The Ringer: All Posts by Julie Kliegman2019-08-13T06:00:00-04:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/julie-kliegman/rss2019-08-13T06:00:00-04:002019-08-13T06:00:00-04:00What’s Next for the USWNT and Their Equal Pay Lawsuit?
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<p>One month after the U.S. women’s World Cup win, their legal battle over the gender pay gap is in mediation. With the domestic league posting record attendances, how close are we to a turning point for the women’s game?</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ASrV6a">Christen Press is tired of talking about the USWNT lawsuit. It’s August 2, the day before her side faces Ireland in the first match of their World Cup victory tour. Before practice at the Rose Bowl, the forward is fielding the usual questions from reporters, explaining, for the umpteenth time since March, why she and her colleagues need equal pay. As she finishes making her case, a tall reporter peeks his head out of the pack with a new question that he says is “a little off-topic”—welcome news to Press, who laughs heartily before switching gears along with him to discuss the art of detoxing after World Cup celebrations.</p>
<p id="w4RECI">More than a month after the USWNT snatched their second straight World Cup trophy in historic fashion, fatigue has set in—albeit beyond the view of the 37,040 fans who watched the team smother Ireland 3-0 the following day. That’s because, in the midst of celebration, questions decades in the making still loom: Will <em>this </em>World Cup win, their fourth, be the triumph whose ripple effects—visibly and monetarily—extend beyond a couple of years? First and foremost: Will their success in France propel forward the women’s fight to be paid equally to their male counterparts? The March lawsuit, filed against U.S. Soccer by 28 USWNT players, for wages and back pay and also for improvements ranging from better training and travel conditions to increased promotion, is currently in mediation. The development came three years after five players filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Under the 2017 collective bargaining agreement, a female player on a World Cup–winning team would earn a maximum of $260,869, while a male player could net $1,114,429, meaning that members of this year’s no. 1 female squad earned less than a quarter of what a man could’ve for the same feat, according to <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41104136-the-national-team"><em>The National Team</em></a> author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2019/jun/28/revealed-the-731003-gender-pay-gap-in-us-world-cup-bonuses">Caitlin Murray’s <em>Guardian </em>analysis</a>. </p>
<p id="LKrpce">The players’ national predicament is something they’re sorting out while playing for their home clubs; all 23 rostered players in France double as National Women’s Soccer League ambassadors. Beyond the World Cup, will the NWSL see sustained success? Will the public even <em>care</em> about women’s soccer now that it’s off the international stage until next summer’s Olympics? </p>
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<p id="AAG2Gc">We’ve been here before. “This is a revolving merry-go-round, a discussion about interest in women’s soccer,” says Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “Every four years I get excited, ‘Oh, it’s a tipping point. Oh, we’re going to lead to great things.’ And then four years from now we’re having the same conversation.”</p>
<p id="DkhyhR">It’s easy to be pessimistic. Ever since the exuberant 1999 World Cup win, we’ve heard ultimately unfulfilled promises that a certain moment or victory will change <em>everything</em> for women’s soccer: it will increase girls’ participation in youth sports, bring more media coverage, lead to a sustainable professional league, and even close the ever-persistent pay gap. But this win is different, thanks to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/10/18656696/us-womens-national-team-world-cup-lawsuit-1999-megan-rapinoe">charismatic USWNT activists</a> fighting a historic legal battle that will have ramifications well beyond their team, and even sports in general.</p>
<p id="CsYK1h">“There’s just a social conscience and confidence to this team that is unmistakable, unmissable, and incredible,” says <em>New Yorker</em> contributor Louisa Thomas. In 2018’s <em>Upon Further Review</em>, she argued in <a href="https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/mike-pesca/upon-further-review/9781478911845/">a gloomy essay</a> that Brandi Chastain’s iconic, gold-sealing penalty kick in the 1999 World Cup changed virtually nothing. But now, she allows, the time is ripe. “It’s not the right moment because they had good timing, it’s the right moment because they made the moment,” Thomas says. More than ever, people are taking notice of the USWNT on and off the pitch, be it courtesy of Megan Rapinoe’s shock of pinkish-purple hair, Alex Morgan’s tea-sipping, or <a href="https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/12/18662883/uswnt-sportsmanship-thailand-womens-world-cup-alex-morgan-megan-rapinoe">a casual 13-0 victory</a> to kick off an incredible tournament. Now that the confetti has been cleared, the women are in a strong position to capitalize on their fight for equal pay. But can they use that momentum to keep growing their sport domestically?</p>
