The Coco Gauff Hype Train Edition
Stefan Fatsis: The following podcast includes explicit language not restricted to words beginning with F, s, B and Q.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Hi. I’m Josh Levine, Slate’s national editor. And this is Hang Up and Listen for the week of August 29th, 2022. On this week’s show, Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley will join us to talk about his new book, The Hot Seat on why college football makes some of us completely insane and sometimes happy to. We’ll also discuss how Coco Gauff is being positioned as America’s next tennis superstar. And we’ll review. Welcome to Wrexham, a new documentary about a couple of Hollywood actors buying a fifth tier Welsh soccer club. I’m in Washington, D.C., and I’m the author of The Queen and the host of Podcast One Year. Subscribe now. Also in D.C., Stefan FATSIS, he is the author of the books Word Freak Few Seconds of Panic, Wild and Outside. Hey, Stefan. Hello.
Stefan Fatsis: Not in D.C..
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: You’re not in D.C.?
Stefan Fatsis: I’m in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: We’re just going to leave that in. We’ve. We’ve come too far. How are you, Stefan? Good. Good. All right, great. And with us from New York is Vince.
Stefan Fatsis: And you want a more specific answer? Ask a more specific question.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: He’s a staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker. Vince and how is how Stefan?
Speaker 3: You know, he seems to be having a great time. His hair is looking good today.
Stefan Fatsis: It’s the magic of gel.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: In our Slate Plus segment this week. Stefan will say more than four words and Ben Mathis-Lilley, the aforementioned writer of the hotseat will stick around to talk with us about the Big Ten’s new megabucks, multibillion dollar TV deal and what it means for the future of college sports. To hear that conversation, you have to be a Slate Plus member. You get a bonus segment on this and other Slate podcasts. You get to listen to our show ad free and you get to support us. I like us. You should, too, to join Slate.com, fight, hang up. Plus Slate.com slash hang up.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Plus, the University of Nebraska football team lost in humiliating fashion on Saturday, falling to Northwestern as a double digit favorite in Ireland after failing to recover an onside kick that they really didn’t need to. Onside kick. That can only mean one thing. It’s college football season, baby. But the fact that Nebraska is the only school to suffer a humiliating loss means that it’s only barely college football season. The real action starts this week with so many more opportunities for humiliation and yes, a couple of great games to lead by Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame, Ohio State. Joining us now is Ben Mathis-Lilley. He’s the author of the new book The Hot Seat, which, like college football itself, is out this week. And as luck would have it, we’re giving the opportunity for him to humiliate himself right now. Ben, welcome and congrats on the book. It’s really great.
Speaker 4: Thank you, guys. It’s always a pleasure to humiliate myself in such good company.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: I want to start where the book starts, which is on November 7th, 2020, the day the networks projected that Joe Biden would be our next president. He’s my president. I don’t know about you guys also that day and maybe more importantly, probably not, maybe more importantly to you. Michigan lost to Indiana in football, which led you to send a series of emails to your Michigan fan friends in which you discussed in depth who would be the next coach of the Wolverines, describing it self seriously as an act of formally moving on. As you write at the end of that first chapter, this kind of fixation conducive to neither peace of mind nor personal productivity is very common. And this book is an attempt to understand that fixation, our fixation, and maybe also to apologize to Jim Harbaugh forever. Doubt again. Is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. I think he I mean, I was talking to someone about this last night. The book was going to be everyone involved in the production of the book, expected it to be a kind of like a mournful tribute to Jim Harbaugh, his final season as Michigan head coach. And it didn’t turn out that way, which was I was great for great for me personally. And I think, you know, for the for the narrative arc of the book, I think everyone likes a, you know, a happy ending.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: So you are a deranged cult football fan. I’m a deranged college football fan. Vincent and Stefan can look at this more as kind of anthropologically. But this is a book about kind of your personal insanity, but also the nation’s I guess and this is a big question, but what do you think it is about college football that maybe in some ways that we can recognize just as general sports fans, but in some ways that are unique to kind of cultivate and inspire this insanity.
Speaker 4: So I think it’s a simple answer. Like, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this, talking to people. And I think it comes back to like a pretty simple answer, which has like it goes off in a lot of interesting directions. But it’s just that college football is the sport that is most closely tied to our identity as a, you know, as far as where we come from geographically or what in some cases what, you know what? Religion we belong to.
Speaker 4: College football really announces to you when you’re watching it like this game is taking place in Alabama, or this game is taking place at a Catholic college in Indiana. And so it’s the one that kind of like speaks to our identities in the most obvious way. More of the players who are on the field probably come from the area, from the from the state they’re playing in than than is the case in most pro games. The coaches are very often alumni of the schools that they’re coaching at, as is the case with Jim Harbaugh. So it’s the one that we’re like most tied up in. You know, our status is kind of tied up in it, most obviously as compared to to any other professional sport except, you know, I think something like maybe international soccer, football. And so it’s kind of like our equivalent of of soccer, I think.
Stefan Fatsis: And for those of us who are not insane college football fans, what’s interesting about your fan, Hood and Josh, is Louisiana State fan hood is that you guys didn’t attend those institutions. You didn’t go to Michigan, Josh didn’t go to LSU. And that speaks more to the sort of the regional tribalism in college football. And you make a strong case in the book for why that is so powerful. Why is it so powerful to you?
Speaker 4: So, you know, in some ways it’s a more original part of our identity. Josh is from Louisiana. I’m from Michigan. I moved there when I was two. So for as far as I’m concerned, that’s that’s where I was born and where I’m from. So it kind of gets to you even before the choice of where to go to college, which is one, you know, that’s something that many people, you know, they choose to go somewhere and then they become a fan of that team. But for many people, it even precedes that. And it’s even more it has to do with their family and where you’ve lived for or where your parents went to college, even as why some people it for a particular team and so it kind of gets into you that early and then the other the other side of it as they get into a little is that colleges themselves kind of cultivated this. So at Michigan there was a conscious effort in when Michigan Stadium was built, you know, way back when to get the community involved in financing it in exchange for good tickets. You know, and at Notre Dame, there was a conscious effort to kind of market itself as a as the Catholic football team.
Speaker 4: A lot of people have the reaction that you had, like what is the deal with all these people who didn’t go to Ohio State or Notre Dame or Michigan? You know, being a fan of this team and kind of living and dying with them and the answer is that that’s how those teams want it. And then so they made an effort to to kind of bring everyone in in their community in that way because they felt it would give them more support as a team and as a university in the Times at the time when some of these universities were young and still really struggling for resources and to be noticed and so forth. So it’s kind of like it’s it’s something that hooks into a very basic part of our brain, but also something that works for them as a, as a marketing ploy, which is kind of what the whole answer to the whole college football thing, that those are the two factors that are basically explain everything.
Speaker 3: Because of that like deep root and regionalism. And by the way, one of the things I loved about this book was how you explain how that changes now that migratory patterns, deindustrialization, these big forces change the complexion of recruiting classes, fandoms. It’s all fascinating. But one of the things that this creates, though, is like the true cult right out of this regionalism, this sort of tribalism comes the cult of the college football coach. That is so interesting. And like when you explain Harbaugh in those terms, he makes a little bit more sense. One thing that I was really interested in is like this idea that he has, but it corresponds to an idea that I guess the rest of the country has of the football coach as a kind of public intellectual or like sort of.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Man.
Speaker 3: Of American greatness or something like that, right? That it’s that this this is the place for a kind of renaissance man, not just someone solely focused on football. I wish I just wonder if you can talk about Harbaugh in those terms and whether some of the like comedy of him comes from that sense, which might be a little bit old fashioned or I’m still trying to figure that out, like, what’s the place for someone like that now?
