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- [00:01]
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C
Well, thank you. I mean, I almost started with a spit take with that Will Ferrell intro. I mean, very appropriate for a soccer conversation to lead in with Will Ferrell, but. Yeah, thanks for having me.
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B
Yeah, he's a big soccer fan, right? Big LA Galaxy supporter. And Terry, you know, it's got good to have you back. But of course, just like teams returning to the World cup, we're going to compare your performance against your previous performances. So pressure's fucking on, dude.
- [04:09]
A
Let's do it. Let's just, let's just blow the whistle and start it.
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B
Blow the whistle. Okay. So I, I thought it might be fun to start with like a dumb who cares that you guys could respond to sort of like a, you know, I could imagine someone being uninterested in all in the World cup entirely. And they might be thinking, who cares where you're from? Someone's nationality tells you nothing about them. Who cares about soccer? It's just a game. You know, obviously it's, it's already taken over the news cycle for people, whether they like it or not. But you know, there's going to be people who are skeptical or who don't care. Victoria, how would you start to answer, you know, that kind of a skepticism?
- [04:50]
C
Oh, boy. I mean, football is life. So I mean, if you're someone who considers yourself to be worldly or at least someone who imagines expanding horizons and thinking globally like this is the world's game and we're fortunate to be co hosts of the world's attention and people who like to engage with other people around the world for fun times and vibes and so it is certainly a hard thing to avoid. But also there's so much joy and it is really, I'm not trying to be fluffy here. It is really a celebration of humanity to see all these different Peoples from different cultures and different backgrounds coming together to all do the same thing, which is appreciate the thing they love the most, which is football.
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, I was. I was thinking about this question myself, and that was one of the first things that came to mind for me, especially for kind of fellow progressives, people broadly on the left, people interested in travel, that, you know, we can understand that impulse to feel more connected to the world outside of the US And I would say for me personally, it might be actually the thing I'm enjoying as much as the athletics. I have become a. A sincere soccer fan in the last couple years for personal reasons. So since the last World Cup, I've sort of invested a lot more in the game of soccer, but I am equally enjoying a chance to engage with the international community in at least somewhat of a meaningful way. I was thinking, what is it both like and unlike? And I think about watching a foreign film, you know, so if I sit down and watch a great Swedish film or something like that, I'm like sort of a visitor in their culture for that time that I'm watching the movie. And I think World cup has less of a deep, specific cultural engagement with like, one culture. But what watching a Swedish film does not provide is any sense of participation, like ongoing moment to moment. We are actually. We're actually all watching the same thing. I mean, maybe at a film festival or something like that, you would experience that. But soccer is so collaborative, it's so interactive, it's so loud. It has all that collective effervescence. I'm sure we'll get to Emile Durkheim at some point because Terry's here. So that was one idea. Those are both ways to engage, but this one's really visceral and participatory. Sort of what I came away with.
- [07:25]
A
I'll add in here very quickly. I really appreciated the first question, because if we pan out just a little bit, you're really asking, like, why should anyone care about sports? Right. And if we bring religion into the conversation, people oftentimes have responses like, well, why should I care about sport compared to religion? Right. One's about the transcendent and the ultimate meaning of life. And then there's sport. And so we can get into some of that. But it's interesting that even in the humanities that Victoria and I work in, on campuses, we often have to do the hard work of convincing our colleagues that sport matters. And. And so oftentimes, you know, the question you're asking is like, just literally the question we. The groundwork we have to do before we can even enter the conversation. Now, Victoria and I have done a lot of this work at asu, and I think they finally got it right. Like, it's like we don't have to do that much anymore. But in the, say, the religion and sport, gender and sport, things like that, a lot of times we actually have to like, pull people in and say, no, no, no, this does matter. And for the reasons you're talking about, the globalization, the cultural knowledge, the visceral feelings that we have at these moments that we can't quite explain, but somehow we're really committed to the thing and we want more of it. And we're kind of let down when it's all over, but we're excited when it's all over. Right? There's so much there that can be brought out.
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B
It's interesting. We can go to religion right away. It's in the fucking name of the podcast. I was again, kind of searching my own psyche and personal history and I thought, yeah, I'm aware of a dismissive approach, a particular kind of dismissive approach within my own story. It's more something I remember from being raised evangelical than I currently feel. I mean, it's been a long time and a lot of work around that. Like, something like, well, this can be fun and diverting, but if anything, if I'm watching the World cup, it's just reminding me how many people in the world still need to know Jesus. And like, that is a trump card. It's psychologically a trump card. Because on that worldview, the stakes are eternal. And the stakes, of course, of any World cup are necessarily non eternal. They're finite and in fact, they're gonna be redone in four years. You know, so there's that. It's taken a lot longer. The other thing I want to add about that psychologically is it's taken so much longer to get rid of the felt sense of pressure around that than it took to get rid of the abstract beliefs that it flowed from. You know, I stopped believing that non Christians were going to hell 25 years ago or something. I mean, a long time ago. I just never really bought that. And yet that pressure that was baked into my upbringing, like, that's. That's like deep neurological priming. That's. And so I've noticed that, like, leaning in. I bet some listeners will really relate to this, that leaning into something like the World cup or the Olympics for that matter, like enjoying being exposed to different cultures while participating in something truly global. It's like I wouldn't call it a spiritual practice. Not for me. That's a little too strong. But it is flexing a kind of muscle and engaging a kind of, you know, maybe transcendent capacity that, you know, I notice when it. It's rubbing up against those old reflexes that were sort of socialized into me by being raised evangelical.