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<cite>Photo by Naomi Baker - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>The U.S. women’s national team celebrate their 2019 World Cup victory in France.</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ib3LS2">Press is tired because generations of USWNT women are tired. The lawsuit is the latest step in advancing a battle for equal pay that extends back more than 20 years in women’s soccer, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/10/18656696/us-womens-national-team-world-cup-lawsuit-1999-megan-rapinoe">when Mia Hamm and her cohort first fought</a> to earn enough to play soccer professionally in the first place. Since then, several collective bargaining agreements have incrementally bettered their situation, without rectifying the pay gap.</p>
<p id="NDxxQ5">“I’ve always supported our players advocating for themselves. I think that that’s important,” outgoing USWNT head coach Jill Ellis said in a news conference before the team’s victory tour opener at the Rose Bowl, adding that she hopes a resolution will be reached between the players and U.S. Soccer soon. “It’s not just salaries, per se. It’s <a href="https://time.com/4140786/womens-soccer-team-turf/">playing on turf four years ago</a>, and now we haven’t played on turf in, gosh, I think in two years. It’s all those things that just make our game better, make our players better, and make our product better.”</p>
<p id="jO5A0A">USWNT’s sustained advocacy stands to benefit not only their own team, but also women’s sports more generally. “I think this is the right time, right now, to be using your platform to talk about the issues,” says Skylar Diggins-Smith, a two-time WNBA All-Star <a href="https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/money-diary-skylar-diggins-smith">who has been vocal about equal pay</a> in her own league. “I can appreciate their conversation, what they are bringing to the table and how they are trying to invoke change.”</p>
<p id="nOZssK">U.S. Soccer is pushing back on the USWNT, and hard. The federation has argued that the players forfeited their right to complain about pay by agreeing to new conditions under the 2017 CBA, which did improve women’s pay and broader circumstances. But that’s not the whole story. “We as a union collectively bargain on their behalf and cut a deal that was the best deal we could get,” says Becca Roux, the executive director of the USWNT Players Association. “Just because employees have agreed to something does not mean it stops a discriminatory pay structure.” (U.S. Soccer declined to comment for this story.)</p>
<p id="shJXoD">In a desperate attempt to tilt the math in its direction, U.S. Soccer <a href="https://twitter.com/CACSoccer/status/1155951850685755394">released contextless numbers</a> on July 29—criticized by <a href="https://twitter.com/Bachscore/status/1156219190723907585">the USMNT</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/itsmeglinehan/status/1155956481369337856?">USWNT</a> players’ associations—claiming that the women were paid more than their male counterparts from 2010 through 2018. Yes, the 2017 CBA narrows the margin between men’s and women’s pay in friendlies and tournaments, upping the women’s pay from 38 percent of the men’s to 89 percent—still not equal—according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/08/are-us-womens-soccer-players-really-earning-less-than-men/"><em>The Washington Post</em></a>. But the World Cup earnings gap, for which U.S. Soccer deflects blame to FIFA, remains vast; for example, the men’s team earns more for losing a qualifying game than the women do for winning one. Revenue generation is another common argument for paying the men’s team more, but from fiscal years 2016 to 2018, the women’s games produced more gross revenue than the men’s (revenue from sponsorships is tougher to sort out).</p>
<p id="DQzdLy">Also, the women performed better during the eight-year stretch U.S. Soccer highlighted and <em>earned</em> bonuses, while the men didn’t succeed in the World Cup, and in one case <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/5/17428184/2018-world-cup-us-soccer-inside-story-jurgen-klinsmann-sunil-gulati-bruce-arena">didn’t even qualify</a>. Had the men and women performed similarly and also played the same number of games, the men’s payout would’ve easily dwarfed the women’s. In fact, the men get bonuses just for showing up—if they were to play in and <em>lose</em> 20 games a year, <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/us-soccer-breaks-post-world-cup-silence-on-equal-pay-but-issues-persist-223139784.html">they’d earn $100,000</a>, an amount only the top female players earn. Were the men to win those games, their payout would be much higher.</p>