Speaker 4: I think we’re all still trying to figure him out, but to the extent that I have, there’s this notion that I think probably a lot of our listeners are familiar with it of muscular Christianity, of this was a very big in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That part of being a Christian and being an American meant not just being learned and knowing and being literate and sophisticated, but also being a being physical and being tough. And sports, you know, organized sports, as we know them now, appealed to a lot of people because they thought like, okay, well, this is a great way. You know, we’ve got all these these kids going to this these these universities and spending their time on their studies. But like, we need to make sure that they’re also tough and they’re ready to fight for the United States and they’re ready to go build a country and whatnot. And so football kind of tied into that.
Speaker 4: And so you can see, you know, you could kind of trace that that idea down to Jim Harbaugh and and the way that he he believes that he has a duty as a Catholic, which we’ve heard a lot about. Because of his comments about abortion and also some some stuff that he’s done related to social justice. He believes he has a duty as a football coach, of course, to to train a very physical, you know, manly football team. He but he also believes that he has a duty as this kind of leader to instruct his players on it and to expose his players to all aspects of life.
Speaker 4: So he took them on trips to France and South Africa a few years ago. They did a tour of Michigan this year in which they visited, you know, a jail in Flint, Michigan. He has this kind of conception of himself, as I guess in my mind, I think of it as like an old fashioned schoolmaster or something, like someone who would be leading a boys school in the 1920s. And in many ways that that is how he thinks of himself, because his dad was a football coach and thought of himself this way. And and as some people tell you in the book, like Jim Harbaugh, his whole life has just been revolved around, you know, thinking his dad is basically like one of the great Americans and trying to live up to his his model.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, and I think that I think a lot of other coaches now still think of themselves that way to some extent. But the kind of secret sauce of Jim Harbaugh is just that if he believes something, he’s going to believe it at full intensity and full volume, and he’s going to do it in a way that other coaches make. Men go through the motions a little bit more. But I think yeah, I think a lot of actually I think coaches a lot of coaches actually would say that this is part of their mission, but they’re just not as kind of colorful about everything in their lives as he is. And so that’s why we tend to notice when he does this stuff.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Stefan, I know you were addressing that question to me, so I mean, it’s right. So I have generations in my family that went to LSU. And like Ben was saying, I spent way more time growing up in Louisiana surrounded by LSU football and people that loved LSU football and going to LSU football games than I did in college. But going to college is like a blip in my life compared to that. And it came you know, people say that college is like the most influential time of your life and molds you and you are bullshit when you’re like six years old going to Tiger Stadium.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: But Ben, a question that I’ve kind of had for myself that I’ve never been able to answer is why some people grow out of this fandom because there is a level of indoctrination or choose your own, perhaps less fraught word. But there are some people who grow up to be our age and have families and other interests and their fandom kind of attenuates. But for you, that hasn’t happened. Is there any kind of distinction between people in Category A and Category B that you can find or or or what not? No.
Speaker 4: Well, I would offer I would I would answer. I have kind of three answers for myself on that. One is just that and maybe this maybe this is something that speaks to you. Maybe it doesn’t. But I’m kind of an expat, right? So I grew up in Michigan, but I went to college outside of Michigan and then I’ve never lived there again. So when I go to games or when I’m watching the game and who I’m texting with or e-mailing with, it’s it’s people that I you know, people that I knew from high school or, you know, I talked to my parents about it. And and so it’s it’s a because it is so strongly connected to place and and to that state in a way that maybe is not as apparent. If you’re watching a Detroit Pistons game, say, it kind of has become the way that I like the tie that I still have to where I grew up.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: That does speak to me.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yeah. So that’s one answer for me. A second one is just, you know, Michigan football was the best kind of the best team historically that I followed when I was growing up. And so, like, there is a little bit of just like pure selfishness that that’s the one I’ve kind of kept track of the most. They haven’t always been successful in the last 15 years that I haven’t lived there, but I kind of thought they would be and you know, and so on some on some level, I was just being a bit of a bandwagon fan or a front runner or something. And when I kind of, you know it to the extent that I consciously decided, well, I’m going to follow these guys as opposed to the Detroit Tigers or whatever, you know, like that, it kind of seemed like it had the best cost benefit at the time. And then the last thing, which I think is the maybe the more mysterious part, is that there are just people who get more hooked into I go into, you know, a very superficial degree, but I go into like kind of our human psychological attraction to stories and characters.
Speaker 4: And when you asked about Jim Harbaugh, there’s a line from a there’s a New York Times book review of a of a book that’s about humans and storytelling that that really stuck with me, which is just like if you think of any country and every religion, any religion, if you ask someone to explain, you know, what’s the story of your country or, you know, what’s the story of your faith? They’re going to tell a story about one person usually or a couple of people, but that’s how people explain. Saying things to each other. And so that’s how people explain Michigan to each other is by talking about Jim Harbaugh.
Speaker 4: So I actually think it’s like a very it seems kind of silly when you when you look at everything that’s grown up around it. But it’s also a very basic urge and which is to say, I think some people just have that urge more powerfully than others, the urge to understand something or, you know. When Michigan got bad, I got more obsessed. And I think that there certainly are people that don’t react that way and they might have happier Saturdays. But yeah, so that’s the kind of the third thing is and you know, I mean, maybe it’s part of the reason we’re journalists too, is because like we find we have many people that they, you know, have a question that they can’t quite figure out. They might let it go. But I don’t I don’t do that. And so that’s kind of part of why I ended up sticking with it, I think, although, like, as I said, like there are definitely many other very fandoms, I felt very deeply that I’ve that I have kind of lost, you know, lost over the years because I, I just don’t have the time as you are, as you were alluding to.
Stefan Fatsis: What I really love about the book is that you quote people like French theorist Emile Durkheim and sociologist Erving Goffman really, really made it work for me. And it’s hilarious. And you and you do a really wonderful job of juxtaposing these sort of deeper, thoughtful analyses of of human nature and why we become fans with the very mundane, you know, message board screaming for Jim Harbaugh, his head.
Stefan Fatsis: And when it comes to Michigan specifically, I think you also do a nice job of kind of either explaining or rationalizing how cultures tend to evolve and how self-image tends to evolve in sports teams. And Michigan, self-image for the last, what, 15 years has been not good enough, can’t beat Ohio State. What is wrong with us? What’s wrong with Harbaugh? What’s wrong with the athletic department? And yet you do the best job I’ve seen of sort of of rationally deconstructing the reasons why Michigan has not been as good lately. And, you know, fandom transcends all of that. We just become obsessed and we don’t want to hear rational explanations. But in Michigan’s case, it’s it’s one of these examples of sports fan hood where the rationalization is painful, but at the same time, it also buttresses your own self-worth and your superiority.
Speaker 4: I don’t know if my conclusion is that I’m a superior person. I don’t know if I’d say that. I would say that everyone everyone wants to. I think the thing I came to was, was that everyone wants to feel superior, you know, one day out of the year. And I think it’s okay to feel that like I don’t I wouldn’t say came out of that with rationalizing the kind of more uglier extensions of like Michigan arrogance and kind of Michigan man silliness that you can see and that that I’m sure have been discussed on on this show before.
Speaker 4: I did come out of it, think like having a little bit more, let’s say, understanding of of the people who are involved. And because, you know, I I spoke to some athletes and I spoke to some coaches. And one thing it reminded me of is like just everyone knows this, but they put such a massive amount of time into their their sport and into their lives as students as well or as or as coaches.
Speaker 4: And so as a journalist, I’m generally pretty cynical when people say that they’re doing something because of an ideal when they happen to be making an enormous amount of money doing it. You know, and and I think that, you know, there is certainly a way in which player players are being exploited or, you know, are, you know, these kind of higher values are being used to justify a system. That’s not that, you know, it’s becoming less unfair. But it was was very unfair.