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A
Victoria, do you have anything to respond to that before I just go crazy
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B
before Terry, Before Terry runs out the. Runs out the clock playing defense? He's just going to take us to the 90th minute.
- [11:16]
C
No, that's why I was, like, handing this one off. Have at it, Terry.
- [11:22]
A
Okay, so a few things. And Dan, when you reached out to me and you. I want to talk about the World cup, my response was kind of like, I'm a basketball fan. Let me invite Victoria Jackson on, because if we're going to talk World cup, she can tell you everything about World Cup. And I'm still like a recovering spot, spurs loss right now. So, like, I'm that William James 6 soul that's trying to figure out whether this is a good thing for me or not at this moment. I. I slid it in. I slid it in. I slid it in. Yeah, yeah.
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B
Now you're playing to the audience. Okay. You're trying to get. Make sure. There you go. You got to make sure you're getting good marks on this. On this appearance. That was good.
- [11:58]
A
There you go. I'll share one story very quickly that growing up, I, I grew up in a. In a fundamentalist church that like to think of themselves as evangelical because they, they wanted to differentiate themselves from other fundamentalist churches. But they were definitely a fundamentalist church. And my first memory of, like, a sport and religion is a vacation Bible school where my brother and I, I have a twin brother, we had a, I don't know, little league baseball game. And in order for us to get to vacation Bible school, we had to come in our dirty uniforms, right? And there was actually like a, like a, A big kind of stink in the church about whether this was like, okay, could these two kids who know no better about anything come in with, like, these dirty baseball pants where they had been sliding around and then do the church thing? Right? And so to your point, this church really had this. One of two things. They had a. And I have an article about this if anybody wants to search it. They, they had a distinctive approach. That sport was something that was done outside of the religious community, and it was okay to do it outside, but don't bring it in here. What we're doing is different. Right. And so, and that's more of what this church had. There are religious communities that have a full out rejection that the eternal life stuff that you're talking about is so intense and should be so priority, you're wasting your time with sport. And so then there's a kind of an outright rejection of sports as any type of a reasonable outlet. But if we, if we look, there's actually other approaches to this, say like a Pope Francis who actually had much of, say, an integrative approach to sports, that sports was actually an outlet to the divine. And so Francis would talk, he actually had quite a bit of work where he talked about specifically soccer and how it brought the world together, it built community, it actually taught the parameters of life to kids all across the globe. And so, you know, when you're talking about the finite nature of these games. A colleague of mine, Tracy Fessenden, we had a, I had a talk with Randall Balmer and, and that was the thing she really harped on. She was like, but that's what we need is a finiteness to the things of life right now. So that when we're done, we know the rules and if someone wins or loses, it's over. Versus this continual thing that we carry, either politically or religiously. And, and I think that's, that's a wonderful way to think about why some of us are attracted to sports at this point. It starts and when it's done, it's done and we can move on, even though we might be sad or whatever, but it's over at that point, versus this long term thing of culture wars and religiosity that we've been in for the longest time?
- [14:48]
B
Yeah. Well said, Victoria. Are you feeling like if we're, if we stay on Religion island, are we kind of, are we boxing you out and trying to get a corner here or what's going on?
- [14:58]
C
No, not at all. I mean, what comes to mind for me about how we're not operating within a binary here is way in which particular performances become otherworldly and how athletes become more than athletes during performances that are all about the context in which they exist, which is not solely a sporting one. And so I'm thinking about Diego Maradona and the Hand of God. Goal. So 1986 World cup in Mexico playing in Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, 7,000ft plus, and Argentina is playing England. And the previous men's World cup is in 82 during the Falklands War. And this is an opportunity for Argentina to stick it to England. And not only do they stick it to England, God intervenes because Diego Maradona scores a goal with his hand, which of course, we cannot do in a sport called football. Americans, we make things confusing because our football, you do play with your hands, but the ref doesn't see it. And this is not the age of var. And so the goal stands. And of course it should, because that is what the outcome is supposed to be. It is ordained. And then Maradona has a second goal shortly after that. That is one of the most beautiful strikes in World cup history. That singular performance is understood to be the best World cup performance of all time by Maradona. And it isn't just because of the sporting stakes. It's because of the broader kind of historical conflict, legacy stakes, but also because it's Diego Maradona and he himself transcends and you know, the images and it's Pele before Maradona. It's place where this happens as well. You know, Argentina goes on to win in Mexico in 86. That was a quarter final they had played against England. But there's something, of course, sports are not scripted, but when we get these performances and we look back on them, you know, with kind of passage of time, it does feel like they were meant to be. Right. And I think that's where, you know, we see the spirituality inherent in sport because of the importance, the layers of importance that fans and people place upon both people who seem unhumanly at times and also the events of their performances.
- [17:53]
B
Yeah, I was. I did a little kind of casual research into, you know, the literature on this stuff, and that came up, you know, I think Maradona specifically came up as an example, but that it is like it's a semi deification of certain of these really successful athletes who are able to just meet their time place people in such a perfect way. Part of it is like modern media is different. How much would something like this have maybe taken on more of a mythical sheen in an era of oral language and oral story transmission, as opposed to not only the written word, but we had TV cameras, so we can watch it in a way we can't watch Moses or whatever. Again, I don't want to try and make some stupid equal sign between the two of them. That's also an undercooked thesis. But yeah, there's something interesting about it. Does feel like there are aspects of it that must underpin some of the foundational religious stories across the world. There are some shared aspects, but like you said, Victoria, I really liked how you said it's totally context dependent. Sports are because there's rules, there are certain teams competing. Not everybody is competing at once. It's not like the marketplace of sports ideas. It's like a game between these two and there's an outcome. And that context, maybe the way to think about that is meaning that that context gives us mental scaffolding around which to make meaning in a way that I would bet that like an evolutionary psychologist or something would say there are things about a sporting event that are a natural fit, like a key to a lock for evolved human psychology. But that's above my, my pay grade. So I'm just throwing out, I'm just dreaming out loud with you guys right now. I have no receipts.
