[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]
Ron Krabill: Hello and welcome to episode eight of the Global Sport Lab Podcast. I’m Ron Krabilll, and I’m your host, as well as the Director of the Global Sport Lab and a professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell. Listen to the end for a more detailed description of the Global Sport Lab. But for now, let me just say that we would love for you to connect with us at the lab. You can find us on the web or at globalsportlab@uw.edu today, we are coming to you from the beautiful campus of the University of Washington, Seattle on a rainy autumn day, our guest is Dr Tracie Canada, the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, where she also directs the Health Ethnography and Race Through Sports Lab, or HEARTS for short. She is a black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer whose research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender and the performing body. She is also the award-winning author of “Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation and Big Time College Football,” and is working on a new project on high school football. Thanks so much for being with us today. Tracie.
Tracie Canada: Thank you all so much for having me. I’m really excited for this conversation.
Ron: We’re also joined today by Dr. Alvin Logan Jr, the director of Unite:Ed here at UW. Alvin, can you tell us a bit more about yourself?
Alvin Logan: Absolutely Ron, thanks for having me today. Little bit more about myself, I’m a former student athlete here at the University of Washington. I played football and I ran track, and after that, I decided, hey, why not study it? I got a chance to go down to University of Texas, where I earned my Ph.D. in Education, and my research revolves around black college football player identity development, that’s racial, academic, athletic identity, looking at different ways to not be one dimensional, and how to continue to exhibit multi-dimensionalism and really explore whole self as versus the black box. As I like to say that the universities, particularly predominantly white universities, put them in.
Ron: Fantastic. Thanks so much, and thanks for being here today. I’d like to begin by asking you, Tracie, if you could share the overall argument of your book with our listeners who may or may not have had the opportunity yet to read your book, and I hope they’ll change their mind after they listen to this.
Tracie: That is really important because I’m sure everyone’s going to go get this book after you hear about it. I wrote a book called “Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation and Big Time College Football,” and the very quick way of describing it is that it’s about the lived experiences of black college football players. But the way that I come at that is from an anthropological and ethnographic perspective, because that’s how I define myself, right? I am trained as an anthropologist, and the work that I do, there’s lots of different ways to define it. Ethnography is one word, participant, observation is another. The word that I like the most is deep hanging out. I describe what I do as deep hanging out with certain people to learn more about their lives and their experiences and how they’re theorizing what’s going on with them. And so, what I did for my work was spend an extensive amount of time with black college football players during a particular time, which most of the work for the book is during the 2017-18 football season. And it’s also heavily informed by the pandemic seasons of play, which started in fall 2020. And so spending time with this specific group of people, the specific group of athletes at a certain time in the contextual, if we’re if we’re going to contextualize, it’s a very specific time in the American imaginary.
It’s a very important time when we’re thinking about athlete activism, if we’re thinking about conversations about injuries, if we’re thinking about conversations about state and police violence against black people, if we’re putting 2017 in a box, it was a very interesting time to be talking to black athletes at that time, but specifically black athletes who were young, who were in college, who were not being paid for what it was that they were doing. And that’s where I came in, right? I was a researcher who was spending time with them, trying to really figure out, what it was like to live their everyday life. And the reason that that’s why I was focusing on it is because I think that there’s a lot that’s talked about Saturdays for college football. It’s on TV, it’s in newspapers. It’s talked about in commentary shows, – what’s happening on Saturday, what’s happening on game day – but I was much more interested in what’s happening on a Tuesday for a player. With that orientation going into the work, going into the research and wanting to talk to people, what is it like to be just like a young person who happens to play college football at this time? What is it like if you are a black young person who happens to play college football? The way that the book shaped up is a statement about the ways that care and family matter for these people, and the relationships that they form with each other, with their coaches, with their universities, also with their mothers. And I think that it’s the narrative that actually runs through the book, so I start with talking about the institution of football itself, because that is a very important part of these players lives, of how they interact with football, what that means for them to participate in football, what their daily life looks like if we structure it around football, and how those interactions matter for them while they’re playing the sport, and then also once they’re not playing the sport anymore in their daily lives.
And then there’s a question for me, there’s a question about this being a team sport, or what does it mean that you’re an individual on a team? And I think that’s a really important relationship to focus on, if you are an individual on a team, because, let’s say you get drafted. It’s not the team that gets drafted. You get drafted, right? I thought that that was a really interesting dynamic, and I wanted to do something with that. That moves us to chapter two, talking about a whole bunch of individuals who just happen to be on a team, and what that relationship is like, and how they’re thinking about that, but also dismantling this idea of a “football family”, if it is really just a bunch of individuals, right? Once we have a bunch of individuals, now, how do they relate to each other? I think that the team, this “football family” is a way that happens, but I imagine that to be very top down, but I think that there’s something different happening bottom up, if we’re focusing on black players themselves. Chapter three is about the brotherhood the players form with each other, the ways that they would define their relationships with each other that are not confined by what administrators, by what coaches, by what universities would say is actually going on with them. Chapter four then talks about moms, because I think that the player’s moms are actually very important people in their lives. The way that I argue it is that college football couldn’t happen if moms weren’t on board, if moms didn’t put in a certain type of labor that is visible and invisible. I give them a shout out, a full chapter to talk about the labor that they put into the sport, alongside the labor that their sons are putting in on the field. Chapter five ends the book by talking about what it means just to be a young black man living in the body that football has created, what it means to walk through the world in that body, right, like which is stereotypically larger, stronger than the norm.
And so, what does that mean when you take off the pads and the helmet and you’re walking through the world in that way as a black person, again, given the context of that time and also this time, right? I think that this, no matter when you’re going to listen to this podcast, no matter when you’re going to read the book, I think that it will still apply no matter the timing. What is that experience like for just, larger than life in every way, young black people walking through the world who, again, happen to play football. And so if you have that narrative going through, I think it is an interesting statement about football in a way that we don’t usually see, about talking about the relationships that they have with each other, about kind of dismantling this stereotypical idea that we have about the team is the be all end all, about challenging the ways that coaches talk about athletes and how coaches treat athletes, and about highlighting the intimacy of the relationships that players have with each other, which I think is actually a really special part of the sport that people know about, and I think is very clear to people, but to actually really talk through what that looks like every day, to have such intimate relationships between young men.
Ron: I think it’s so fantastic, partially because even though it’s so obvious when you say it, it’s so common for people not to see college athletes, pro-athletes as human.