Speaker 4: That said, when you talk to a player who is extremely proud of having gotten a michigan degree, well, playing football, it’s hard to be cynical about that person. You know, I think it’s you know, I talk to these guys and I was thinking, well, that you know what? That’s right. That’s great. Like those these guys are proud that they got into Michigan and that they completed the coursework at Michigan at the same time as they played football.
Speaker 4: And like, yeah. So I kind of came to, to be a little bit less cynical about that and came to think like, you know, okay, I understand why they have this, you know, in some ways it expresses itself as arrogance, but in some ways they’re just people that are proud of what they’ve done. And I give them a little bit more of a pass for wanting to to get back to what you’re talking about. Those are the people who are around the Michigan program, around the athletic department saying like, yeah, we need to preserve our academic standards and and we need to still be a school that that has its players going out and doing, you know, work in the community. I know a lot of other schools do that, too. Michigan is by no means the only one that players volunteer. But I think that it made me respect that a little more because this is it’s not just something that these that these guys were saying because of their own ego, but because it’s like something that they actually did. They, they, they put in the work to be able to say that if that makes sense. And so I was a little more understanding of that. In the end.
Speaker 3: It just seems, you know, this whole thing of that pride, I can understand that just in terms of how much pressure. A place like this seems to produce around football, like you mentioned before, this analogy to the Premier League. And I think the greatest analogy there is that a certain number of teams think they should always win like and not just win like the league, like they should always make the Champions League, they should always and there’s just a couple of games, these rivalry games, where it’s like, maybe we won’t win. It’s like beat Ohio and always win every other game, you know? So I just want like and this goes to your point about front running and all these other things, but how, how is that sustainable for anybody like the fans? It seems like there’s an impossible bar for them to even think they can win. As you pointed out several times, they can win and the fans are like, Man, we should never be this close. Just like, it just seems like a misery for everybody but one or two teams a season.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that we Josh and I published a piece a few years ago called College Football is Great and no one is happy that I think that is just the permanent state of college football. And this book has a happy ending because it had happened this season. We happen to be, I would say Michigan is probably the second happiest team in the country after last season, after Georgia, which won you know, Georgia won the national championship and Michigan beat Ohio State. And yet, you’re right, probably all the other teams are like, you know, like that was that was underwhelming from, you know, like that, you know, Oregon can do better than that, you know, and that’s what everyone else is saying, you know, so totally.
Speaker 4: I think this just happens to be like this. This book has many positive conclusions about about how this all fits into our our self-worth. And is is in a noble is ultimately a noble activity and an uplifting one that those conclusions are there because Michigan beat Ohio State and I might have a different conclusion if that about about any other season. But no, I think you’re right. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier as well. That’s what keeps people coming back, you know, because they feel that and you know, over the spring and summer, the frustration dissipates and they see Michigan fans being this happy and they think, I want that and I’m going to go back to the season because I might get that at the end anyway. You know, like Josh is wrote a great piece about LSU. Was it was it LSU beating Florida? Was it LSU winning the title that that you wrote about?
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Josh LSU beating Florida?
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s just like you get one of those every ten years and it fuels it feels the hard times that are to come.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: The book is The Hot Seat. It’s out this week. There’s more in there about Michigan, but also about LSU, Florida, Atlantic, the college football landscape in general. Get it? If you’re a college football fan, get it. If you need to understand the mind of the college football fan. And Ben, you’re going to be going out and doing some events.
Speaker 4: Yes. Yes. Tuesday night in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I’ll be at Literati Bookstore with Austin Meek of the Athletic, talking about the book. And then on September 13th in Brooklyn at the DRAM Shop, I will be with Jane Coaston of the New York Times. Jane is another super fan in addition to being an accomplished journalist. So I think we’ll have a we’ll have a good time there.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Thank you, Ben. And you’re going to stick around for our bonus segment, so look forward to that.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Up next, the hype around the American teenage tennis star Coco Gauff. When?
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Of. As you may have heard on this show or elsewhere in the world. Serena Williams announced in Vogue a little while back that she is evolving away from tennis. Her last tournament, maybe unless she changes her mind, begins on Monday night with her first round singles match at the U.S. Open against 80th ranked Montenegrin Dunker coverage. And we learned over the weekend she wants to be playing doubles with her sister Venus.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: With that first round match coming later in the week, Serena and maybe Venus two are on the way out. Another American is surging, both on the court and off. 18 year old Coco Gauff, who made the final of the French Open a few months ago, is the subject of big new feature stories in the New York Times Magazine and ESPN. And she got the Vogue treatment, too, in a video documenting a day in her life. Here she is, chatting with her dad, Corey, at lunch.
Speaker 5: She was nine at the time. And it’s uncommon for people to be June seeking the. Every time the kid miss them, they clearly prefer the other girl. They want her to win over. Go, girl. And so it was just me and her. And they were walking around with the cradle. But nobody would be louder than me.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: My dad was the only person in the stands really cheering for me.
Speaker 5: And I was being loud. He was like, You’re the greatest to do it. You’re the greatest of all time. Don’t worry about it. All the ones cheer, the gives you, the ones you beaten, the ones you going to be.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Stefan In that ESPN profile by Alyssa Roenigk, Coco talks about consciously modeling herself after Serena, while her father, Cory, talks about consciously modeling himself after Richard Williams. And so there’s a lovely kind of full circle this here about her getting all this attention at this moment. But do you think it’s too much pressure on her, too much hype, or should we not worry about it and just enjoy a very winning person who seems to have a good family, a good support system, and a good sense of who she is?
Stefan Fatsis: I think it’s the latter, Josh. And I think that The New York Times Magazine story by Susan Dominus, which was the cover story, by the way, shows you why, as you well know, tennis stars have large and very tightly controlled teams to manage the player’s every need and calculate their every move. That golf is getting the Times mag treatment and a gushing ESPN feature, and the Vogue video right now is part of their strategy. Her team, her parents, her agents, her P.R. people, her business managers, they all made a calculated decision based on Goff’s personal maturation and recent performance, including the run to the French Open final. That now is the time to ramp up her profile, to make the transition publicly from the image of a teen prodigy who, as dominant puts it, could only defy expectations to a serious force in the game.
Stefan Fatsis: I was talking to our friend Louisa Thomas, and she said that golf’s people a couple of years ago were putting off requests for big profile access. Serena’s pending retirement, no doubt also played a role here, too, as you pointed out. People were going to be making the observation that golf is picking up the Williams sisters baton. The media exposure gives her some control over that narrative. Golf and her people seem to want the extra pressure. They believe that now is the time for Coco to begin living up to the promise of her teen years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I guess that was the sense I got to reading these pieces. It’s very clear. It’s a it’s a clear invitation for more scrutiny. And to the point about corporate golf seeming to pattern himself after Richard Williams. He seems to have baked that into his cultivation of his daughter as an athlete. There’s a scene in that Times magazine piece which is playing around like 15 years old or something, and he’s saying to her, you know, you take your mind to another place right now. Remember, we talked about that. You know, so this is on some level as intrinsic this this added pressure, I should say, as intrinsic to her personality, her upbringing, as is her sort of strict performance between the lines on the tennis court.
Speaker 3: But, you know, I don’t know. I still can’t help but worry. You know, she’s a kid and she talks really hard, mainly about, you know, going out with her friends and not knowing whether she was weird because she was homeschooled her whole life and all these kinds of things that just, you know, I’m always hoping that these these sort of basically child stars, these prodigies are in the end.