- [20:05]
A
I think it's interesting to think about a particular, what I would call a first order experience. And so if we're thinking about sporting experience, if we're thinking about religious experience. One of the, the people that I tend to, to go to my mind is Rudolph Otto. And so he has this, this whole schema of like what does a religious experience look like? And it, it actually doesn't look like what most people would agree with today. It's actually kind of terrifying and it evokes a sense of awe that makes one bow down. But I think where Otto is, is useful, is it in the contemporary world is he really has us thinking about first order experiences versus what I would call a second order of watching the television and maybe a third order of watching a replay that slowly that thing loses its, its impact on us psychologically, emotionally. And so Victoria is going to get to be at some of these games, right? So she's going to have that like right at the moment kind of thing that most of us won't get to experience in this particular moment. But we actually, some of us will have similar type experiences if, if, if we're say at a soccer pub and it's, it's full of fans at that moment, right. And so to be there, there's something about being close to action and being close to others who are invested the same way that we are. That I think gets back to religion, but then also says that there's something just about the human experience that transcends whether it's sports, whether it's, whether it's a music festival at certain times, whether it's a religious gathering. Those things all come together in that experience. Which probably leads us back to collective effervescence. Always. We're all Durkheim in, but none of
- [22:10]
B
us want to admit it, it's Durkheim's World. We're just living in it. Victoria, I did want to ask you, you know, a stupid question, but I'd like to hear your reasons. Like why are you planning. By the time this airs, you will have already been. But at the time we're recording, you've not yet been. Why are you planning? Why have you prioritized going to matches in person to the World Cup?
- [22:36]
C
Well, there are no stupid questions. I think that's a very valid one, especially because of that, the very much publicized high cost, both the tickets and
- [22:46]
B
then everything around the tickets on your meager academic salary. Victoria, I saw you clipping coupons the other day, and I've gotta ask. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
- [22:58]
C
I mean, every World cup, there's a story about people in Argentina, like, putting a second mortgage on their homes and selling everything so that they can travel to Kacher or Russia or now this time, you know, Mexico, the US Or Canada to watch Argentina play. So, yeah, I'm just trying to participate in that, I guess. No, I think I should say I'm as excited for the experiences around the games as I am for the Games themselves. Because when we're talking about soccer and the World cup, like, the fans are participants and traveling fans and bandwagoners, whomever, soccer more so than the other big international sport festivals, which, you know, are Olympic and Paralympic games. And we've seen this. You know, if you watched Scotland fans going to the Red Sox game or the. The now beloved relationship between the University of Kansas and Algeria, because Kansas is where Algeria has their base camp. Like, there's really special things that have nothing to do with the football on the pitch. But that said, I think, um, it's going to be really fun to. To actually be in the venue watching these games, surrounded by other fans who are so excited to be at a World cup match. This is my first time going to a men's or women's World Cup. I've never been to a game, so I'm excited about that. Maybe I'll get to go to Brazil next summer for the Women's World Cup. The first time the Women's World cup will be in South America, so that will be spectacular. And Marta, I think this will be her seventh World cup if she plays, and I'm sure she will. So, anyway, I think I will have seen by the time this airs, Iran, Belgium in la, and then the Netherlands and Tunisia and Kansas City. And part of this is my Arsenal fandom. So there are Arsenal players on both
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B
Belgium and and the Netherlands, right?
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a knockout round match in Dallas. I don't know who will be playing there yet, but it could be a really spicy one so that'll be fun. I think the stuff around it as much as the game itself. So got to get to the fan fest in Casey. I think that will be just an incredible experience. Also,
- [25:29]
B
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- [26:06]
C
Of course Jason. It's in the name Sam's Club.
- [26:10]
A
Oh yeah. Come join us.
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B
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- [27:19]
B
You mentioned Iran and I think thinking about the Iranian team. There are a number of sort of global political storylines here. You know we're talking about the context and each World cup does have its own global political context. And this one is. Well, I sort of thought of, I thought of framing it this way, but you don't have to answer this question, but let me try this. What does it feel like watching the World cup and rooting for America as I. Well, I assume you mean you're wearing an American kit right now. You're wearing a jersey. You know, what's it like rooting for the U.S. men's National Team in this international moment? I'm curious how you guys are thinking about that. Let's start with you, Terry. I also have an answer, but I'll leave.
- [28:21]
A
Yeah, so, yeah, so it's obviously a super tough question at this moment. I mean, and I mean tough in the sense of like, figuring out feelings at this moment. And some of the work that I've done is trying to think about how sports build a civil religious moment where people almost, almost in a sense that what sports is doing sometimes to the US is rebuilding our patriotic fervor. Right. The Olympics do this globally. We have other sporting events that do this that all remind us of who we are and what sports we play. And, and that translates into being broadly American. It's interesting right now that it, it's almost the civil religious fervor is, is obviously core corrupted at this, this moment with the, the geopolitics surrounding this, of the questions of whether any, of any of the, that they can't, they don't
- [29:12]
B
call it a war.