Tracie: Yeah.
Ron: As just the athletic sort of prowess, just what they do on the field. And I think the way you bring that into a much fuller picture and humanize the people you’re working with is really powerful.
Tracie: Thank you. And I just want to quickly say that I think another way that I consistently find is surprising for people, is to have to highlight that these are college players, right, which means that they are 17,18-ish to 21,22,23-ish, right? They are young people and they are considered adults, but these are people who, just moved out of the house, might not have ever had to deposit a check, have to go get their own gas, now, I’ve never done laundry by myself, right? I have to figure out what classes to sign up for and how to get to class because I don’t have a car, right? These are all the issues that they’re dealing with just because they are college students. And then you put on top of it that they happen to play an incredibly lucrative and incredibly popular sport, are semi famous, or some of them actually just straight up famous people, and people have access to them also in a certain way, especially because of the way that social media is now a part of this, right? And so I think that it’s a really important intersection of experiences, if you’re talking about specifically college athletes, because all of these things are happening at the same time, right? It’s not the same for professional athletes, and it’s also not the same for people who play youth sports, right? College is such a, in anthropology, we would call it a liminal space, right? College is already such an interesting particular time of this boundary between childhood and adulthood in a certain way. But then you put playing a sport like football on top of that, being famous in a certain way, people knowing your name, people knowing what you look like, people knowing that they can have access to you and say whatever they want to you in the streets or online. That’s a whole different experience that I think needs to remain at the center of it, that these are young people.
Alvin: So interesting a way to put it, it’s a very layered experience. And as Ron said, you definitely highlight that in a really impressive way. One of the things that we were also impressed with is your use of the metaphor of tackling, one that really, it was a through line through the book. And can you say a little bit more about how the metaphor of tackling helps us understand what’s going on with black college football players that other terms like navigator, negotiating or managing might miss.
Tracie: I appreciate that that came through, because I really wanted it to come through. I put it in the title of the book so I could kind of double down on it. But I thought that, there’s so many it’s so funny to me because it’s such a cute play on words. And now every time I say it, people think that I’m talking about football. You’re tackling something right? I don’t mean like, the actual football term, but it works in that way, and that’s why I like the word itself, and that’s also why I like it more than those other terms if I’m talking about football. It came up in lots of different ways, because, again, it is a way to think about navigation, or like it’s another word to think about navigating. If I’m someone who’s interested in the everyday for a football player, that’s the way that I conceptualize it. I’m interested in how he’s navigating his everyday life, right? Which means Monday matters just as much as Saturday, just as me, just as much as Wednesday, right? And so how are you navigating? How are you tackling each day of the week, even though one day of the week is much more important, right? But the way that the term came to matter, and the way that players also made it matter to me, right? I’m someone who’s interested in labor, if I’m someone who’s interested in humanizing the players that I work with, the fact that there is a piece of equipment in football called a tackle is also really important, right? Because a tackle is something that is used in practice, used against in practice. In order to teach how to tackle the verb, you use a tackle the noun. But players would describe themselves feeling like tackles when they were used in practice, right? That is not an explicit way of them saying, I feel exploited, I feel used. But if you say to me, I felt like a tackle in practice today, that, to me, is your way of saying that you feel exploited and used. And so I’m taking seriously language that players themselves were using to say that, like, Okay, here’s this word again, and here’s another way that it’s being used, and it’s actually speaking quite clearly to a lot of the dynamics that I’m already interested in, right? Tackle, the noun came up because of the way that the equipment was used. Tackle, the verb definitely comes up because it’s football, right?
And so a big part of football is attempting to stop the forward movement of the ball, and the way that you do that is with a tackle, right, like the actual coming together of bodies to stop one person moving forward. That’s kind of what a tackle is. And actually, you should tell me if I’m describing it incorrectly, but that’s how I think of a tackle, right? But it’s a very violent form of stopping movement because it is two bodies coming together and hitting each other with such force that my goal here is to stop you from moving. And again, as I already said, like these are large people, because that’s how the sport has made them. But they’re also wearing a ton of equipment, they’re moving quite quickly, right? It’s a very violent interaction of bodies, which also speaks to a lot of the issues that I’m talking about. But on the other side of it, it’s the interaction of two bodies, right? Two or more, it also could be more. The way that I look as a tackle, look at a tackle, the verb or the noun, but that’s coming from the verb, is that it’s actually a quite intimate act, right? Because two bodies have to be really close together in order to tackle. And this became even more clear to me during the pandemic, because football was still being played in colleges in 2020 and part of the reason why people were very against that is because football is a sport that is played close together, right? If you have something that is airborne that we’re not really sure what’s going on with it, but you have a sport where people are always in close contact with each other, these are quite opposite, there’s a disconnect here, right, of what we’re actually caring about. Are we caring about making sure that people are safe from this virus, which, at the time, was COVID, or are we interested in, the perpetuation of a sport that requires this coming together of bodies. And so, because it does require this coming together of bodies, the fact that I’m interested in relationships and the intimacy between players, the care between players, I thought it was actually a really interesting term to use in that way too, right?
To say that this is bodies coming together very closely in a very small space, and that’s saying something potentially about their relationship with each other, but just in general about the way that the sport has to be played, it has to be played in close contact. I appreciated thinking about tackling in that way, because it does move me to think about the relationships that players have with each other off the field, too. Throughout the book, anytime that I wanted to use another verb that could have been tackle, I replaced it with tackle, because I wanted there to be tons of tackles throughout the book, and that could have been in any way that you use the term. But I think that it speaks so clearly to the sport that I’m talking about, even though the attack was used in other sports too. But I think it speaks so clearly to the sport that I’m talking about in the way that I’m trying to talk about the sport, that it was the perfect word to have to represent all of those different aspects of it, but also to have it be in the title to say how are these players tackling their everyday lives?
Alvin: So, very intentional?
Tracie: Yes.
Alvin: Very intentional. Dare I say double, triple, on time.
Tracie: I mean 1,2,3,4, however many you want.
Alvin: But it’s really interesting how you take the understanding and the vision of a tacklel and then now you’re taking this into the middle of a tackle, yeah, and talking about the dynamics of that tackle and how it impacts one or both or many of those individuals. It just takes one’s mind, particularly somebody who played into an interesting space to think about it from those multiple perspectives.
Tracie: Have you thought about a tackle in those many, in those different ways?