Speaker 3: Okay. I have a weird relationship with Coco, which is that she’s amazing. And every time I watch her, she’s having a hard time. I don’t know what that. So I feel like I’m a personal jinx to Coco and I’m then I sort of act accordingly in my watching schedule over these next couple of weeks. But I’m wishing her the best, and I think these pieces do what they are meaning to do. They make you really love her. She’s a very as Josh has a very winning personality.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: So as a media consumer, if you’re deciding where to spend your precious time with all this Coco Media, I would actually recommend the ESPN piece over The Times Magazine when it goes deeper into Coco’s life and past and history, and has some really good scenes in there describing her childhood coming up in Delray Beach and the Times magazine piece. I didn’t think it was bad, but it also, I guess, bugged me a little bit with its kind of lack of self-awareness around its headline, which is Kim Coco Gauff, the tennis prodigy, become a tennis legend.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And there’s a little bit kind of further down the piece, this kind of reflection on, as you said, Stefan her first turning pro. She could only defy expectations. And now the expectations are building. And there’s this light at the end of this paragraph that when, for example, Tennis magazine was in January, the magazine’s website asked as part of its top ten burning questions of 2022. Is it time for Coco Gauff to deliver? Well, can I read that headline again? Can Coco Gauff, the tennis prodigy, become a tennis legend? I mean, maybe this is a little bit of nit picking, but there is a way and you said this to Stefan in which does rollout is a conscious effort on Coco’s behalf by her team thinking that she is ready for this moment.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: But there’s also a clear incentive from the American media to anoint a successor to the Williams sisters. And the act of asking this question of whether she can become a legend is not a passive. Like that’s a choice and it’s a weight that’s being put on her.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And so I thought it’s kind of weird as a journalist, I guess, to acknowledge your own role in the process of like you want to portray yourself as like just sort of dispassionately asking a question, but they are part of this kind of hype building moment. And I thought a maybe a more interesting piece would have kind of wrestled, grappled with that and acknowledged that.
Stefan Fatsis: I don’t think I don’t think it’s fair to put too much on a headline. The writer doesn’t write the headlines, as you know, John. Oh, come.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: On.
Stefan Fatsis: Stephanie Improves them.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: I don’t know, like lecturing. You’re like lecturing me about the way that headlines work. Like, I’m some idiot on Twitter.
Stefan Fatsis: I don’t feel like, you know, like headlines are.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: You think the headline accurately reflects the content of the piece?
Stefan Fatsis: No, I didn’t. I mean, I thought that the piece was, you know, depicted a family that seems to be pretty well balanced. And for all the comparisons between Corey Goff and Richard Williams, Corey Goff comes off much more reasonable as a person, even when he’s talking about, you know, cheering for Coco in the face of everyone rooting against his daughter and being a kind of force in her coaching and development. I mean, there’s a self-awareness, it seems, at least as it’s portrayed to the Goff family.
Stefan Fatsis: Corey Goff made a decision in the spring to step back and hire a full time coach where as he had been doing most of the day to day stuff with her since she was little. But in terms of who these this family is, I mean, it’s very different from the Williams story and it is very simple and reductive to try to to portray her as the next Serena or the next Venus or the next Venus.
Stefan Fatsis: Serena. I mean, the golfs were sort of a middle to upper middle class family that made a very conscious decision to explore the possibility of their daughter, at least that’s portrayed in the story they tell to explore whether she would be good enough at age eight or nine to merit giving everything up to pursue this. And that’s what they did. They come off as reasonable people and there’s only so much you can control.
Stefan Fatsis: And I think it’s in their interest they perceive now to do this, roll out and be more public in this way. And they understand that sports are fickle and that there are there’s no guarantee that she will become a Williams or even become a Naomi Osaka. But they’ve made a conclusion that she’s able to handle this now, and it’s worth doing for whatever reasons, whether they think that she could become a legend or because they think it’s time to sort of solidify her branding or because they think she deserves it in this sort of sea of women’s tennis aspiring champions.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: A long and interesting answer that totally begs the question that I asked, which was, does the headline accurately reflect the content of the piece? The headline is Can Coco Gauff, the Tennis Prodigy, Become a tennis legend? Here’s the last sentence of the opening passage of the story before she can fully realize her own dreams or anyone else’s. Gauff has to do one thing she has not yet accomplished at the highest level. She has to win. That’s not, in the words of her parents. That’s the words of The New York Times magazine, of the writer of the piece that is the subject of the piece. Can she become a tennis legend? She has to win. She’s 18 years old.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I mean, and this is one of the perils of like we talk about it all the time of access journalism or whatever. I mean, because this level, even though it’s not really that much access, when you look at either of these pieces, by the way, I mean, it’s like riding around with her in a car or being told something by her and her dad. It’s not a lot of access, and it’s easy to tell that all of the pieces that we’re talking about were sort of put forward by a publicist with the framing already pretty much baked. And like the piece wouldn’t exist if you didn’t take that frame more or less. I actually don’t for some reason that like, I think is like maybe two layers deep. I don’t experience it as putting more pressure on her because the sort of pressure narrative is part of her team’s. Conception of how to put it forward in this weird way. I know that there is real pressure on her, but I don’t think it’s. Will she be the next star or she needs to win this U.S. Open?
Speaker 3: Right. Like that is a narrative. The actual issues with her, whether that exists or don’t because I don’t know her, I think probably exists separately from that. But, you know, I don’t know I think you’re you’re right seven and this is like one of the about like the sort of seeming reasonableness of Corey and candy golf. And that has always been my impression of them when I like sort of, again, watch them on TV or whatever, right? I do my sort of pop psychology. But even that like they were going to test the waters, including moving her to Florida, taking her out of school. And they give these little hints of like the grandparents, like Candy is the maternal grandparents of Coco were like, what? And they’re like, We’re doing this no matter what.
Speaker 3: And then later in the in the piece, this is still the Times piece. Although I would you know, I, I think I do share your preference for the ESPN one, but I don’t not by a lot. Anyway, it’s Coco says it’s my grandmother who told me there’s more than this. Right? I think there are like you can always detect around the edges of these, like, sort of. More or less neat family stories, everybody else in their life being like. And you’re doing what? When? You know, I just think there is a sort of level. There is a sort of like baseline bizarreness to any one of these stories. And what’s most bizarre is that at least this part of the story is not exceptional to Coco like everybody. And everybody that we’ve heard of has had a childhood that would seem totally alien to anything that any of us could hear about. So that’s I mean, that’s one of the things that I just was was reinforced for me by and.
Stefan Fatsis: There are whole there are hundreds of other wannabe Coco’s who’s who flamed out at 12 or 13 or 14 who, you know, made the exact same choices that the Goth family did.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Or who didn’t flame out. But for them, their success was being one of the hundred best tennis players in the entire world. And they’re a person you probably haven’t heard of.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Yeah, I’m I’m being a little bit, I think, inarticulate and probably exaggerating my issues with the pewds with the piece, which again, I’ll say is a fine piece. I just I don’t think it necessarily put more pressure on her. I just feel like it is part of a pressure making like industrial complex. And there should have been some kind of acknowledgement about the role that that it’s playing.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: But also, I would say that tennis is this like totally bifurcated sport in that, you know, at the U.S. Open, there’s men’s and women, men and women playing alongside each other. But in America and Taylor Fritz has talked about this a lot, like Taylor Fritz, maybe his profile is going to be raised because he’s one of the main subjects in this upcoming drive to survive like Netflix tennis show. But he’s he’s like a young, like, kind of movie star, attractive dude. He’s had a lot of success, not like Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, levels of success. He’s like, nobody knows who I am. Like, I’m not this is not a popular sport in America.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And then you have somebody like Coco Gauff because of what the Williams sisters have done and because of also that if you’re a woman playing sports, like being a tennis player is like the by far and way number one path for fame and remuneration like no other sport compares. But so Coco has this level of potential superstardom that is available to her as an American that kind of dwarfs at this moment in history at least what an American male tennis player could potentially be or become.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And so it reminds me a little bit so that I think is just interesting. And B sort of reminds me of like the ceiling that Michael Jordan created both for LeBron James and for like everyone else who is not LeBron James, just like this impossible level of achievement and success that Venus and Serena have had such that when you’re talking about whether she’s going to become a tennis legend, okay, if she wins eight Grand Slams, is she a ten? Is she a tennis legend? And so just like looking at this young woman who’s 18, who’s so smart, who’s so.