- [29:13]
A
What, what do they call it? Military engagement or something? I mean, even that. Right. I know even that kind of. We could just call it, it's an absolute political mess. And so that, you know, in a sense, from like, where I'm standing, it, it does make me hesitate a bit in certain ways. Right. Where maybe I'm not as quite as proud as I would have been had circumstances politically been different. But I guess there's also a moment there as well for some mending and healing at some point that, I mean, I, I, I don't know that maybe we'll see and maybe that'll show us the, the real power of sports at, at for a situation such as this. Yeah, it's confusing in my brain at
- [29:47]
B
the moment, at least you're not financially contributing to it and therefore complicit like Victoria. So, Victoria, why don't you answer the same question?
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C
I am.
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B
You don't know me. Terry does. I'm obviously kidding.
- [30:00]
C
No, no, no, I know. Well, first of all, at, as I mentioned, Arsenal fan. So I, that that keeps me Busy. I've got 10 national teams to cheer for, none of which are national team.
- [30:11]
B
But by the way, I'm a. I'm a Leeds United fan. I've got like, I got technically four players, but only two of them are playing, so it's a lot easier.
- [30:20]
C
Yeah, but lovely.
- [30:21]
B
So, you know, we all love.
- [30:24]
A
Yeah.
- [30:24]
C
Um, but there's also former Arsenal players that I can cheer for too. So it's basically like the whole tournament. I'm just going to have to watch and cheer. Um, but that brings me to the US Men's national team because Fullerine Balugan, who in the US Opener scored a brace. He scored two goals. He would not be American citizen if President Trump had his way and we got rid of birthright citizenship. And so I want to contrast the UN's US men's national team in soccer with other US teams we've seen in the recent past on the men's side kind of performatively aligning with Trump and going to the State of the Union and things like that. That is not the US Men's national team. And what will be interesting to see as this team goes deeper into the tournament, which I do think they will, how much, you know, the American President, Donald Trump kind of tries to insert and inject himself into the success of this team because there are many members of this team that will be rejecting of that while trying to remain respectful. And it's a tricky balancing act that you have to navigate. But, you know, this soccer team is full of athletes who had multiple national teams to pick from. Because when you are moving out of the youth level of soccer and you're starting to play for the senior national team, you have one time that you get to pick who you align yourself with. And like Balogun, who is. He's the child of Nigerians who are living in England and was born in the US when they were visiting here, grew up in London and is a product of the Arsenal Academy, and he chose to play for the U.S. one thing that will likely be out and that listeners should look for is a series of columns that Jerry Brewer is writing at the Athletic. And he's a wonderful columnist. His commentary is, in my opinion, spot on, looking at sports and politics. And he is kind of really intrigued by this idea of athletes being part of this effort to reclaim patriotism, that we should not be seeding patriotism. That, I mean, like thinking about Frederick Douglass and What is the 4th of July to the slave and this kind
- [32:50]
B
of different American history.
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C
Right. That actually project here is ongoing and it is patriotic to continue to participate in the effort to make this country truly free for all. And so I think athletes are actually really great, both in the way they use their bodies, but also their voices. And using those sporting performances in that manner is something that I think we're going to see with this U.S. men's National Team,
- [33:22]
B
to the point of Trump co opting it. It's like I was trying to think of an analogy. It's like imagine if an arts magnet high school, the student body representatives that were elected by their students, they organize a battle of the bands, and then the principal tries to come in and dance on stage, while the thing that the kids did, it's like that. And actually maybe somebody who's kind of more familiar with the inner workings of all of this might argue that this is not a cogent argument in terms of maybe the actual dollars flowing and stuff. But affectively, emotionally, to me, it actually feels like a kind of resistance to Trump to embrace the multicultural cosmopolitanism of the World Cup. And maybe that's only in a kind of an airy, fluffy, personal, psychological way. That might not be an actual sort of political or financial act of resistance, but it does feel like an affective one. And I think that that kind of resistance matters and making meaning and living authentically. And I do have a genuine value of connecting across cultures. And our president has a genuine value of shutting as much of that down as possible. And he's a little whiny bitch. And I'm gonna go on living my life and enjoying it. And I don't need the principal to like my punk band. It doesn't matter what he thinks. You know, I also. So my answer to this question is I actually, I've been finding it surprisingly easy. I remember this feeling during the Bush years and the first Trump era, because I was traveling more, especially during Bush. That's when I was traveling internationally in a band. And I remember feeling embarrassed you'd apologize for things to your European hosts and things like that. And I feel like through the years, maybe I got an early example. I had an early experience of that in my 20s, where I can really sort of distinguish between I'm rooting for my home and the things I love about it, versus I'm rooting for the current public face of my home. Those are distinct America. We're coming up on 250 years officially as a nation, and Trump will have been president for eight of them. And are those eight the most disgusting mustard and vomit stain on our shirt? Yes, they are. Our global on Our globally facing soccer kit. They are and they will be. But it's eight years and I wasn't born into Trump's America, I was just born in America. So I think there's like a, I can be like, it's less like I'm rooting for the United States and it's more like I'm just like rooting for my country. And that's what everyone else is doing too, with their own particulars. And that's like a really cool seeing yourself reflected in the mirror of another nation's patriotism. And to bring religion back into this very briefly, recently evangelical canonized author C.S. lewis, that's a joke for the evangelicals, had a bit about this in one of his books. I don't remember if it was mere Christianity or maybe the four loves, because he talks about, he distinguishes four different kinds of love. And one of them, he says, is like love of country. And it's like fellow, it's like love of fellows. You know, it's like our group comes from here and we are proud of that. And Lewis thought, this is not a bad thing. It's not the same as loving God. It's not the same as like, deep, selfless love that humans are capable of, but it is like a thing worth celebrating. It's a natural thing that we experience. We can have it, we can experience it in our own different ways. And so I, I find myself thinking about that and finding a lot to celebrate along those lines. And I think I've actually been a little surprised that it's been easier than I thought it would be around some of that dissonance being a host country. And. But maybe it's just that the American people and even these municipal governments or like the University of Kansas or like some of these, like, smaller actors that are not the federal government have mostly been comporting themselves very well. And it does seem like all three countries have shown a lot of hospitality and welcome. Other than some of the travel stuff, which, again, that's at that federal level, we can put that at Trump's feet. But beyond him and his administration, I'm pretty proud of the way that Americans have been embracing all the visitors and stuff like that.