Alvin: So many different ways. I mean, my body still hurts from tackles. There’s that. Yet it, you know it’s one of those things where, as you were saying, it’s very intimate, right? And we don’t think of it in that way, because as we’ve, you know, or as you talk about in, you know, I’ve heard your previous talk about, it’s, it’s a hyper masculine space, right? And it’s being a hyper masculine space to think about tackling as an intimate act,
Tracie: Yeah.
Alvin: It’s interesting.
Tracie: It’s disruptive.
Alvin: It just goes against a lot of what you would think of hyper masculine, but that’s what you’re doing.
Tracie: Yeah, yeah.
Alvin: A lot of folks would term it as, you know, Football is a game of moving somebody against their will.
Tracie: That’s a much more masculine way of saying it.
Alvin: Exactly, right. You see what I’m saying.
Tracie: It likens it to strength.
Alvin: Yes.
Tracie: The ability to do it, right? To convince, it’s not convincing, but to convince someone to do something that they don’t want to do, right? That’s linking-
Ron: And domination.
Tracie: And domination. Yeah, the violence of it, it’s dangerous, right? It’s only certain people that can do it, can play this sport in that way. Yeah, that’s a much more masculine way of saying it than the intimacy of bodies coming together.
Alvin: That’s why we talk about your rebrand and understanding. That’s why it’s definitely appreciated.
Ron: I’d be curious to hear, Alvin, what are some other insights you had from reading Tracie’s work as a former college football player. What came up for you? What was that experience like for you?
Alvin: Well, the difference in it. It’s one thing to play it, and one thing to be in it, but the difference in it, to take yourself out of it.
Tracie: Yeah.
Alvin: And to look at a different era. I played from 2007 to 2010, and that was when we were in the PAC [Pacific Athletic Conference] 10, and it was truly five conferences. We lived off $936 a month. Now we talk about NIL[Name, Image, Likeness], we talk about a number of different things that, you know, happened in the world of college football that really changed the dynamics and add additional layers to some of the athletes. To be at different universities, one at the University of Washington, but, you know, at Mellon University and other universities that you talk through, you know, you had the comparison. That was one thing I naturally didn’t get. It was like, you’re playing here, it’s big-time college football, that’s it. I had, you know, a father that played, my brother played, cousins that played, so it’s, and we were all in big-time universities, so that’s the only perspective I got. Now, hearing and being able to look through that lens that you provided us, it’s eye opening. Because, I mean, it happens all over the place, yet at differing levels of exploitation, at differing levels of just inclusion on campus, and the way that people view you and look at you. And you know, it’s just very refreshing to see that someone is taking the time to provide care to those different vantage points.
Tracie: Thank you. That is really interesting to look at it as a comparative thing, right? Not just different types of universities, but different years, because college sport changes so quickly, college football can look completely different depending on the year that you participated in it. To be able to reflect on your own experience that was not more recent, right? With something that is more recent, that is still even different than today, is a fascinating thing, right? Because that means the temporal experience matters here in a way that I don’t think people expect it to as much. If you’re a college football player retired, current, that’s just your experience. It’s like it could be,but my experience could look completely different from yours, depending on where I was, what time it was, what my school had access to, what division I was in, if it was, if it was power four or power five, right? All of these things actually really do shape one’s experience. So that’s really interesting to hear that that changed it for you, too.
Ron: To keep building on that, I think it’s really interesting to think about those changes in the landscape of college football and in my other life, I’m a media studies scholar, and so the this whole idea of NIL, and then the house settlement, but the sort of focus on name, image, likeness, and the pressure that puts on athletes to now also build a brand on top of being an excellent student, and an excellent athlete, and just an 18 year old is really striking. I’d love to hear you talk more about sort of, how do you see these new systems maybe perpetuating some of the kinds of exploitation you outline in tackling the everyday. Are there any places where you see openings for it to mitigate some of that exploitation, and or are there sort of brand-new forms of exploitation that are coming out of these new systems?
Tracie: It’s interesting when I have to think about what’s happening now, because I’ll put a time on it, right? We’re now in 2025, I did the majority of this research in 2017- 18 and NIL, and more of the more recent things that are impacting 2025 happened around 2021, right? And so, I was doing research before, I mean, players were definitely still talking about this of, what would it be like if we got paid to play? That was actually one of the main things that they would talk about um, and not explicitly in those terms, but what would it be like if we could just go somewhere, right? What would it be like if we had access to this? And they would kind of daydream in that way. And so it is interesting that now they do have much more access to certain things that they were daydreaming about in 2017. But what I like to say about what I like to say about the current moment again, is that, like everything is moving so quickly, and it’s hard to actually keep up with everything that’s going on. But one, the way that I think of NIL, and also the transfer portal is actually just giving back rights to athletes that either everyone on campus already had access to, or rights that coaches have always had access to and have, I think, exploited, to be able to move from school to school, just if you get a better offer, you can drop the school that you were at before, and also, sometimes even still, get paid out of that contract. The fact that coaches have always had access to that type of mobility, and now players just finally have a little bit of access to that. And it’s interesting the way that that has changed coaching for some coaches, right? The fact that they will say, this isn’t what I signed up for, and this is a whole different thing. What did you sign up for? Did you sign up for complete control and domination and disciplining of the people that were on your team, you could just drop them if you got a better offer, because you’re right, like, that’s not exactly what it looks like anymore, right?
Ron: Yeah, right, the answer we know is yes.
Tracie: Yes, that is the answer. And so that’s why certain coaches are no longer coaching, right? Because they’re like, this isn’t what I signed up for, and I don’t want to do this anymore. Did you sign up for the ability for you to literally make millions of dollars from this job that you have. And for some football coaches be the highest paid person in the state that you live in. For your players to not have access to any of that no matter how much money you made, the University made, the NCAA made, the media conglomerates that that show these games, they all made money, but the fact that now somebody can hold a very local camp in his hometown and say that he’s a player at your school and he can make a little bit of money, that’s what you have a problem with now? Okay, sure. If that’s what the issue is, then that’s what your issue is. I think one part of it is an interesting look at well, like first I will say I don’t have a clear cut answer to this, because I’m not doing research right now, right? I’m not working with players right now to see, like, what their experiences are in the every day.