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<p id="PP4D43">The U.S. Soccer counterargument should give the women a better position heading into mediation, according to Rick Rossein, a CUNY School of Law professor who specializes in employment discrimination. In cases like this, mediation through a neutral third party can be complete with a compromise in as little as two weeks, Rossein says. If successful, it would prevent the case from going to a potentially long, costly trial. There’s a burden placed on U.S. Soccer not only by the USWNT’s World Cup win, but also the players’ personalities and public image. “A number of them are very savvy at being their own advocates, really presenting themselves as very responsible people. Obviously, everybody has seen their amazing athletic abilities, but beyond their athletic abilities, we see them as real human beings,” says Rossein, who has a healthy appreciation of Rapinoe. “Their high scorer and leader, she’s amazing. She has a very mediative approach herself, and yet makes it very clear what they’re trying to achieve and what they think would be justice in this situation.”</p>
<p id="Evi7Uh">Lilly Ledbetter, the namesake of the first bill Barack Obama signed into law upon becoming president in 2009, knows a thing or two about the USWNT’s plight. “No one should have to go through what those ladies are doing now,” Ledbetter says. She <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledbetter_v._Goodyear_Tire_%26_Rubber_Co.">went through it herself</a> in 2006 and didn’t earn a penny from her own lawsuit, so she now supports equal pay for women in any industry, no matter how lucrative professional sports may seem compared with her job at Goodyear. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, they’re getting what they should. Look what they got paid.’ Well, that’s not the point. If that’s a good pay standard for the men, it’s good for the women.”</p>
<p id="CP2jTC">Adding to the public pressure are a couple of bills introduced on the Hill to withhold federal funding for the 2026 men’s World Cup until the women are given “fair and equitable pay,” by Senator Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and representatives Doris Matsui (California) and Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), all Democrats. (Meanwhile in Washington, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/us-soccer-lobbyists-womens-national-team-not-underpaid-1452331">U.S. Soccer hired two lobbying firms to further its cause.</a>) Those symbolic bills certainly wouldn’t pass Congress, but make a firm statement in support of equal pay. “The U.S. women’s soccer team brought the whole world, the whole country, together,” Matsui told <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/24/bill-would-block-world-cup-funds-until-womens-team-receives-fair-pay.html">CNBC</a>. “These women demonstrate what’s best in our country, and I just really feel that they need to be recognized in the appropriate way—and they ought to be paid equally, too.”</p>
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<cite>JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Megan Rapinoe celebrates with the World Cup trophy.</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="OLpax4">Closing the equal pay gap is the most important possible outcome after this year’s World Cup, but it’s not the only domestic area for growth in women’s soccer. “We are starting to see that shift in conversation of, women’s soccer still exists beyond this one month every four years, and beyond the Olympics,” says <em>Athletic</em> USWNT and NWSL beat reporter Meg Linehan. “I think this is going to be the real test of 2019.”</p>
<p id="HZ68nH">Early returns on the post–World Cup NWSL bump are positive, and are certainly aided by an ESPN broadcast deal through the rest of the season, which ends in October, and a shiny new sponsor in Budweiser. “We will support the game and these deserving athletes every single day, not just every four years,” <a href="https://twitter.com/thegoalkeeper/status/1147850395705892866">a full-page Bud ad</a> in <em>The New York Times</em> read.</p>
<p id="7eK0Yn">In Portland on Sunday afternoon, an <a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-nwsl-womens-league/story/3919136/nwsl-record-crowd-gets-what-it-came-for-in-thorns-win">NWSL-record 25,218 fans</a> watched the Thorns squeak past Crystal Dunn and the North Carolina Courage. <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/reign/reign-fc-drops-world-cup-homecoming-match-in-front-of-club-record-attendance/">Other teams</a> are shattering their own attendance records. For a nationally televised Red Stars match against the Courage on July 21, Chicago sold 17,388 tickets, nearly 10,000 more than had been sold for a stand-alone women’s soccer match previously. Eight USWNT players featured in that game. But to sustain this kind of progress after the excitement of the World Cup fades, <a href="https://theathletic.com/1104037/2019/07/29/in-the-glow-of-a-world-cup-win-the-sponsorship-landscape-for-u-s-womens-soccer-is-more-important-than-ever/?source=dailyemail">Linehan notes</a> that the nine-team league will need both better infrastructure—anything from better facilities to stronger marketing to thriving, potentially MLS-backed expansion teams—and more investments from big-name sponsors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/sports/soccer/womens-soccer-nike-sponsors.html?action=click&amp;module=News&amp;pgtype=Homepage">like those that back U.S. Soccer</a>. One can be difficult to lock down without the other. The USWNT victory tour, which will run through October, should boost excitement around watching the world champions play, whether in international competition or with their home teams. It will also double as Ellis’s farewell tour, a celebration of her legacy, including two World Cup wins. (She was not fairly paid either, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/feb/21/jill-ellis-uswnt-salary-womens-world-cup-soccer">earning less than the men’s U-20 coach</a>. Kate Markgraf, a ’99er and <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/kate-markgraf-hired-as-the-first-general-manager-of-the-uswnt-sources-145130755.html">the newly minted first general manager of the USWNT</a>, will be tasked with finding her replacement.)</p>