- [38:03]
A
I agree with that. And one of the, I was trying to, to bring religion back in. Obviously. One of the parallels, if you look back in the United States history, the, a lot of the founding fathers philosophically thought that the, there should be a separation between religion and the state because they thought that if the state interfered with religion, it corrupted religion because Religion was too sacred. Right? Now, that doesn't mean individuals don't bring in political ideas into their religious spaces and things like that and can, to an extent, voice those. But if we think about the parallels, I mean, one of the things we might, I'm not saying this is the case, but one of the things we might reflect on is whether we do think the pitch, baseball fields, football fields, are actually of a kind of a similar sacred quality in the sense that if the government interferes too much, it ends up corrupting that which we find sacred. And so it, it might behoove the Trump administration to keep doing what they're doing, to an extent, of staying out of it. Because, I mean, we saw what happened when he attended one Knicks game. They totally lost because of his energy. Joking.
- [39:10]
B
But wait, are you. So now, as a Spurs fan, I'm getting, I'm getting real mixed messages from you here, Terry. No, continue.
- [39:16]
A
But its presence there, like, he forced himself in that space, did all kinds of, you know, like, bad disruptions to the game itself. And so in some ways, you know, the, maybe the federal level would, would benefit from thinking about it as a sacred space that they should stay out of and let people bring their own fans and athletes, bring in the political, the political resistances and messages that Victoria is talking about, but the top down shouldn't interfere in it because then that ends up corrupting it.
- [39:44]
C
And what's interesting here, of course, is that what's understood to be the most corrupt institution in the world of sport on the planet is FIFA. And that also kind of is a nice kind of signaling and reminder as to why Donald Trump cares so much about the World cup. Because the people he admires around the world are bankrolling FIFA and benefiting from aligning themselves with FIFA. So like Vladimir Putin, I mean, Trump wants to be him. He admires him so much, he's like, thanking him for staying out of the conflict with Iran and the mou. Like, he gets a shout out and, like, what's going on there. And then, of course, the sheiks in the Middle east, he aspires to. Sheikh. And so, and these are the people who Gianni Infantino hangs out with. And it's why Trump and infantino have become BFFs. It was like Infantino had the FIFA commissioner.
- [40:50]
B
Yeah.
- [40:51]
C
The head of FIFA. Yeah. And. And so, and like Gianni Infantino, I think, really believes he is the world's most powerful peacemaker. He believes in the messaging of FIFA, that soccer, you know, brings people humanity together and ends Conflict, which is silly, but he believes it. And I mean President Trump is taking him to the Middle east for these negotiations he, he missed. He arrived late to a FIFA congress because he was traveling around with the American president negotiating an end to these conflicts. So all that is to say, like Terri, I think what you said about like the founders wanting to keep the state out of religion because it would corrupt it. That's how a lot of soccer fans view FIFA and the people who align themselves with FIFA. And right now that is Donald Trump who understands this is the greatest show on earth. It's an opportunity to make money. That, that is what this enables him and his family members and the people who associate themselves. It's a money making opportunity and it's the greatest show on earth. And so it's why we saw the kind of the, the, the showrunner. Chew this. We have a men's World cup with the club World cup last summer, which Chelsea won. And strangely President Trump is on the stage celebrating with Chelsea and won't get off the stage because he's going to celebrate as if he won too. So. And also kept the trophy. FIFA had to make a second trophy to give to Chelsea because Trump kept it. And it's in the Oval Office and there's video of him talking one of the champions medals that were passed out to the players during that victory as well. And we've just learned that FIFA has confirmed that President Trump will be presenting the World cup trophy to the winning team in New York. And I'm sure it'll be a repeat of what happens last time around, though I don't think he'll be able to get away with keeping it this time. But that is what he doesn't need to people he admires. This is what they do. Roderick Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, Vladimir Putin has one of his super bowl rings now because he didn't give it back. And Kraft asked like the people the stage promote, people traveling with him like, hey, can we get that back? They were like, nope, it's his now you can just go home and order a new one. So that's who, who our president is right now.
- [43:31]
B
I, yeah, I mean it's, it's a comedy of errors. It's a farce. I have no love for the commissioner of FIFA, of course, not for President Corleone either. But I think I'll disagree with you, Victoria, about the ability of the World cup and things like it to actually promote global cooperation and really effectively world peace. We only can approach world peace, but whatever sort of moving in that direction. I wanted to bring this up anyway. So Professor Scott Galloway, who's like a venture capitalist guy, who's now kind of a culture commentator, wrote a book about masculinity. He was just on Men in Blazers. So I'm subscribed to Men in Blazers, the kind of flagship, I don't know, football, soccer podcast in the States or whatever. And he had him on. And Scott Galloway said he's like, I think that the World cup is doing more effectively what the UN was set up to do. Now, obviously, it's not sending peacekeeping missions in times of famine and civil war and genocide. It doesn't have that ability. But in terms of, like, the sort of affective, psychological bindingness of the international community, I think I would agree that the World cup and the Olympics, that those sort of regular international sporting things, they probably do move the needle more than anything the UN would try to do psychologically, let's say, or just a country's involvement in the UN that filters through the news to its citizens. I actually think this stuff does more of that. So I think there's something to that. In my mind, it would be in spite of the current commissioner, in spite of, like, Brian Phillips had a great piece for the Ringer as the World cup was just starting. I'll put the link in the notes where he's like, here is the absolute shit show of global politics, the context for this World cup. And once the games start, we will probably forget most of it and the magic of this thing is going to take over. And I would say we're recording this June 17th, we're about a week in. And that is undeniably the state of affairs on the ground is the magic of the game has subsumed that conversation. And obviously we need to be aware of the realities. But I would say, in a good way, that's allowing people to connect to that sense of connectedness across the globe. So maybe that's. Maybe we don't actually disagree about that. But I like any chance I get to say I'd like to disagree.