Stefan Fatsis: Likable.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Bright and bubbly and likable, such an amazing talent as a tennis player, seems so like conscious of her place in the world and what she wants to achieve. And just knowing that the like 99th percentile outcome of like success for her is not going to be anywhere close to what, say, Serena has done with winning 23 Grand Slams. And maybe I’ll eat my word someday. I don’t know. But it’s just like the reality is nobody has it. Nobody is going to do that. It’s not a comment on her. So like Stefan, that’s why this all seems so kind of crazy making to me is that like, she deserves this because of all of those things, but also it just seems like, you know, so it’s setting her up to fail if the standard is like next.
Stefan Fatsis: Serena I think that’s totally fair. Josh Obviously. And I guess the question I would have is that if you were able to get a straight answer, you know, an honest answer from from Coco herself about what she wants, what she would consider to be a great career or a successful career that would be the most interesting and worthwhile opinion of all. But these stories never tend to go there. They never tend to acknowledge that winning three Grand Slams would be an amazing career. I mean, because it would be. And so that, I think, is what’s what’s missing there.
Stefan Fatsis: And with golf, too, given her age, you know, the thing that is refreshing about her and I think that attracts us to her as a personality, is that she seems really self-aware and just the. I mean, I felt sad reading about how she views her sort of teen years and her own sort of insecurities and acknowledging the sort of weirdness of growing up this way as this closeted, you know, cloistered tennis machine who’s homeschooled. That’s just always weird to to see when you when you read about kids in these sports. And I think it’s intensified when an athlete reaches the level that Coco Gauff is at now and is on the verge of, you know, becoming this superstar.
Speaker 3: To your point, though, about like what would satisfy the huge sort of heroic karma left by Serena? It’s weird because this also depends on the dynamics of the WTA Tour right now. I mean, there has been this strange leveling, you know, somebody that looked ready to sort of step into something like that. Ash Barty retires. We’ve got all of these excellent athletes on Jabara who I love that you got a bikini who just won Wimbledon. Another favorite of mine, Sabalenka. There’s there are a lot of great people. Obviously, Naomi Osaka looms large here. But I mean, it’s an environment where, like, you know, the next person to win six majors is going to be a huge deal in a way that you might not need to be Serena to be the next global women’s tennis star just because of the sort of the parity in that field right now.
Stefan Fatsis: So isn’t it also just that the our perception of what is likely or possible with, you know, particularly women’s tennis is shifting because of Naomi Osaka stepping back and then beating her mental health issues and Ash Barty retiring at such a young age. It’s a different paradigm, as Vinson just said, like winning six could be the equivalent of being a legend.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Yeah. There are some ways in which the what Naomi Osaka and Ash Barty have done feels revolutionary. But also there’s a long history in tennis and in women’s tennis of athletes stepping away before athletes in comparable sports have. But I would also say that the Williams sisters with how they’ve served as inspirational figures but also in very specific ways bringing about equal pay, increasing prize money have raised the level of the sport in such a way that it will be. They’ve kind of both left like a ladder for people to climb up and simultaneously like take the ladder. It’s they’ve given more access and opportunity, which means competition is tougher, which means it’ll be harder for any individual to succeed at the level that they did.
Stefan Fatsis: And also easier to step away because of the riches that you’ve accumulated by a very young age, if you’re good.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Sure. And the last thing I’ll say is that as far as access goes, the way to access Coco and obviously the stuff is like highly mediated and curated, but is tik-tok. And if you look at her tiktoks, which I did for the first time over the weekend, you’ll see a very different person than you see in either of these profiles. One who is a member of her generation, who’s 18 years old, who’s participating in trends, and who’s also speaking directly and openly to people of her age about her struggles. And the thing that’s so kind of funny and interesting is that a lot of people who follow her on Tik-tok don’t know that she’s a tennis player or don’t or know that she’s a tennis player, but don’t follow tennis. And so if you want to supplement your Coco Media diet and you’re not already a follower, I would check in on her there.
Stefan Fatsis: Yeah, but that’s mentioned in the Times piece. Jocelyn, give a little credit there.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Up next, the documentary, Welcome to Wrexham about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a Welsh soccer team.
Stefan Fatsis: Two years ago, the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney joined the ranks of Americans who own European football teams. But unlike the billionaires who bought cash printing worldwide brands like Liverpool, Manchester United and AC Milan. Reynolds of Deadpool fame and McElhenney of It’s Always Sunny. In Philadelphia, fame paid $2.4 million for Wrexham AFC, a hapless club in a down and out city of less than 50,000 people in northeast Wales. McElhenney and Reynolds document their journey in Welcome to Wrexham, an 18 episode series on FX and Hulu that debuted last week. Here they are talking about buying the team, which was founded in 1864 and is said to be the third oldest professional football club in the world.
Speaker 6: So there is a real risk for us. Yeah, I mean, that’s part of the anxiety. Like watching the team lose last night, you’re thinking the investment in this club just took a hit. Yes. And and there is a version of the story where we are villains, where it doesn’t usual starts. Usually the story in my head, yeah, it doesn’t work. And then we go, What are we going to do? We have to sell it. And then we’re the bad guys. Yeah. Fuck that.
Stefan Fatsis: Fuck that. Yeah. Vinson this premise, both real life and onscreen, could go sideways in a bunch of ways. American owners aren’t generally well-received in Europe. The actors football knowledge is astoundingly limited going in, etc., etc. But there’s a symbiosis at work that I think underlies the series and more broadly, the modern relationship between fans and owners at all levels of sports. Wrexham’s citizens want someone rich to save their team. McElhenney and Reynolds want a good story to make a documentary series. The tension is whether both parties get that and more from the arrangement.
Speaker 3: I’ve walked away from the episodes that I watched so conflicted. I love the fans of Wrexham. There’s a guy who runs a pub and also has like a a sort of like outdoor burger grill who just talks about the team in this salty way with the people that come and get their burgers from him. The burgers looked really good, but they looked like there was some sort of like shrimp topping at some point or some kind of weird thing. I can’t remember. I don’t know what it was. That’s what it looked like anyway.
Stefan Fatsis: So now you want to go to Wrexham and go to a game?
Speaker 3: I do. But I did walk away feeling like these two people should not own a soccer club. Like they just didn’t. And they have this, like, lieutenant, who I’ve seen on TV before. I forget his name. Now he’s a writer on, I guess, Mythic Quest and is now just sort of their lieutenant. Like, I’m just here to represent their interests, even though he knows nothing about, like, represent them. How just be. I was just irritated English accent. He’s got an English accent and he comes in and the moment he leaves the rehearsal room gives this short, stilted speech. The moment he leaves the practice room, you just hear them this tittering laughing like, Who the hell was that? I just I’m glad to be watching the show.
Speaker 3: And, you know, there are moments in this that made me tear up. Like when the ownership sort of vote happens or stewardship vote finally happens and they throw this like impromptu fireworks party and somebody is dressed up as Deadpool. And just like I was just thinking about how stupid it is to love sports this much, but how much we need it. And, you know, in this grey place, everybody’s talking about hope. You know, I just love these people and I’m glad to be watching them. And I just don’t see it. With with Reynolds and McElhenney. So I just I don’t know, it was just.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: It’s.