<p id="znUmEq">Connected to increased awareness of NWSL is increased media coverage. Linehan, who’s been covering women’s soccer since 2012 and may be the first such full-time, paid beat reporter for a mainstream outlet, has seen a drastic change in recent years, including in France for this year’s tournament, where the U.S. had the second-largest contingent, behind the host country. “We’re starting to see actual money change hands, to actually cover women’s soccer beyond just people who love it and want it to be covered well,” she says. <a href="https://equalizersoccer.com/"><em>The Equalizer</em></a>, for which Linehan once did unpaid work, now has a subscription model setup. Outlets like <a href="https://theix.substack.com/">The IX newsletter</a>, which covers women’s soccer once a week, and <a href="https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/"><em>Burn It All Down</em></a>, a feminist sports podcast that covers soccer extensively, are also subscription-driven. What’s more, she says that interest has expanded internationally, too, citing more in-depth coverage of women’s soccer in countries like Jamaica, Brazil, and Argentina. That coverage only stands to grow, as <a href="https://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/fifa-women-s-world-cup-expansion-gives-hope-to-future-debutants">FIFA just announced an expansion of the World Cup field</a> from 24 sides to 32 for 2023.</p>
<p id="CU99uZ">Following a major sporting event on TV like the Olympics or the World Cup, girls’ participation in youth soccer typically sees an uptick to match. Whether that’ll be sustained, though, is to be determined. Luckily for fans, they can take actionable steps to support the sport’s continued development. “I would challenge readers and fans of women’s soccer with all the excitement and all the interest and engagement they had around the World Cup, if they could figure out even one way to keep engaged, to sustain their interests, to support the team, to support a league, to support the sport, whatever that looks like to them,” LaVoi says. “If those millions of fans did that, I think that helps push the needle.”</p>
<p id="43puXu">If the lawsuit is settled through mediation, the nature of the process means that the USWNT won’t get everything they’re asking for, but they do stand to see their earnings rise to an extent and their other concerns addressed. If and when that happens, the U.S. will be that much closer to signaling to the rest of the soccer world that women are just as deserving of the respect heaped upon men. “If we can achieve pay equity for them, it will not only improve the current situation but it will inspire future generations of young girls to become leaders,” tennis great and staunch equal pay advocate Billie Jean King says in a statement to <em>The Ringer</em>. </p>
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<cite>Photo by Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Fans at the USWNT championship parade in New York City</figcaption>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="pHumyA">It’s around 7:30 a.m. on July 10, weeks before the victory tour kicks off. Manhattan’s Battery Park is quiet. Two hours before the World Cup victory parade begins, one woman in a red-and-white-striped shirt walks into a nearby Starbucks with a sign in tow. On it, Rosie the Riveter holds a soccer ball, and her speech bubble reads, “We Did It.”</p>
<p id="w7hznq">The parade that follows is fittingly triumphant. Mixed in with the ticker tape raining down on supporters are actual pages of the USWNT lawsuit. Backup goalkeeper and team documentarian Ashlyn Harris says, “Pay us, bitch,” while teammate Allie Long looks straight into Harris’s phone and <a href="https://twitter.com/linzsports/status/1148977018899509248">chews up a page of the lawsuit</a>.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ZyuqyQ">There’s still a whole lot of “it” left to be done.</p>
<p id="rlXKad">Ringer<em> staff writer </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/authors/haley-oshaughnessy"><em>Haley O’Shaughnessy</em></a><em> contributed reporting.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/8/13/20802004/uswnt-equal-pay-lawsuit-nwsl-us-soccer-megan-rapinoeJulie Kliegman2019-06-10T06:10:00-04:002019-06-10T06:10:00-04:00Nothing and Everything Has Changed for the USWNT
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Twenty years after Brandi Chastain and the ’99 squad lifted the World Cup trophy, the women’s team has grown more famous and successful than their male counterparts—yet their battle for equal pay continues</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Azt3XF">The story never gets old. In the 1999 World Cup final, Brandi Chastain lined up the ball at the Rose Bowl for the decisive penalty kick in a tense shoot-out against China after receiving a peculiar instruction from U.S. women’s national team head coach Tony DiCicco: use your weak foot. With her left boot, Chastain blasted the ball to the top-right corner of the net, well beyond the reach of diving Chinese keeper Gao Hong, sealing the win for the USWNT in a watershed moment not only for the team, but also for women’s sports in the United States.</p>