- [46:09]
A
I try and take it, you know, ever the contrarian.
- [46:14]
B
No, I like to model. I like to model mature, disagree.
- [46:17]
A
I get interesting story, and then I'll respond to that. Victoria would probably know what I'm talking about. Right on the edge of campus, there's a Chipotle that's really close to our offices, and it's. You can get right off of campus. And very recently, I went and walked to Chipotle. I was sitting in there by Myself. And there were two guys across the way. It was obvious. They just kept, like, talking and looking at me, and I was like, what? What in the world? And one of them finally gets up and walks over to me, and I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, I've got a booger hanging out of my nose or something. And he was like, hey, sorry to interrupt. Are you Scott Galloway? And, like, what? I was like. I was like, oh. And he was just like, you look just. I was like, no, I don't.
- [46:59]
B
No, you don't say.
- [47:00]
A
There's the white dude with no hair. We look alike. Are you Bruce Willis? Maybe. Whatever kind of deal.
- [47:07]
B
No shade on Scott Galloway. But, Terry, your nose points straight ahead, and I don't think Scott Galloway has, you know, old emo kid plugs in his earlobes. Like. You do still have those?
- [47:18]
A
I do. I definitely have them. Yeah. Okay.
- [47:20]
B
Yeah, there they are.
- [47:21]
A
Yeah.
- [47:22]
B
So this guy did not know his. He didn't know his Scott Galloway well enough to compare with you.
- [47:27]
A
The one thing I was just gonna follow up is, like, what you were hitting on at the end is we like the games that we play, despite the intrusion of capitalism, despite the intrusion of politics, and it's almost like we just intuitively bracket out all of those things so that they give our attention to the game itself. And yes, we gripe and we will critique, and rightfully so, all of those. But when it comes down to the game, the game itself is what draws us in. Right? And it's like, despite all of those things, sport and the World cup, the matches, like, there's something beautiful about it that really captures kind of the essence of what it means to be human. And I think it's hard to ignore that.
- [48:16]
B
I want to take a little chance where I might run afoul of one or both of you. I'm willing to take that chance because I am a man of courage. Scott Galloway established he's interested in men's issues, masculinity, this kind of thing. I also am interested in that. I talk about it sometimes. It's not, like, a huge topic of the show, but it comes up. And I thought he made an interesting point around that in that conversation with the men in blazers guy, Rob, who. I don't know his last name well. And first of all, I want to say, obviously, these sports is not men's only. We've already Talked about the U.S. women's National Team, who has a much better international record than the men's team and kick all kinds of ass. But Just if we're looking at that, if we're going to look through the lens of masculinity, he said that what he thought he saw both on and off the field, and some of his examples off the field were the Norway fans doing the Viking row. He mentioned the Japanese fans, like, bringing bags to clean up litter after and like, leave the place nicer than they found it. I think he also mentioned. He might have mentioned something like the Algeria, Kansas thing, like, you know, embracing these. Oh, it was the Scottish fans in Boston and sort of the embrace. Boston embracing Scotland and that. He thought that that was one way to look at that, is these are displays of masculinity. This is a variety of types of display of masculinity. And it got me thinking. The thing I want to add there is that soccer, if we're looking through that lens of masculinity, I think soccer does stand out to me as a particular balance of sort of like raw physical power and stamina on the one hand, and grace and finesse and exactitude and almost poetry on the other hand. Whereas, like, I love American football. Like, the Niners are my. That's my biggest team. That's where I give the most energy. That is not as balanced of a masculine form of sports as soccer is. And so I just think either of those are interesting lenses. You could take sort of Scott's approach or my thing about soccer. And I just found that intriguing. And I, you know, at the risk of having two left leaning humanities professors on, let's just throw it out there and see what happens.
- [50:35]
A
Victor, you have to respond first to this one.
- [50:38]
B
Sure, yeah. That's the rule. You have to.
- [50:40]
A
Yeah.
- [50:40]
B
If Terry responds first, then he's a part of the problem.
- [50:44]
C
No, I love this generation of athletes so much and they embody what I think Scott Galloway wants to see in the world, which is like, you know, an expansion of what it means to be a man and. Yeah, and that men can be loving and that they can show that they are loving. And my goodness, do we see that in the NFL. I mean, and it isn't just in extreme moments, like, you know, when an athlete suffers like an extreme injury or has a medical event and there's all these expressions of love. It is. It is continual. And we see that in soccer across many different nations. The people who got emotional when Raul Jimenez scored in the opening game of this World cup when Mexico played South Africa, knowing his backstory and how he shouldn't have been there, and it was his teammate who saved his life. Knowing he shouldn't move him after he incurred a severe school injury playing in 2020.