Speaker 3: This is might be this might be chalked up as a loss. Another loss for America as geopolitics and reputation abroad.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: It hadn’t occurred to me until you just said all that Vinson. But this segment is kind of brings in core elements from segment one and segment two. I love that it works out that way. You’ve got the kind of tribalism and insane fandom, the passion from this long suffering fan base where this soccer club, which is old and storied and has suffered as the fortunes of the town, have suffered. That’s all so present and it’s so specific. But it’s also something that I think many of us can really relate to and understand. And it’s a core reason why we love sports.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: As for these stories like this, and hopefully they’ll end in success and happiness for the fans who do appear long suffering in ways that like, say, a San Diego Padres fan is not long suffering, like absence of titles does not necessarily equal long suffering in the same way. So we have all of that. You heard about that and segment one.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Then in segment two, you have this sort of observer effect situation, right? They are more conscious of it, I feel like, in this documentary than they were in the New York Times magazine. And the way that I described in that Coco story, there is a kind of funny moment where they’re doing the Zoom call. They try to appeal to the Wrexham supporters, Reynolds and McElhenney.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: It’s like explaining how they’ll be good stewards of the club, etc., etc. and then they kind of zoom out and are laughing about like how the supporters could see these like gigantic documentary cameras in the frame of the zoom that this was not just like a plea from two humble multi-millionaires to come in, that they’re documenting every kind of moment of this and that that obviously has an impact on the way that this thing is going to be received.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And Stefan, I think that clip that we shared in the introduction is not necessarily representative of the show. Like most of it. In the first two episodes that we saw is about the people in this Welsh town, the players, the manager, the fans. And so I guess I come out kind of where. Insidious, although I’m a little less negative on the owners, just like I’m going to watch it. Like I I’m interested. I like I’m interested in these people.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And in some ways, the kind of larger questions about the these people’s project feel not super material to me. As for me just watching those first couple episodes, I just felt like, yeah, you know, credit where it’s due. They like identified a really good story and I want to keep watching that story.
Stefan Fatsis: Yeah. And I think they deserve some credit for not centering themselves in the telling of the story. I think they had to initially because it is such a fish out of water story. I mean, McElhenney, you know, the doc in the first episode makes a big deal out of the fact that he’s a Philadelphia Eagles fan. He grew up very blue collar. There’s a scene where he goes back and visits the little house in which he grew up in South Philadelphia. And Reynolds is pretty candid that, you know, he looks like he was your typical suburban white kid playing a lot of sports and not being very good at any of them, but being a sort of a generic sports fan.
Stefan Fatsis: But more than that, being a purveyor of stories and wanting to look for a good story, I mean, it really isn’t clear which comes first here. The idea for the documentary or the idea to own a team and McElhenney is he’s attracted to like an underdog story and it feels like just kind of snowballs and into where it leads to them buying a club.
Stefan Fatsis: And what’s not clear in the film, which I read in, there’s a good GQ, long GQ piece, Tick Tock, where the writer followed them for the for the first season, where you learn that McElhenney dispatches his English writer friend from his show to look for a team and he can’t do it. So they hire a sports agency to scout for an available football team. I mean, it’s not quite as organic as it all seems, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I mean, I think once we get the sort of doofus Americans who don’t know anything about soccer, which is such an old caricature now that it seems really jarring that, wait, there’s someone in America who’s a sports fan who’s never heard of relegation and promotion. That seems really unlikely. And once we get them out of the way a little bit, it does feel like their hearts are in the right place and they do feel a kind of pressure to do right by the people of Wrexham and the team itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was sort of astounded by the sort of graphics showing the pyramid and the like, it’s like oh and then you lose and you go down and it was like it was really weird. And I mean I guess that was to sort of play up maybe tongue in cheek, the sort of ted lasso ness of it all. But I was very right. I was kind of intrigued by that.
Speaker 3: But one of the tensions that it puts forward, and I guess maybe this is just part of the tension of the dream of promotion through the ranks of the soccer as well. Is that like in order to do this, they’re obviously going to have to change the complexion of the team. They’ve hired this, you know, sort of Premier League bigwig to be their sort of true steward, not like this writer character, until they find a CEO. As soon as the sort of the season that they come in at that sort of midpoint on is over their sort of promotion. Dreams are over for that season. They’re talking about the fact that they’re going to probably have to like get new players that era. And so success here means a kind of plucking out of context.
Speaker 3: It seems to me like the charming ness of the story of these these these wonderful players. A lot of the players are great. We see this, you know, grown man reduced to tears after he’s gotten a red card and goes back into the locker room. And it’s a decisive game. It seems like the success here means that the team, it’s almost like a gentrification story or something like that. But of course, that’s what the fans want to like. The fans want them to be successful. And success in English football is increasingly a sort of global place, less semi deracinated affairs. I mean, that’s one of the things that I’m interested to see, like how how they develop it and whether they are truly self-conscious about that layer.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Yeah. And so why don’t these fans deserve what, for instance, Mets fans are buying right now with the hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen having buy the team and lo and behold, they’re having more success than they did under the well pants. And this thing can go any number of ways, like a new rich owner can make fans absolutely lose their minds. See the Glazers with Manchester United. But it does feel a little bit maybe infantilizing to say like, oh, Wrexham should, you know.
Speaker 3: Stay, stay Wrexham stay true to Wrexham, you know.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Yeah. Or that like these kind of like reg clueless owners are any different than like a thousand other rich clueless owners. I mean, they’re like they’re kind of like a different species of clueless owner. But it’s, it’s not anything that we haven’t seen before in a, in a couple of core ways. But like it, it is funny and, and which, you know, the ways in which the show is self-aware and honest like they do talk openly about, as you said, needing to get rid of the manager and the players.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And they don’t hide that and they don’t hide those players from us as viewers like this guy, Paul Rutherford, you hear a fan talking about how shared Paul Rutherford is and what a terrible player he is. Then you meet him and see what like a nice guy who is with his kids and then he gets a red card and gets cut from the team. And so like there is something kind of brutal. But also I appreciated that like they could have just never introduced us to that guy and not let us get even semi attached to him.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: On the other hand, when they talk about what an underdog story this is, yeah, it’s an underdog story of rich people buying a team and giving it more resources than the competition. Like they’re not going to move it to the extent that they succeed and move up. It’s not going to be because they’re like money balling it or something or they’re like continuing to like buy it to get different key players. They’re just going to like spend more, put in more resources and move the team up to the next tier of English football. It’s like that’s what they should do. But it’s not an underdog story.
Stefan Fatsis: Right? It’s only an underdog story in that Wrexham is, you know, in the fifth tier of English football right now because of, you know, decades of financial issues and ownership issues and and and economic issues in this town. You know, Reynolds caught a lot of shit for for saying last year that, you know, I think the quote was, we’d be lying if the dream wasn’t the Premier League, which is ludicrous. You know, this is a city of 50,000 people, but at the same.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: They were saying Leicester City was ludicrous.
Stefan Fatsis: Stefan Yeah, but at the same time they’re doing exactly what they needed to do. And spoiler alert here, and if you don’t want to know what happens after the first few episodes, the first two episodes of the show, skip ahead a little bit. But what Reynolds and McElhenney do is exactly what you said, Josh. They spend money. They’ve signed 18 players, new players since they bought the team. They brought in players from as high as the championship, which is the second tier of English soccer. A goalscorer who scored 30 goals for Wrexham last season, they almost got out of this fifth tier National League and moved up into the sort of legit fourth level of English football and they fell short by like one goal and then they added a bunch more players this past off season.
Stefan Fatsis: So right now they’re in like fourth place after five games and the, you know, the athletic I’ve read a preview of the National League that the Athletic did, which said that, look, if Wrexham doesn’t win, it’s, you know, they’re the odds on favorite because of how much they have spent. You know, they spent one, they spent £300,000 to sign a player in January. So Reynolds and McElhenney know that this is how English football operates or they’ve been educated about that now and they are making that effort.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And I think the other kind of underrated genius of this premise is that it is real life drama of a sports season, but at a level where nobody knows what the results are, even though, yeah, the games have already happened. And so there is the need, like you just said, to do a spoiler alert about.
Stefan Fatsis: A like.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Last season because who the hell knows whether Wrexham won or not? So right. Smart, smart idea for doctors.