What I do think is going on is that players, like I said, have access to something that people have always had access to, which is shaping the way that people look at players, right? It’s changing the way that they are seen because there is not total control, now, offered to universities, to administrators, to coaches. Is that changing the game itself? I’m not sure, but I’m sure it’s changing the relationships that these admins have with the players who are at their universities. What would be really interesting to look at, though, because I’m much more interested in the relationships between players, is to see what does it look like for a team when everybody on that team could only be there for a year, right? A lot of what I write about is the depth of the relationships that black players form with each other. Part of it is because they’re going through an experience that really nobody can, it’s not relatable or accessible to anybody else, and so there’s a type of shorthand that they have with each other, but part of it is because of how long they’re in it together, right? And it is a very mobile population, college students are always coming in. They’re always graduating, they’re always moving around. Some go to abroad, right? Some go to internships. It’s not that everyone is incredibly stagnant on a campus, but there is kind of like a timeframe around how long you’re going to be here. If you take that timeframe away, and we’re to say that the entire team could only be here for a year at a time. I’m sure that’s impacting the relationships that they have with each other, which, on the flip side, I think, is probably impacting the ways that coaches are able to use certain things against players or for players, right? To convince players to come, to convince players to play when they shouldn’t be, to make them do things that they don’t really want to do, that the players themselves don’t really want to do. I’m sure that coaches are using that to their advantage but also finding it challenging in certain ways. I would be really curious to see what the transfer portal is affected like, how the transfer portal is affecting the relationships on the team, because there is much more access to mobility, which means that they probably aren’t much more mobile than when I was doing research.
I think the other thing that I would be really interested in, and this is another way of thinking about the ways that coaches might be able to exploit players, is to change dynamics in a locker room, to say like that, that person is getting paid more than you. You’re not working hard enough because of that, which means that maybe I don’t want you here, maybe you won’t be playing more. Because they have access to NIL deals, and those are different at every university, they’re not centralized at all, they’re not consistent. But I imagine that those could be used against players in a locker room if they’re trying to get something out of them, because there’s a built in hierarchy with the way the NIL deals are distributed across teams. And so I could see coaches using that to their advantage when they’re trying to convince people to play or not to play or get surgeries, not to get surgeries, you know, whatever, the whatever the conversation is there. But having said all that, do I think that it’s still a good move for athletes themselves? Yes, I think it’s a step in the right direction. Do I think it’s an end all be all? No, we’re nowhere near the end of what players, I think, have been hoping for. But it is interesting that even these steps have fundamentally changed the landscape of college sport, right? College sport and college football in specific. And so what does that actually look like for the players who are participating, for the people who are signing up to do this, for the people who if they stopped playing tomorrow, the entire thing would go away, that’s what I’m interested in, and I’m sure it’s having some very real implications for it. But to circle back to is the exploitation? Is it better or worse, or whatever, the situation is there, right? I think that it’s still a system that’s exploiting labor for the people who participate in it, right?
I don’t think that the money is distributed to the people who put in the most work. And all of that still has not changed. One part that I think is really important here is that I don’t use the term student athlete in my work, but if you’re going to claim that they’re student athletes, this system has not changed at all, the academic side of this, right? It is not changing that athletes don’t have access to certain majors because the majors interfere with their time on the team. It doesn’t change the fact that players spend so much time with their sport that sometimes they can’t participate in internships, they can’t network with alums who might be able to help them with careers outside of sport or in sport, sometimes they can’t participate in the same opportunities as students on their campus, like study abroad, because of the timing of it, right? They just can’t because of the way that their sport is demanding of their time. It hasn’t changed graduation rates to say the football players now graduate at higher rates. It actually, I’m not sure what it’s doing for graduation rates, but I don’t think, I actually, don’t think that it’s happened for long enough for us to see if it’s affecting graduation rates in that way, but I would be curious to see if more or less football players are graduating from college because of now these new changes, right? It is not saying that, this is a big gripe of mine as a professor because I don’t this is not at all the players, but it’s not saying that you have to be in class every day now, right? It is saying that we still can say, if we have a if we have a game on Friday and you have a class on Thursday, you have an excused absence from that class. So players are not getting access to the same in-class time as their peers are, they are relying more on tutors, they have to do more work on their own right. These are things that have not changed at all with these changes to the landscape, and I think that that’s still something that people need to bring up because I think that players should have access to mobility. I think that players should be able to get be paid in whatever way this means that NIL is paying them. But if they’re being promised in education, we still need to make sure that they’re getting the education that they’re being promised, and that they have access to opportunities that are not playing when they graduate, because odds are not in the favor of everybody going pro once they graduate. What are the majority of them going to do? Are we actually caring for them in that way? And I don’t think that this has changed that at all.
Ron: And to further that point, Alvin and I were talking about this the other day, it also changes the dynamic in the classroom.
Tracie: In the classroom.
Ron: Because now you have a professor who might be making 1/10, 1/20, what one of their students is, and does that change the dynamic? What does that look like?
Tracie: Because certain professors probably don’t love that, right? Certain professors probably have feelings about that fact, and should they? I’m not actually sure if they should feel a certain way, because that player in their classroom is also making a ton of money for the university. Are they just getting access to something that they’re owed? I would say so, right? But it could 100% change the dynamic in a classroom, depending on how a professor feels about it. And also if a professor is unwilling to kind of move with the way that they’re teaching a class, right? If you can’t come to class, then you got to figure out a way to still turn that assignment in today, I don’t care if you’re going to be gone for this, right? Those are things that I think still impact a player’s experience in the classroom, which is something that as educators, as universities, as institutions of higher education, that’s still something that we need to be very concerned with, even if the athletic side is consistently changing, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, what’s actually happening in the classroom with this person, this student, is still really important.
Alvin: Well, let me ask this, and I appreciate that perspective, particularly on NIL. I’m looking forward to a space where it can be utopic for college football players, right? The things they can really get the piece of the pie is, I guess you could say, right? But as you’re describing this, what it harkens back to me for is what Dr. Billy Hawkins calls oscillating migrant workers. They’re moving around, they’re parts of university, they’re working for, yet they’re not on contract to be employees. So, in that vein of things, what does unionization look like for black college football players, for college football players, for the institution as a whole? How does that either impact support or dismantle, how does it impact this whole situation we’re talking about here?