- [51:49]
B
Okay, I didn't know that backstory.
- [51:51]
C
And Raul Jimenez was crying after he scored. And, like, the TV cameras up in his face, and he is. He is openly expressing that emotion that is. That is of this generation. And it's touching. And to see people around the world hearing that story, embracing Raul and knowing just what a wonderful soul he is. Like, this is not how he talked about sports in the 70s, for example. But all that is to say, like, this. This idea of soccer as. As embodying a different form of masculinity, that is not how people think about soccer outside the United States. That. That is a more kind of insular American view, because our manly sport was American football.
- [52:41]
B
And that makes sense.
- [52:42]
C
Yeah, it was soccer football. And it's why, you know, the FA in England banned women from the pitch at the high point of the women's game's popularity, because it was seen as a threat in 1921. And subsequent FAS across, you know, the UK and then Europe and then Latin America followed. Brazil took it to the furthest extreme by making it illegal for women to play soccer. And these bans weren't just kind of, you know, aesthetic, they were real. Now, women played on the margins, but it's why it was so dangerous for women to play soccer for so many years, because it was seen as aggressive in the way that a girl playing American football or a woman playing American football would be here. You know, it's only in the 1970s that these bans are lifted. Brazil law goes away only in 1979. And it's not like once those things are lifted, those places embrace women playing the game. Those beliefs linger on. It's why the U.S. women's National Team can have such success right away, because there's a vacuum and.
- [53:53]
B
Oh, shit, that makes sense. Yeah.
- [53:56]
C
Combination with Title 9, like our educational civil rights law and athletic directors being like, we have to add more women's teams. Let's add soccer. That's not threatening that.
- [54:06]
B
I was sort of imagining it was like a financial infrastructure thing or something. But of course, you're you. That has to be right. If there's. If there's a total vacuum in these other countries where. As opposed to US Men's team versus other countries that have a very robust player development, youth development infrastructure.
- [54:24]
C
And so by the time of the 2022 Men's World cup in Qatar. Actually, no, it was 2018, the last time we had a summer men's World cup in 2018, there were still 56 members of FIFA that did not have active women's teams. And so that's changed, though, you know, in the eight years since. And that is a result of, I think, people in those places, first of all, the work of the U.S. women's National Team to kind of kick down those doors and then bring everyone else along with them. Megan Rapinoe spoke really eloquently about this. When the women were knocked out of the tournament, perceived to be at a point that was too early for them, and she's like, no, this is a point of our success. This means we successful because the world has caught up, and that's what we wanted all along. That was in an interview with Frank Foer for the Athletic on the Atlantic that she had talked about that. But it's also interesting because there is more investment if we're talking about domestically clubs around the world in the women's game now, because they understand that that's where they can expand their market reach. So just even for purely capitalist reasons, it's smart to invest in women's sports. It's why Bart loves Arsenal. And, you know, the big clubs on the men's side are now, you know, investing more in their women's teams, but we aren't seeing that in the U.S. because the NFL does not have women's teams. And so I do think we're in an interesting moment in the United States where we might see more culture change around gender equity and women and society in general outside the US Than in it. The NFL is working really hard to make FLAG come to be the equivalent. But I just.
- [56:15]
B
It seems like there's a structural problem with American football that you don't have with basketball or soccer. You know, it's just like. I just don't, like. Even as a. I don't fucking. I think of myself as fairly enlightened around gender or whatever. I could be wrong. It's a little. I don't really want to see women just bashing into each other. And I know that, you know, like, women's boxing and UFC does have, like, at least a somewhat sizable viewership and fandom, but there is maybe. And, you know, it's. It's hard to know how much of it is socialized versus if any of it is innate, but there's a kind of a. Yeah, it's like there's a brutality to it that just feels like it's that kind of, you know, wide receivers are graceful and kind of. Maybe running backs occasionally, but there's not a lot of grace in the game of American football. Whereas like basketball and soccer, you know, it's this flowing kind of a thing and it just feels a bit more. I don't know, I don't know. I guess I'm. I'm sort of in real time showing that. It's even kind of hard to exactly pinpoint what feels weird about that. But it does. It seems that it's not only about American attitudes. There's something structural about the game of American football that also does not lend itself in the way that soccer and basketball and other sports do. I mean, feel free to disagree.
- [57:37]
C
Well, just really quickly. I mean, the big structural conundrum that we will never solve the problem of fixing college sports is that American football is king and it's also fully professionalized and its mission is different and its business is different. But we pretend that all sports across the athletic department are the same. And so this problem of the state of college sports will never be fixed, in my opinion. And actually this is what I do, my work on. This is all the policy work I do. If we don't spin off football or treat it differently or, you know, whatever, we're never going to an optimized system.
- [58:23]
B
Yeah, we're just kind of lying to ourselves like at the unit, you know, you guys are obviously at universities. So I'm thinking college football, but like college football for whatever, the 75 top colleges in America, you guys probably know what the number is. But for some huge proportion of like 40,000 student schools, like this giant chunk of the American college population, football is primarily a recruitment tool to get students to come get four year degrees. Like it is their most effective recruitment tool, maybe head and shoulders above anything else, you know. Yeah, they come to your college fair, you know, in your high school gymnasium. But you know what really gets people to want to go to Georgia? Fucking going to the college playoff. That's what makes people want to go to Georgia. Winning the sec, like that's really the thing, that's what sticks in our minds because it's the most visible and it is like, yeah, it is sort of. It is the American sport, the king of American sport, you know, by a significant margin. Scott Gallio was talking about that because he just bought. He is a co owner in a small Colombian kind of down league team that they bought for $20 million. And he said Tottenham or something was about to go for $9 billion or. No, no, no, Tottenham was going for a couple billion. And then like the Cleveland Browns went, I should look up the number. But he said something like, let's see what did it. Let me get this right. Yeah. $9 billion. The Cleveland Browns went for the Cleveland Browns, who don't do very well.