Speaker 3: One thing this makes me think about and I think this it has to do with my sort of lifelong cluelessness about substantial fear of money is, you know, like the question is how much is a lot of money in this context? Because, you know, all the other examples that we just gave were true billion like people with, you know. Catastrophic amounts of money. And these are two move one TV star and a very successful movie star. But not I mean, unless they’re part unless one of the shrouded elements of this is that they’re part of a larger ownership group. I don’t I don’t know. But it’s like how much? Okay. Whatever amount of money that is. It’s not the same as a Steven Rogers. It’s not the same as any number of, you know, billionaire owners we can name.
Stefan Fatsis: They paid $2.4 million to get the team.
Speaker 3: How far do these guys take it? Right. Because that’s not that’s not enough to buy success in obviously in the Premier League or even in the know.
Stefan Fatsis: It’s enough Vinson to get out of the fifth tier and move to the fourth year and maybe the third tier. But after that you need real money to start spending millions on real money.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: It sounds real to me.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but there’s real tough people to, you know, to me. And then there is, you know, surreal amounts. And that’s an interest of mine in this as well. Like, is Ryan Reynolds ever going to be like, you’ve destroyed my Deadpool empire because he’s just like, this team has dug him into a hole or like that. That’s the crux I’m waiting for.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And now it is time for After Balls, sponsored by Bennett’s Fringe is endorsed by Kenny Sellers. He says it was okay.
Stefan Fatsis: Wrexham just talked about they play in the National League, which we mentioned is the fifth tier in English football. Some other teams in the National League. Scunthorpe, Yeovil Town and Aldershot Town. All of which I believe I’ve mentioned on this podcast before. Currently Wealdstone is in first place. Some other teams in the league. Woking, Solihull, Moors and the drum roll.
Stefan Fatsis: Dorking Wanderers. Dorking Wanderers. Kind of a new team. They were founded in 1999, but there was a previous iteration, the Dorking Football Club, based in Dorking, Surrey, England, that was formed in 1880 and went out of business in 2017.
Stefan Fatsis: Wiki says that the origins and meaning of the name Dorking are uncertain. Early spellings are varied and one of them is dark and egg, which I like. Unclear also whether Dorking has anything to do with dark. 1960s us. Sense of silly person presumably from earlier use as a polarization of dick penis in student slang, particularly the Midwest. Alternative etymology from dialectical Norwegian dawg. A mass hip. Heavy, dimwitted, slovenly person. I’m sure the people of Dorking are not dimwitted or slovenly.
Stefan Fatsis: Josh, what is your Dorking Wanderers?
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Those of us who grew up in the 1980s will remember the public service announcement that we’re about to hear. Given that I watched way too much TV as a kid, I estimate that I’ve seen it 4 million times for these short trips. Looked at its menu. Did you get it? Answer me. Who taught you how to do this stuff? You are right. I learned it by watching you. I’m often reminded of that ad just mostly because my cultural frame of reference is so limited. I’m reminded of very few things and this is one of them. But notwithstanding that reality, I was specifically reminded of it the other day when a video emerged of a guy at a New York Yankees game who’d fashioned his hotdog into a straw, which he then used to drink a beer. Have you seen this video?
Speaker 3: I sure have, yes.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Okay. Just making sure we’re on the same page. First of all, I must stipulate this could be a viral marketing campaign for something. Maybe there’s a new prank show that we’ll learn about when we turn on true TV for the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Your guess is as good as mine. I just want to say. Could be a plant. Let me just say that. But let’s assume for the purposes of this after ball that it is real, then. Sure. It’s disgusting, obviously. But one factor that I think is not being discussed enough here is that it’s not even normal to drink beer with a regular straw, much less with the hot dog straw. It’s like if you saw someone being driven in a chariot pulled by Chihuahuas and that chariot was also in a swimming pool. I’m getting a little off track here, though.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Let’s go back to the PSA. We’re going to play it one more time just so you have it in your locked in your brain. These are your drugs looked at. It’s not that you get. Answer me. Who taught you how to do this stuff? You are right. I learned it by watching you. Do you know where I’m going with this? Vincent Stefan.
Speaker 3: A child who also drinks beer out of a hot dog straw blaming it on his dad. A cat’s in the cradle of beer straws.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: I like that. I like.
Stefan Fatsis: That. I have no idea. Continue.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Where I’m going with this is Royals barbecue. Reeses sandwich pulled pork topped with barbecue sauce, bacon bits and Reese’s Peanut butter cups. Braves the punisher rib meat slathered in monster energy, drink infused barbecue sauce, Pirate’s Cracker Jack and Mac Dog Caramel sauce, jalapenos, cracker jack and macaroni and cheese on a hot dog.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: The idea behind all of these items. Ballpark weird ballpark foods is to get publicity. So congratulations to Aramark and all the other food vendors who came up with these monstrosities. We fell into your devious trap by just mentioning them here. And congratulations to hot beer star guy. Not for your originality, but for your deep understanding of ballpark culinary virality. You are the kid in the plaid shirt on the bed holding the drumsticks, and you, anonymous inventor of the Cracker Jack and Mac dog are the mustachioed dad holding the box of narcotics, or in this case, the box of caramel sauce, jalapenos, cracker jack and yes, macaroni and cheese. The hot dog beer straw. He learned it by watching you, that’s all. Oh, wow.
Speaker 3: That is a moralizing, after all. Today.
Stefan Fatsis: As has Aramark. Or I’m guessing that like the food menu inventor’s team at Aramark is probably frantically manufacturing hotdog beer straws right now.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Or they might be wiping it off their already pre-planned slate and thinking we got to up the ante and do something even more gross than that.
Stefan Fatsis: I don’t know just that the guy the guy in the videos probably approached them about a marketing deal or a licensing deal for the hotdog. Beer, stressed all of the.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Consternation about this, about, oh, there’s a gross thing happening relating to food at a baseball stadium. Like, where have you guys been.
Stefan Fatsis: The last decade? I think if they dip the if they dip the hotdog in chocolate sauce and then, you know, fashion it as a straw that could be marketable fits right in.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: You know, and it’s just like the lack of history, understanding of history in our society. It’s just like people think that a thing that happened to them today, it’s just never happened before. You need an awareness of where you’ve come from as a country and a people.
Speaker 3: Ain’t that the truth? But but isn’t that the problem with baseball everywhere? Nobody recognizes Mike Trout. Nobody recognizes a bad food when they see one. I mean, it’s just it’s the way everything’s going.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: That is our show for today. Our producer, Kevin Dunn, as I read this, credits with the mournful time to listen to password and subscribe or just reach out, go to Slate.com slash hang up. You can email us and hang up at Slate.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for Stefan Fatsis and Vinson Cunningham and Josh Levin Remembers Elmo Baby and thanks for listening.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Now it is time for our bonus segment for our Slate Plus members. And back with us is the award winning in the future. Author Ben Mathis-Lilley. Hot seat reminder at this week. Ben, thanks for sticking around. My pleasure. And we wanted to talk to you about the Big Ten’s new television deal, which is perhaps a first in cod football in comparison to the FCC is better than the FCC, bigger, better. And it’s, what, $7 billion over seven years?
Speaker 4: Billion dollar a year?
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Yeah. So what do you make of the deal and what it means for the conference and what it means for college sports more generally?
Speaker 4: You know, I think the first thing it means for the conference is that they are going to continue to be competitive with the FCC. I wouldn’t say that I would promise they’re going to beat the FCC in the college football playoff. But this is the kind of thing that they basically have to do if they’re going to keep pace with them on the field is have the kind of money that they need to pay coaches and to pay for private jet flights to Florida and Texas and California to recruit the best players and to know to market themselves nationally and do all the things that they need to do because there they are working from behind, as you allude to, on the field. And so I think they need it. You know, they they they need to do this if they’re going to if they’re not going to become a second tier conference. And I think that they they knew that.