Tracie: That’s not where my line of research is, so I don’t know if I have a fully developed answer to what it would tangibly look like, but when I think about unionization, I also think about it in the scope of grad students on campuses are unionizing, right? Duke’s grad students actually just unionized, they finally signed their contract there, right? This is not outside of the realm of other groups on campus, Faculty are unionized at certain universities, right? And those, those relationships look different at every place, they look the way that they come to an agreement for them to look, right? Something that I think is interesting about unionization is that, if you look at the universities or the teams that are attempting to do it, the universities teams, athletes that are attempting to do it, one, I think it’s an interesting push, because it is demanding conversation across universities. To your point, from before, of like, you were very aware of your individual experience, I think that unionization efforts are by nature, in community. It’s asking, okay, what did y’all get? What did you ask for? What was your relationship like? What was the process like for you? It’s making athletes talk across sports, across schools, across divisions, which I think is really helpful, because when you know more about other people’s experiences, then you can say something more specific about your local experience, right? I think that that’s interesting. I think that if you look at what they’re asking, you look at what they’re asking for, the groups that have gone further with these efforts, sometimes it’s stuff like, sure, we want to have access to money, a lot of times it is about money. But sometimes it’s also like, we want to have access to health care once we’ve graduated, because this sport, no matter what the sport is, actually, this sport has really damaged my body, and you only care about taking care of my body as long as I am a student at this university and I play on this team. And the second that’s no longer the truth, I have to take care of it, right? If you add on top of all of these things that I have limited job opportunities because I don’t have the same amount of time to devote to things outside of my sport, I couldn’t major in what it is that I wanted to, I’ve been playing the sport at these exaggerated rates for years, and it has broken down my body.
I will also say that I have an article out with a medical anthropologist where we talk about medical anthropologist Chelsea Carter, where we talk about weathering in sports like this sport has weathered my body in a very particular way. It’s worn it down, right? And now that I have limited opportunities, I might not get a job that’s super high paying, it might take me a couple of years to get there, I might not have access to the same things because I couldn’t participate in internships and network in the same way. But I still have this body, and this is the one body I have, and you broke it down with this sport, and now I have to deal with all of the medical bills that are going to come from the fact that I played this sport. I now have to deal with the fact that I have a chronic injury, or my back is persistently hurting, right, or that I have to consistently go to this doctor now because of a surgery that I had a couple of years ago that now has flared up, and now I’ve got an issue with my knee, right? I think that it’s ,if we’re circling back to unionization efforts, if you’re looking at what athletes are actually asking for, I think that that is a really interesting push right? Because sure, unionizing will lead to a whole bunch of different things, it’s going to open a lot of doors, if you want to think about it in that way, it’s just going to lead to changes, right, like if, if athletes successfully unionize, things will look different, right? Because, if they are treated more as workers on a campus, that fundamentally is going to look different, right? But if you’re looking at what they’re asking for, it is, in a way, asking to be treated as people, that you actually, in some way, potentially, genuinely care about. You care about my experience once I’ve left this place, because I made you a ton of money, I devoted all of my time, it seems like, and a lot of energy to this. And the second that I graduate, or actually the second that our season is over, my senior season is over, you really don’t care about me anymore, right? And I think that’s what’s more interesting about it, because I think that, quite honestly, if universities weren’t interested in athletes unionizing, they could deal with a lot of the issues that they’re talking about, right? There are resources available for, let’s say, this is something that has come up recently for me, talking at different universities – there are so many resources put into making sure that athletes stay eligible because they can’t play their sport if they’re not eligible. So there are tons of academic resources that are poured into athletes on campuses to make sure that they stay eligible, in the same way that they could pour a ton of resources into their mental health, right? And they could say, on these campuses, they could say that these are resources only available to athletes in the same way that those academic resources are only available to athletes, in the same way that they say that this weight room is only available to this basketball or football team. They could do the exact same thing, but say that it’s for mental health resources. They could say the same thing for this is only for you, if we’re talking about the physical health of your body. They could say the same, we’re going to have a career center devoted only for the athletes on this campus, right? They could do that they just don’t. I think it’s interesting what they do devote their resources to and what they don’t, and then when there is pushback for what athletes are demanding or asking for and what there isn’t, right? So I think that all of these things together mean that if athletes successfully unionize, yeah, it’s going to change. It looks different. What does it mean to be a worker, if you are an athlete on a campus? But I would argue that we are way past the point of saying that college sports are professional because they are professional, they just like to use the moniker of it being amateur because of the control that that means, right? If we were actually just honest about what’s already happening, then conceptualizing these athletes on campuses as workers is actually not that far from what’s actually already going on, it just means that they would have access to certain things and not and lose access to other things, right? And so that’s just a conversation that needs to be had, because we’re already at that point of this being a professional system, whether or not they want to call it.
Alvin: You heard it from the Doc herself. So, you know, you put it so beautifully. It’s hard to, you know, and the direction that you’re taking with it, particularly around caring for the football players, as also describe my work, it’s, it’s already there while in the short term, right? So even within your book, you make a distinction, right, kinder care and corporal concern or corporeal concern, right? Can you talk to us about that distinction a little bit more, in particular with some of the examples that you just brought up?
Tracie: In the book, I do conceptualize these two terms, because I think it was the way that I was thinking about the different forms of care that athletes on a campus receive, because I am not going to say that they are not cared for by the institution. It’s just a certain type of care for something specific at a certain time. And that is where the term corporeal concern comes up. And I deliberately don’t call it care, because I think that what they’re doing is more manipulative and extractive. But corporeal concern, it’s it to me, it’s written into the into the phrase itself, is to say, like we care a lot about your body, right? And so there are a ton of resources that are put into making sure that athletes bodies stay able to play right like that’s actually at the core of it, the way that I look at it, that’s at the core of everything that’s going on with college athletics, is to say that we need your body to be able to be good enough to play. And what does that mean? That means that if you get injured, we’re going to address it immediately or not, depending on actually, what you need in the moment, what we need in the moment as a team, how much we need you in this position, do we have somebody else that’s able to play? But we’re going to address physical injuries, we’re going to devote academic resources to you, because if you’re not eligible in the classroom to play, then you can’t physically play on the field, so you have to have these academic resources. There’s also a whole point about making sure that they have access to food, right, certain nutrition, hydration, right? Because this is also still about the body, but that is an expense, right? And sometimes it might not be the best food you’ve ever eaten, but we’re going to make sure that you have access to meals, because if you can’t eat and fuel your body, then you can’t play for us, right? There’s all these ways that the body becomes central to what institutions and coaches are caring about. I would argue it’s not about the person, it’sabout the football player, right, and the football player is someone who needs to play. What I think is different with corporeal or what I think is different from corporeal concern, is kindred care. And I think kindred care is something that comes from players themselves, amongst themselves, and I also write about it coming from moms. And this kindred care is something that is important to the person as a person, right? I recognize you as someone who just happens to play football, which means that I care about, did you go to class today? What’s happening with your friends? Did you get dumped by your girlfriend? Why did you get that tattoo? Did you go to that session to find out about the job that you could get, right? How are your How are your grades? Are you doing okay, right? Just a very basic, what’s going on? Are you doing okay? I would analyze that as a type of care that comes from other players, because of the shorthand of like them understanding the experience without having to really explain much of what’s going on. But I also think that moms devote a lot of this care to their sons. I’m interested in you as a person, I want to make sure that you’re okay, right? I am really excited for you, if you played really well, but I am also very concerned with like, how you’re doing? Did you eat enough today, right? Do you need to go get your car looked at? Have you had, I think, because of the racialized experience of the people that I talk about, have you had any interactions with police that I need to be concerned about? What’s going on with your coaches? How are they treating you? Right? There’s a certain way that I think certain people in football players lives are providing a certain type of care that is completely different than this focus on the body that comes from coaches and administration. And as I argue in the book you need both, right? Because, again, if their body is completely break down, they can’t play anymore. You do need that type of medical, biomedical interest in somebody’s body, but it’s just the person as a body. It’s not the person as a person. I think that to me, at least, it became very clear that there were people who would provide one and not the other. There were very few people who would provide both, but if you think about how care factors into this experience, I think it opens up a lot of conversation for what’s actually happening in this day to day for football players themselves. And again, that’s what I’m interested in, right? Is how you get from Monday to Saturday and then back again, and I say only those days, because they usually get Sundays off. But how do you get from day to day? I think that thinking about it through a lens of care is actually really interesting way of thinking about it.
