
Speaker 4: is losing forty million. You don't know that. You didn't
Speaker 4: see any financial statements. How do you know that? So
Speaker 4: there's reason to think that they're not telling the truth
Speaker 4: because they didn't tell the truth about the NBA for
Speaker 4: all those years. The amount of losses we're talking about
Speaker 4: are incredibly tiny. They're not significant even if they do exist. Yeah,
Speaker 4: going back that media deal, they're going to be taking
Speaker 4: billions of dollars from the WNBA. So if you're losing
Speaker 4: forty million, well you're going to be getting billions. That
Speaker 4: WNBA media deal is it worth probably eight to ten
Speaker 4: billion dollars and they're getting two that's eight billion dollars.
Speaker 4: So it's tough money they're taking.
Speaker 1: And it's really hard because without the transparency of the financials,
Speaker 1: you can run with whatever argument you want to make.
Speaker 1: And what we end up doing is saying NBA teams
Speaker 1: are losing money, but their valuations are billions of dollars, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that work every year that you say you've
Speaker 1: been losing money for the last fifty plus years, and
Speaker 1: yet with each passing year, the investment in owning a
Speaker 1: team becomes more and more lucrative, regardless of how you
Speaker 1: run it poorly, well, whatever. But we don't afford that
Speaker 1: same principle or that same idea to the WNBA side.
Speaker 1: I could keep talking to Chill forever. We're out of time, Nef.
Speaker 1: Last question, what do you hope folks take away from
Speaker 1: this book?
Speaker 5: I hope folks take away and understanding that the way
Speaker 5: that the stories have been framed to them about women's
Speaker 5: sports is incorrect. I hope they consider our reframing of
Speaker 5: women's sports and the context that we provide, in historical
Speaker 5: context that we provide to show that women's sports are
Speaker 5: doing fine, they're doing great, they're excelling, and understanding the
Speaker 5: history and the context of that makes it shows or
Speaker 5: paints a much clearer picture for everyone.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm so grateful to y'all for doing the tough
Speaker 1: academic research and the actual work to put things down
Speaker 1: in print that are actually correct, as opposed to those
Speaker 1: who are willing to and face NOO accountability or repercussions
Speaker 1: for flinging around misinformation in pursuit of dragging down women
Speaker 1: because of their weak, sad little egos. Anyway, this is
Speaker 1: a great book Slaying the trolls.
Speaker 2: Everyone get it.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for coming on, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Got to pay some bills. Stick around slices, Welcome back slices.
Speaker 1: Make sure you go out and get the book. And
Speaker 1: if you're interested in reading more about what Dave mentioned
Speaker 1: regarding the whole NBA handling of the WNBA TV deal,
Speaker 1: We're going to put his substack article about.
Speaker 2: It in today's show notes. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Slices.
Speaker 1: Good Game Nephen Dave, Good Game Spanish tapis Thank you Trolls.
Speaker 1: Good Game with Sarah Spain is an iHeart women's sports
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