Hang Up and Listen: The Wide Receiver Performance Art Edition

Slate’s sports podcast on the U.S. Open, Antonio Brown, and Clemson football.

About the Show

A weekly sports discussion show from Slate. Hang Up and Listen features Slate personalities Josh Levin and Stefan Fatsis.

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Hosts

Stefan Fatsis is a panelist on Hang Up and Listen and the author of Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic.
Josh Levin is Slate’s national editor and hosts the sports podcast Hang Up and Listen. He is the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.

Episode Notes

In this week’s episode of Slate’s sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen, Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin are joined by the New Yorker’s Louisa Thomas to talk about Bianca Andreescu’s big win over Serena Williams at the U.S. Open and Rafael Nadal’s remarkable five-set victory over Daniil Medvedev. Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley also joins to assess Antonio Brown’s transcendent if short-lived career with the Oakland Raiders and his escape to the New England Patriots. Finally, they discuss the Clemson Tigers’ college football dynasty and the perhaps-over-the-top, maybe-creepy techniques its coaches and staffers have used to maintain it.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:

• Follow Louisa Thomas on Twitter and read her New Yorker pieces on Bianca Andreescu and Daniil Medvedev.

• In FiveThirtyEight, Tom Perrotta writes, “Bianca Andreescu Wasn’t Afraid of Serena Williams—or Any of Tennis’s Best Players.”

• Medvedev trolled the crowd after his third-round U.S. Open win.

• Follow Ben Mathis-Lilley on Twitter.

• ESPN’s timeline of Antonio Brown’s tenure with the Oakland Raiders.

• In Slate, Nick Greene reconsidered the conventional wisdom that the Raiders were smart to trade for Brown.

• The video Brown released that featured a surreptitious recording of Raiders coach Jon Gruden.

• Brown reportedly sought the counsel of social media consultants.

• Did Brown act out on purpose so he could go to the New England Patriots?

• Mathis-Lilley’s Slate piece on Clemson’s Thad Turnipseed.

• Sports Illustrated’s Tim Rohan wrote about Clemson and Christianity. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a long piece on the same topic in 2013.

Hang Up and Listen’s weekly Luis Lobos:

Stefan’s Luis Lobo: The morbidly mesmerizing weekly photos of ambulances on the field at high school football games.

Josh’s Luis Lobo: The history of injury-faking in football and the legacy of “Faintin’ Frank” Varrichione.

On this week’s Slate Plus bonus segment, Stefan, Josh, and Ben Mathis-Lilley discuss the phenomenon of the college football near-upset, as exemplified by Michigan’s overtime win against Army.

Podcast production and edit by Melissa Kaplan.

You can email us at hangup@slate.com.