Ron: To sort of continue in this vein, one of the things I really love about your book is the way you bring a black feminist theoretical approach, and the way you center the role of mothers in caring, not only for their own sons, but also sort of for the other sons, for the whole team. And I think any of us who have played sports is familiar with that mother who became that mother, who becomes sort of the mom for everyone, right, Is sort of always there for everyone. I’m wondering how does that play out in particular ways with black football players, as opposed to, say, black high school players or white college players or other groups of athletes.
Tracie: I thought it was super important to talk about the moms, because they were some of the first people that became super clear to me as important people in the lives of football players, but I only ever really saw moms talked about on Mother’s Day. Colleges will usually have little shout outs to them, ESPN always has some type of package for moms on Mother’s Day, and sometimes they will also appear and like the little produced packages before games, because sometimes they’ll talk about like players families and their experiences and how they got to the sport, and so moms will definitely show up there. But what was so interesting to me is that that was such a limited way of thinking about how central they are to the entire thing. And I focus on black moms, because I think that black moms, coming from a black feminist perspective, one black moms recognize their own positionality, right? To say that I’m a black woman living in an anti-black world, and I know what that means, like an anti-black misogynist world that’s also filled with misogynoir very specifically, so I know what that means for me, and now I have a black son that’s living in that same world, right? They’re concerned for them from a completely different perspective, I think, because of their intersectional experiences as black women in the world. I think they see their sons in this embodied way that I was referencing before, as bigger, larger, stronger than everyone else, and what that tangibly means for them is that they’re being stereotyped as, stereotyped, they’re seen as threatening, they’re seen as dangerous in ways that they’re not, and so they’re worried about them in that way, right? But then there’s also moms who, if you’re putting it specifically in football, they’re the ones who are driving them to practices in the morning, they’re the ones who are taking the snacks after the game. They’re the ones who rally together the family to make sure that everybody comes to the game and has tickets, right, and that they’re all wearing the shirts so that he can find them in the stadium, right? They’re the ones who make the posters, they’re the ones who organize the dinners after, they’re the ones who are organizing the tailgate. Sothere’s a lot of labor that black moms specifically are putting in, some of it is visible, right? A poster is much more visible than a mom calling her son to ask about an interaction that he had with police, and like, how he handled that, and does he need help? And do I need to come down there and talk to somebody, right? Some are visible and some are much more invisible, but moms are putting in a lot of labor to make sure that their sons are okay. And I would argue it’s not just to make sure that they’re okay, it’s to make sure that, quite literally, that they’re surviving their experiences, right? I think it’s surviving the sport of football, because it is such a dangerous and violent sport, that things could happen there. But also surviving their daily lives, I want to make sure you come home at night, right? And I understand that football matters to that in a certain way, but that’s not really what my concern is. You’re my son before anything else, so I want to make sure that you’re okay as a person, and that you are alive as a person, right? I think that black moms are doing such interesting work, and I call it work, I call it labor. And I also say that, like the sport itself, couldn’t happen without them, because what is really important here, I think, and it kept up, it kept coming up over and over again, is that if a mom doesn’t want you to play at a school, if a mom doesn’t like a coach, if mom doesn’t want you playing the sport at all, like you’re not playing right, like she’s the one that has to sign off on, like everything. And I think that the fact that so many players would say that, so many coaches would say that, but there’s so much in the literature, in the narrative, that highlights dads, that as I was spending time with them, oh no, it’s my mom, she controls everything, like she runs this whole situation. I’m like, oh, well, I knew that theoretically, right? It kind of made sense, but to see it in action, how central these women were to their sons, not just playing, being able to play when they were younger, but where they ended up playing in college, what coaches they were vibing with and which coaches they liked and didn’t like which ones they were allowed to recruit their sons, right? Those types of things were really interesting, because it was, in a way, especially the way that the sons were talking about it, they were making visible the labor that these women were putting in. To say that if my mom doesn’t sign off on this, it doesn’t happen. And to me, that meant that the sport itself can’t happen without the moms. That’s in a very practical way of they give birth to these sons, but that’s also in a very intangible way of if she says no, it’s a no, right? And so, I thought it was necessary to highlight them, and that’s also part of my black feminist theoretical orientation, right. To say where are the black women, and what’s happening with the black women? I also thought it was important to say that I am a black woman in this space, right? Who I am and my own positionality matters too, in the way that I do the work and who interacts with me and what’s happening while I’m around. And so, for me, there are lots of way that being a black feminist came up, but I think the clearest way is in the fact that there’s a whole chapter in the book about college football, about moms, and specifically black moms, and I don’t think that there’s a way to deny that me being a black feminist, influenced the fact that there’s that chapter. And it’s also the chapter that, when I talk to people, it’s the one that is the most talked about, right? That’s the one that people will ask me the most questions about, it’s the one that has led to more offshoot things from the book. And I think that there’s, I think that that’s a visible recognition to say that, oh, we’ve known this all along, so it’s nice that it’s now written down and we can use it in these tangible ways, right? But, but it’s the one that people ask me about the most, for sure.
