Going Deep: Sports in the 21st Century speak with Meghann Burke, executive director of the National Women's Soccer League Player's Association

Going Deep: Sports in the 21st Century

It's our annual Super Bowl episode - but this one comes in stages. The day after John and our show's producer recorded it, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL alleging racial discrimination, sham interviews for coaching positions, and more. We recorded a second time to include that in the show, plus we also feature part of an earlier Going Deep episode where John and Marcia explained why coaching in the pros is far more difficult than in college.

In this episode of Going Deep, our hosts go back to an issue they've spent much of their recent years discussing - concussions in contact sports. They catch up with two engineers - Eric Nauman and Tom Talavadge - whom they first met while John was coaching at Purdue University. They've talked with Eric and Tom before about their work on microconcussions, and they get the latest on what the pair have discovered in their research, and how it can be applied to sports like football.

This episode of Going Deep goes deep into our archives for two conversations that are just as topical now as they were when they were recorded in 2018 - Origin Stories Part 1 & Part 2, and The Coaching Rollercoaster.

This episode is not really about Jon Gruden, whom John Shoop worked for with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004. It isn't really about Bruce Allen either, who was the general manager of that team. It isn't about the email exchanges between Gruden and Allen that were recently revealed that led to Gruden's resignation as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders on October 11th, 2021. They're all just actors in the play. This episode of Going Deep is really about the characteristics of white supremacy culture, as defined by Tema Okun.

In their last episode, John and Marcia only scratched the surface about mental health in sports. They go deeper in this show, and they bring in an expert to help - sports social worker Natalie Graves of Chicago.

In this episode of Going Deep, our hosts take some time to slow down and dive into two topics in the sports world which are getting varying degrees of news coverage - athlete mental health (a lot) and race-norming in the NFL (very little).

Our hosts tackle a topic they've long wanted to in this episode - youth sports - and in particular, the trend toward having teens specialize in one sport at younger and younger ages. Their guests include Jon Solomon of the Aspen Institute, which will release a 'children's bill of rights in sports' on August 12th. Three members of the city of Asheville's parks and recreation department also join the program to discuss what's happening locally.

On July 23rd, the 2020 Summer Olympics get underway a year late in Tokyo. Because of COVID-19, these games are already unlike any other in the history of the Olympics. To get ready for the games, our hosts showcase plenty of stories and facts from Olympic history - some well-known, and many not. Their guest is David Wallechinsky, who wrote the definitive history of the Olympics The Complete Book of the Olympics, and served as president of the International Society of Olympic Historians from 2012 to 2020.

On July 1st, six states will see 'name, image, and likeness' bills go onto the books - allowing collegiate players for the first time to make money during their college careers. Will others follow suit, or will the NCAA be able to hold off the changes as it has since the verdict in the Ed O'Bannon case? John and Marcia speak with Micahel McCann. He's a professor at the University of New Hampshire, and a writer for Sportico.

In this episode of Going Deep, we mark the beginning of the minor league baseball season this week with an episode that looks at the growing differences between the minors and college baseball. Our guests include the manager of the Asheville Tourists Nate Shaver, and the head baseball coach at UNC Asheville Scott Friedholm. And for the first time, we take questions from our listeners!

Rusell Dinkins ran track at Princeton. He knows firsthand how the sport can help Black athletes get into college. That's why he's made it his mission to stop universities from around the country from cutting track & field and cross country programs - like at Brown, William & Mary, and Minnesota. Dinkins joins our hosts to talk about his latest fight - to save track & field at Clemson #SaveClemsonXCTF

In February of 2020, Alex Gary was announced as the new athletic director at Western Carolina University. By the time the former Catamount baseball player started the job a few months later, the whole world had changed. Gary recounts his first year as AD in this episode with John and Marcia, and what it was like to address all the challenges that arose. He's the first Black athletic director at both Western Carolina and the Southern Conference.

Super Bowl 55 takes place Sunday in Tampa, Florida. It closes a season like no other in the NFL - something just about everyone can say for themselves too. Our hosts in their annual Super Bowl episode talk how the league responded to the pandemic, plus how the results of the NFL's call for more diverse head coaches remain lackluster - a discussion that pivots to the language white people use when talking about race.

For Going Deep's first episode of 2021, John and Marcia delve deeper into the focus of their show - how sports in the U.S. mirrors American society. Just a few hours after we taped their discussion - which mostly focused on college sports - the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol only underscored our hosts' message further.

For this episode of Going Deep: Sports in the 21st Century, we dip into our archives for a previously two-part show where John and Marcia tell us the story of the greatest quarterback you never knew.

In this episode of Going Deep, John and Marcia talk with Daniel Libit and Luke Cyphers the founders of The Intercollegiate. It's an online media outlet that focuses on investigative college sports journalism and analysis.

The stature of athletes has always been apparent. But how much power do they actually have in achieving social change? Bomani Jones examined this in an August 2020 article in Vanity Fair. The ESPN host and podcaster joins John & Marcia to talk about the power of athletes in this episode.