- [60:03]
C
So the promotion validation is baked into the price of soccer clubs. Right. Because you lose a whole lot of money if you go down. And so, for example, the owner of the Golden Knights, which sadly lost the Stanley Cup. I say sadly because we don't have a team in Arizona anymore. And the Golden Knights are my team now. The owner, Bill Foley, wanted to acquire an MLS team. MLS isn't even close to the top league in soccer in the world. Right. And it cost more to buy an MLS franchise than it would cost to buy Bournemouth, which is in the top division, the Premier League in England.
- [60:40]
B
The Premier League, yeah.
- [60:41]
C
It's because promotion and relegation is baked into the price.
- [60:44]
A
Yeah.
- [60:45]
C
So, yeah, the Brown. You know, if they finish in the bottom of the NFL, which they typically do, you know, in soccer, they'd be ejected down to a lead below. They'd have to go play in the SEC next year. But what they get instead is media rights, revenue sharing. They get the same check as every other team. They get an easier schedule the next year, and they get the number one draft pick unless they've traded it away or they'll blow it on a crappy quarterback. Right. And. And so, of course, it has a higher value because it's this, like, closed shop of billion.
- [61:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. Their investment is protected structurally. All right, well, I have you guys for three more minutes. So this is not going to come out till probably, let's say, June 25th or something like that around there. Give me three or four teams that you are interested to see what they do. I'll start by giving mine US number one. I also root for Norway because my wife and I are both Norwegian American and we've been there a few times and like to go back, I always root for Japan. I think I really got into rooting for Japan after I had been with my band. And then after the Fukushima quake, was that the Olympics or the World Cups where they. World cup where they did really well. The soccer team, I think, won it. Was it the women who won it? Something like that? There was. Around Fukushima, there was a surge of Japanese soccer and it was this timed with, like, you know, global concern about that event. But they are just like. They play so fascinatingly. They're so precise. And, yeah, I just always love watching them. Those are probably my three big ones. And then now, as a fresh Premier League fan in the last couple years. I'm curious about England just because most of my soccer watching sort of takes place in England.
- [62:42]
C
Hopefully, the conditions will be a part of the story as we go deeper into this tournament. The Europeans really like to complain about heat and humidity, and they're also always. It's like they've never seen a thunderstorm before in their lives when they happen here. And there's, like, snakes and they are venomous and all that. And it's like they're in the new world and they don't know what to make of it. So hopefully the conditions won't be part of any of the stories.
- [63:08]
B
They're on the wagon trail going west to hear them say it.
- [63:12]
C
But what is interesting is that typically when World Cups on the men's side take place in this hemisphere, teams from this hemisphere do well. I don't think that's necessarily the case in the age of optimized sports performance and sports science. I mean, it's why we have people like Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and Ochoa from Mexico and Luka Modric from Croatia playing in their sixth record, unprecedented six World Cup. On the men's side, it happens all the time on the women's because we're awesome.
- [63:47]
B
And I, I. Entropy does not apply to women's bodies the same way it does to men's.
- [63:54]
C
I think what's interesting is, as this tournament started, we saw some national teams take their time. The, the U.S. men's National Team came out guns blazing because they understood the assignment. But I think the teams that took their time understood that this was going to be a long tournament and that they didn't want to kind of exhaust themselves early on because they're going to be playing seven, eight games. And I think France really demonstrated that more than any other team. I'm really excited to see what happens when President Trump hands someone like Kylian Mbappe the World cup trophy, because this is a person who does not hide or not decide not to share his politics. So I would like to see France in that position for that reason. That said, England, Arsenal, right? We got. That's. That, that's. You have most Arsenal players. It would be really cool for it to come home in the year of America's 250th birthday. That's like tying a nice, tight bow on this thing. So I would like to see England, you know, being there at the end for that reason. It's too kind of historically perfect.
- [65:04]
B
Yeah. And we don't, we don't really have a chance to win it for the US that would be an extreme outlier.
- [65:11]
C
Yeah. Yeah. Strange things would have to happen many times, Terry.
- [65:17]
B
Teams.
- [65:18]
A
Yeah. I think for me, obviously, United States, because they got barbed wire. Right. So always thinking of us as an underdog when we're typically not that on any world stage. So that's nice. I'm really interested in kind of the Argentina storyline of repeat and messy and everything else. Right. Like, can that happen? And then currently, I have a good friend of mine who's from Turkey. Yeah. And so I've kind of jumped on the bandwagon with her, like, rooting for them because we had a lot of NBAI interactions. We were texting each other and trying to talk trash because she's in New York City. And so sort of jumped on that because I'm gonna see her in a. In a few weeks.
- [66:07]
C
Cool.
- [66:07]
A
Hopefully they'll still be playing and. And we could watch that together because she's from Turkey and her intensity is something that you just don't see on soccer, so I just like to be near it. A lot of why we root for certain teams is, you know, like, that's my fantasy footballer back, and therefore I like that team. Right. Kind of. It's. We still find our allegiances in odd ways.
- [66:33]
B
Well, okay. I've taken you a little longer than you had, so thank you both so much for being here. And thanks everybody who listened this far. Victoria and Terry, what a pleasure.
- [66:43]
C
Really good to meet you, Dan.
- [66:44]
B
Yeah, me too, Sam.