Ron: Very interesting.
Alvin: I really resonate with that.
Tracie: You have a story about your mom.
Alvin: Absolutely. I’m sitting here thinking about my mom.
Tracie: That’s what it means.
Alvin: Shout out to Dana.
Ron: Shout out to Dana.
Tracie: Shout out to her.
Alvin: She was a big one, and, you know, not the only mother in my life, my wife as well. You know, we’re having those conversations about my nine- and my seven-year-old, about the safety of football. It’s been something I preached for a long time, they’re like, it’s not safe to play yet. You know, as I see them develop as young people, they like it. And I know it’s partly on me, I get it and I understand it, but also her opinion matters the most to my boys, and I can definitely appreciate that. So that perspective, it resonated very deeply, very deeply. One of the things I definitely like to do with you know, conversation about challenge, particularly about challenge of black athletes on campus, and some of the things they deal with societally, is what areas or avenues that I have for advocacy, for self or agency, to exercise that, to face some of these challenges head on, to overcome a lot of these challenges, to be the individual that they set out to be for themselves outside of the game?
Tracie: I think that’s an interesting question, because I look at it as a much more individual thing, right? But I think that there are plenty of ways that they could be in community and have these conversations. One of them is the unionization efforts, right? Even if they’re not unionizing, to be in community with other athletes at on your campus, because I also think that some of these sports, that some of the athletes of certain sports, are incredibly siloed, I think that’s on purpose, I think that happens on purpose, because if you don’t talk to other people, then you don’t know what to ask for, you don’t know what’s going on over there, you can’t compare your experience to anybody else’s. The second that those divisions, which are false divisions, but the second that those divisions are broken down, then that that leads to a lot of productive conversation, I think. But one of the ways that I write about it in the book is to say that, like, you can advocate for yourself, but you can also resist in lots of ways, right? And so, like, there were athletes that I spent time with who had brands and tattoos, who wore, like, incredibly shiny jewelry on purpose, who would speak in Black English unapologetically all the time, who wore their hair in ways that the coaches didn’t love, and would wear things in football and even outside of football, that marked them in a particular way that the team didn’t approve of. And they’re like, I don’t care, like, this is what I want to wear, this is how I want to present myself, this is who I am. And I think, like, none of them explicitly said this, but I would always find it really interesting that they were finding these ways of like, aesthetically dressing themselves right in these different ways, and what that meant to them, how it was so central to their ability to represent themselves, to say that I am this person, and I’m going to represent that in this random sleeve that I have tattooed, right? Or in the fact that I’m always going to wear my hair on top of my head, so that I’m like, six inches taller than I already am so you can see me walking across campus, I’m always going to wear these sweatshirts that have cartoon characters on them, which inevitably means they’re really bright sweatshirts, right, so I stand out in a certain way, right? I always thought that that was really interesting, because often it contradicted what the team wanted them to do, it contradicted team more norms, right? It’s not the way that you’re supposed, quote, unquote, supposed to dress, supposed to represent yourself, supposed to represent this team, because we’re a unified force, and so we want you to kind of all look alike, right? It was interesting the Black English tag of that is an interesting part to me too, because there were certain ways that the team would want people to interact with the media if they were interacting with the media, so if they spoke in Black English, that’s already a certain mark, it’s a certain class and race mark, I think. The ways that players would violate that, transgress that, in very specific and very tangible and on purpose, was to say, no, this is how I speak. If you don’t want me to talk to media, then that’s fine. I won’t talk to the media, but I’m also the best player on this team, so take it or leave it right, like, this is what you’re going to get. I was always really inspired by their ways of resisting at these very individual levels that I think spoke volumes, because they were resisting certain norms of what was expected once you’re on a team that’s run by usually, it was ran by white men at a university that’s a historically white institution, right? I thought that that was really interesting. But then once, you come together once, once there’s groups of black athletes who talk to each other on a campus, once there’s groups of black athletes who go to conferences and talk to each other, because now we’re all the black athletes at the universities in this area of the country, and so now we can have our own regional conference, and we can have conversations about this, once we’re able to link up with admin on campus, who we find out are more like minded or like who will support us in in the face of some of these issues that are coming up, I think that those were all, those were, and are, all solid ways that black athletes are consistently resisting what’s happening, are advocating for themselves, another way that they could do that, because I’m always talking about what’s happening in the classroom. If you really want to major in something, then you make it happen, they can’t make you major in something, but that means you might have to figure out how to make it work for yourself, right? Go with them, with the paperwork, here’s the classes, here are the professors, here’s what I know, here’s what I want to do with my life, right? You have to advocate for yourself, because there are often ways that they will limit you, because it’s just easier to. I think that there are ways that as long as they know what’s possible, and as long as they have a bit of an imagination, they can advocate for themselves. But I will also always consistently come back to the second a player stops playing, the whole sport stops. I think that we just need to make sure that they all recognize that too. And I say that to students on a college campus too. College campuses are for undergraduates, so If undergraduates actually wanted something to happen, all they needed was to just band together, and it would probably happen, because the institution is for them. The team is the same way, right, like and so if there’s something that they really want to happen, and we’ve seen moments of this, which, again, is not necessarily the through line of my work, but there are plenty of scholars who write about athlete at athlete activism, right in really compelling ways that if they wanted something to happen, band together and you can make it happen, because if you stop playing, the whole thing implodes. And they know that. And if there is enough pressure around a certain issue, and if you say that you will no longer play, I think things will change.
Alvin: Can I ask a further question on that? And that’s very well put. You’re talking particularly at the collegiate level, right?
Tracie: Yeah, I only talk about the collegiate level.
Alvin: Being privy to some of the stuff that I know you may be doing.
Tracie: Yeah.
Alvin: What does it look like to have those conversations and to foster advocacy and agency at a younger age?