Stefan Fatsis: It also positions them to expand. They’ve already added USC and UCLA, as we know. And the allure of splitting $1,000,000,000 a year and more if you bring in other markets is going to be really strong.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. Like there’s already been some some real reporting on Oregon having reached out and said kind of like we want in. And I think if Oregon comes along, it’s kind of expected that Washington would be maybe part of that, too. Another school with a lot of alumni and some some solid football history on the West Coast. And then the big fish always is Notre Dame, you know, every any another way to answer your the first question would be that like everything the Big Ten does is is in a way like a kind of a peacock feather show off for the athletic department at Notre Dame to say, hey, come on over here, because that would really, you know, cause their value to explode. And so, yes, I think that’s still something that they would love. I don’t know if Notre Dame is looking into it at the moment, but that we’ll see.
Speaker 3: Does this mean then that the sophisticated college football fan has to on some level extend that fandom to the sort of divisional or conference level that you are actively rooting for these things to happen? Or does it I mean, or does is there another vector on which it makes it sort of a bore in the way that like as an NBA fan, I’m just annoyed by how much we talk about general managers or what.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think some people react that way. There are definitely people who are at this point, which is one week out from the game starting saying like, thank God, like this is football is back. Like actual football. Like I think someone a writer who works for who writes from a blog, Michigan fan site kind of did I think his distinction was football with a lowercase football and for uppercase football and lowercase football is talking about TV deals and uppercase football is actually watching like people play football. And so I think some people are excited for uppercase football to come back. I as someone who is, as we discussed, kind of fascinated by that, the way that that the passion for uppercase football gets translated into the business and to these kind of things. I actually enjoy following it, but I certainly understand why other people kind of get sick of talking about cable television and Nielsen ratings and want to just go back to the to the actual games.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: I mean, the degree to which tribalism has infected some of our brains, like manifested for me quite hilariously. And CBS running a promo for like the Big Ten on CBS coming up and whatever year that is where they ran Big ten highlights over the like S.E.C. on CBS. The music was like, that is not right, so how dare they do that? That’s not the Big Ten song.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, actually, a lot. And this speaks to Vincent’s question. I responded to you on Slate Sports Slack and said, Hey, actually, people are pointing out that that played for some of our games, meaning the Big Ten games in the 1980s to which you took offense that I was claiming because kind of the third person plural in that situation. But. Yes, yes. So, Ted, so that I think does speak to Vince in question yet. The answer is yes, we do. We are taking this very personally.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And, you know, this is like a bigger picture question. We didn’t get to it in our first segment, but I think the kind of ultimate. Question that we’re all asking now is like, is there something fundamental to college football’s success and popularity that’s getting lost in this expansionist phase and not in like a sentimental? It was better when I was a kid sort of way.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: But in like a this is the reason people like this sport sort of way, this identification with place this identification with we are going to play Wisconsin not USC except in the Rose Bowl like this TV deal cements this new reality in place in a way that it was probably already cemented. But there’s no kind of going. Walking back from $7 billion like that speaks louder than, you know, any individual, like regional rivalry. And so, yeah, where from from where you sit right now, like, do you feel like this is a moment where something is being lost or is there something is being gained or is it more complicated?
Speaker 4: You know, I think that it’s possible that there’s a positive outcome from the perspective of playing these regional rivalries, because, like, it does seem like where it’s headed is just to basically still have the PAC 12 or the PAC ten or what have you. But it’s called the Big Ten West Division. You know, I think we are headed toward hopefully having some kind of regional scheduling. It does seem like the the people who matter at conference commissioners and athletic directors are aware that fans want to have semi regional schedules.
Speaker 4: So I would imagine that if the Big Ten does kind of just like consolidate these schools on the West Coast, that they would end up playing each other more, that they play Rutgers. I mean, that would be kind of the logical thing to do and that the same would happen, you know, in whatever version of the SCC, you know 18 team as see we come up with is going to have a kind of like you know, you know Texas Oklahoma wing and then a, you know, a Florida Alabama wing or whatever. That said, I do think that, you know, the so the Big Ten, if to get into the details of the Big Ten, still they are now doing this NFL’s style thing where there’s going to be a Fox game at noon and a I think NBC game at 330 and a and then a night game on CBS.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: And they’re really not a Big Ten fan. It’s an NBC game as a night. It’s Saturday night. Big, Big Ten Saturday night.
Speaker 4: I got I got it backwards. You’re right. Absolutely. So you’re going to see games get put at night that like like the thing about the Midwest is, no one actually wants to go to a game at night. Like, that’s fun when you’re in Florida or in Baton Rouge in October. It’s not that fun when it’s, you know, 37 degrees and it’s sleeting. So as you started to see, if you start to see in past years, you’re going to have these games where like the stands are might be kind of empty. And to this point, clearly, the the athletic director answer to like the question of like, will you sacrifice 20% of people in the stands in order to get higher TV ratings is like, yes, they will definitely do that. Like, does that change if it gets worse and worse and worse and people just are really fed up and are not buying season tickets, I don’t know, like it’s a.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Bet on climate change, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. But like, you know, this this has been going on for years with the PAC 12 championship game that they played in a literally mostly empty stadium in what, Santa Clara, because that’s what the TV deal stipulated instead of on an on a campus where there where there would actually be fans of the teams. It seems like they’re, you know, going to continue doing that. So, you know, it has to like actually affect the TV product and a TV ratings and and it tells it does. I don’t think anything is is going to change.
Stefan Fatsis: There’s an inevitability when you’re talking about $7 billion that the conversation is going to turn to actually rooting some of that, not to the coaches and their million dollar salaries and the jets to go recruit people, but to the players. Are you surprised that there hasn’t been? I mean, I don’t know when when there’s conversation on the Michigan boards, where does paying players fall? How do sort of the rabid fans feel about the inequity of touting these billion dollar a year deals and not simultaneously saying, okay, some of that has to go to players at this point, we have to change the system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, maybe Josh can can talk about it from that. You know, it’s always even more complicated in in the southern states where or in state in at schools where the fan base is maybe a little more politically conservative. But I kind of think it’s reached a tipping point with Michigan fans. There are absolutely people who will complain about it and don’t like that. You have to be considering an nil deal for your, you know, incoming freshman quarterback. People don’t like that. But I think that I don’t I don’t think that there would be an uproar if if that TV money started getting split. That’s just you know, that’s just my reflexive answer to that. You have Jim Harbaugh talking about it at Big Ten media days saying like, oh, well, you know what? The TV companies are using the name, image and likeness of the players to market it. So why shouldn’t the players get some? I think you’ve had the president of the Big Ten, Kevin Warren, you know, making those kind of like exploratory comments along those lines. So I think it’s kind of accepted, at least at Michigan as kind of a. Foregone conclusion that this is going to happen. I don’t know if that’s true everywhere.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: At LSU, it’s mostly just concern that Texas A&M is cheating or if not concerned, just like speculation, like it. There’s no discussion about what’s right and just and fair. It’s all about kind of practicalities and what it means for the fortunes of your school vis a vis another school.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Which is like, you know, the same way that a lot of political discussions go. Like there’s a certain number of people who are the activists and who care about it on one level. And then there’s people who care about it. As you know, this could be a winning issue for my my party. And then at some point, it’s just it just becomes a thing that everyone knows it’s going to happen and then it happens, you know? So I think we’ve kind of gone over that that hump. But but, you know, I’m not I’m not I’m not sure I would put a lot of money on it.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: The book, again, is the hot seat. The TV deal, again, is $1,000,000,000 a year. Ben, thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, guys. I always appreciate it. Always a.
Josh Levin, Josh Levine: Pleasure. And Slate Plus members, thank you. We’ll be back with more next week.