Tracie: Yeah. I think that it’s an interesting question, because younger kids are also thinking about a whole bunch of different things, and in a way that I actually really appreciate. It seems, at least in my preliminary work so far with high schoolers, football is not the end all be all for them, they’re engaged in so many other things, they’re interested in so many, they’ve got so many friends, they’re doing all of the things all at the same time. And another thing that actually comes up with high schoolers, I think, more than college players, is that you are a two-sport athlete, but that happens much more at the high school level than it does in college. And they’re not as specialized, or they’re at least more, they’re involved in different groups of athletes, I think that that’s actually a very good thing, right, to talk across sports. But I think that’s an interesting question, because it is about how you get young people to advocate for themselves? And I think a lot of it is about education, right? For them to know that it’s possible for them to know that they’re not going to be the first to do something, to know that they’re part of a long lineage of other people who have done this before, to know that they can link up and ask adults to help them right? I think that that’s something that is really interesting when you’re talking to like a 15 or a 16-year-old who seems dejected, of like this is, like, I can’t do anything in this moment, like this is so hard, I can’t move forward, this is my only option. And sometimes it is needing a representative to say that, but I did that, right? And so sometimes it is linking up with an adult who has tangibly done the thing that they’re talking about. But sometimes it’s just exposing them to different things, right? And so I think that’s a responsibility that I think we all have when we come in contact with young people, right? Is to expose them to all of the things, right? Football is not it. Let’s say that you are a football player and you want it, but, like, maybe you’re amazing, maybe you’re an amazing pitcher, and you just didn’t have access to the equipment, there wasn’t a, you didn’t there wasn’t a baseball team around you when you grew up, and you just don’t know it, right? Maybe go try to talk to them, see what’s going on over there, right? There’s so many different ways that I think that we’re limited by what we’re exposed to, and it seems to definitely hinder people as they’re younger, but people who are younger, have very few inhibitions, and it’s a great age to say that you can do whatever you want, and here are the possibilities, and sometimes you just have to lay them out, because they might not even know what they don’t know. And my dad says that all the time, and I love that phrase, they don’t know what they don’t know, so you have to tell them what they don’t know, and then they can make decisions for themselves and then advocate, like no, this is actually what I want to do, I want to pursue this. I think that’s also responsibilities as adults who are training, educating, dealing with the next generation in a world that is going to look completely different. Completely different for them.
Alvin: Well put.
Tracie: Thank you.
Ron: So, Alvin started to tease this a little bit, but can you tell us more about your new project with high school football and how it continues your work in “Tackling the Everyday” and maybe how it diverges as well?
Tracie: The work that I’m working on now, which will eventually be the next book is about high school football, but it’s a project that’s centered in a way around concussions, about the ways that we actually think that concussions are over represented in injuries for football. Not to say that concussions don’t happen, but I wonder what other injuries are going on, because we spend so much time thinking about brain injuries and concussions, which are important, then that means that we are just accepting as fact that the other injuries are going to happen, and you might just have that ACL [Anterior Cruciate Ligament] issue that you had when you were 16 is just going to be an issue that you have for the rest of the life, and the rest of your life, and you just take it for what it is. I played football, so this is what’s going to happen. I don’t know if that’s great either, right? And I am very interested in thinking about injuries of all kinds for high school players, and I’m focusing on high school, because so much energy and resources and time are devoted to looking at college in the NFL, when the only way you get to those levels is there has to be a pipeline. Football is not a sport that you really start playing late, it’s very rare that people start playing the sport late, and so they usually start playing when they’re really young, and there are millions of people who play this sport before a college or an NFL level. But there’s at least in the way that I think about it, there’s so few resources that are devoted to looking at this huge population that populate the pipeline to the to the higher levels, that there needs to be attention paid there. And I also think that I’m a qualitative resource or researcher, so it’s important to think in the same way they think about in “Tackling the Everyday,” what’s the experience like? Who were, who matters when you’re making decisions about whether to play? What are the reasons that people play? Even if we have all this data about how dangerous the sport is, these are all questions I think a qualitative researcher can answer really well if we’re thinking about injuries, right? Like, even though I am thinking about, like, physical injuries and like, what it does to the body and how it wears the body down and how it impacts certain people, because certain people play certain positions in this sport, right? These are all things that I’m thinking about. But also, why do you do this when you have all this information, I think is still very central to the question that I’m trying to ask. And again, when you put it in a context where it’s all young people, I think something really interesting comes up, right? Because, again, these are, we’ll say 14 to 18 year olds that I’m dealing with now, which is a whole different situation when you’re working with kids, and the way they think about stuff, and who helps them make decisions, and the fact that I’m reminded they can’t drive, some of them can’t drive themselves places, right, so they’re young, and so they’re there, have to be adults around them who are helping them in one way or another, or who are shaping their lives in one way or another, and so the fact that the adults around them actually matter in a completely different way than in college is really, is becoming really interesting to me. But at the core of it is why play this sport when we know so much about it? What keeps you in it? What motivates you to play? Is there a reason why you would stop playing? And why this sport? You could be really athletic, but why football? Why is this the thing that you’re devoted to? And so eventually I’ll have answers to some of these questions, maybe, hopefully, and it will end up in another book, maybe hopefully.
Ron: Fantastic. I truly, truly, can’t wait to read it.
Tracie: Thank you.
Ron: Wow. Thank you both so much for the conversation today. Really, really, fantastic to hear all your insights. Really appreciate it.
Tracie: Thank you so much for having me.
Ron: Alvin, is there anything else you want to ask?
Alvin: You know, there’s a bunch of things I want to ask, but you know, we can hold off, okay. You know, I just appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I appreciate your thoughts and your writing and your research. It’s going to go far, it goes a long way, it reaches a lot of people, and you’re intentional about that. So I appreciate it.
Tracie: I appreciate that.
Ron: Fantastic. Well, again, thank you so much for the conversation today, and thanks also to all of you for listening. I’ll say just a bit more about the Global Sport Lab now. We are a new collaboration based in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, in partnership with my own school Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Bothell, the lab uses the lens of sport to explore the big issues of our global world, from migration, politics, inequity, racism and gender discrimination to popular culture, democracy, human rights and the economy, to name just a few. We are particularly focused on the sport of football, which is particularly confusing to say today, better known as soccer in the United States during the run up to Seattle’s hosting of the FIFA Men’s World Cup in 2026 but we are interested in a wide range of sports well known and less well known, from the grassroots to the professional levels, and how they help us make meaning of the world special. Thanks to musician and scholar of Global Football, Laurent Dubois, and WOTI Production for the use of our theme music, “Merci Kylian” available on Spotify and Apple Music. If you would like to join more conversations like this, please reach out to us at globalsportlab@uw.edu We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. And keep playing.
[MUSIC PLAYING – “Merci Kylian” by Laurent Dubois]