<p id="Cs0Z2n">In the more immediate aftermath, Chastain tore off her shirt and fell to her knees in her black Nike sports bra before her teammates mobbed her, as Pasadena’s cheers grew deafening.</p>
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<figcaption>Brandi Chastain celebrates her winning penalty kick in the 1999 World Cup.</figcaption>
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<p id="SNcO6K">It’s a thousand-word image that radiates jubilance: hers, her team’s, her country’s, her sport’s. But it’s also an image we likely never would have sensationalized were Chastain not a woman, for whom taking off a shirt is a radical act. Days after the match, <em>The Washington Post</em> ran a story cheekily headlined, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/soccer/longterm/worldcup99/articles/sportsbra14.htm">Chastain Lifts Sports Apparel Market</a>,” in which Chastain denied that she choreographed the moment to showcase her bra on Nike’s behalf. The article continued:</p>
<blockquote><p id="OCiDtI">But whether spontaneous ebullience or planned product placement, the star’s move has exposed, in addition to her rippling abs, a whole set of issues related to female athletes and body image and earning power. And it has brought instant attention to a piece of clothing that is humble and practical – not a traditional bra of shine and lace and cleavage, but a sturdy compression garment. The sports bra is the cloth symbol of Title IX’s success.</p></blockquote>
<p id="bJpnNF">That’s a lot of significance resting on one woman’s chest. At the time, the <em>Post</em> noted, only about a dozen women athletes even had “significant” endorsement contracts (ranging from a mere $75,000 to $350,000), which partially explains the to-do over a single garment.</p>
<p id="2pCDUJ">Twenty years later, so much and so little has changed. There are many more than 12 considerably famous female athletes, many of whom play for the USWNT. And yet, for all the symbolic progress and abstract fame, the gender inequality issues that plagued the ’99 squad persist. On Tuesday, they’ll begin the defense of their 2015 World Cup title against Thailand in France, seeking a record fourth trophy. But just three months ago, the U.S. women’s soccer players found themselves in a familiar position off the pitch: fighting. All eyes were on them because of their pay, not their play. On International Women’s Day, 28 players signed onto a lawsuit against their governing body, the U.S. Soccer Federation, for institutionalized gender discrimination. They’re asking to be paid equally to their male counterparts, a longtime point of contention.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="G3S4rI"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The French Connection: Why Lindsey Horan’s Past Represents the USWNT’s Future","url":"https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/7/18651308/womens-world-cup-uswnt-lindsay-horan-psg-france-portland-thorns"},{"title":"The USWNT Is No Longer in a League of Its Own at the World Cup","url":"https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/6/18654693/fifa-womens-world-cup-what-to-watch"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="6RdKZF">“It’s 2019. Why are we talking about this? It should be equality,” Chastain tells <em>The Ringer</em>. “It’s such a foregone conclusion that yes, men and women doing the same job should be paid the same amount.”</p>
<p id="PU7bZW">The USWNT itself hasn’t necessarily changed; the squad has always featured players who are hard-working, outspoken, and aggressively fun-loving. Rather, it’s that there’s more—and more thoughtful—commentary and coverage to consume about the team’s triumphs and tribulations both on and off the pitch. In 1999, there was no <a href="http://www.espn.com/espnw/">espnW site</a>; no <a href="https://theathletic.com/author/megan-linehan/">beat writer</a> assigned to cover the USWNT and women’s pro soccer. There were thousands and thousands of fans in the U.S. with few mainstream avenues to regularly access substantive information about the squad.</p>
<p id="TUIdrO">What’s changed is how the country sees the USWNT. People finally not only know they exist and can name individual players, but also see a clearer picture of each individual woman’s soccer chops, activist work, and personality quirks. So the USWNT is more famous than ever—but that doesn’t mean they’re now actually getting paid anything near what they’re worth.</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="s4HbZX">The players should already have an airtight case for equal pay without this résumé, but they’re the winningest team in the sport and are more successful on bigger stages than their male counterparts, who <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/5/17428184/2018-world-cup-us-soccer-inside-story-jurgen-klinsmann-sunil-gulati-bruce-arena">missed last year’s World Cup entirely</a>. And “success” isn’t just defined by the women’s record three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals: In 2016, <a href="http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/26189867/uswnt-suing-us-soccer-discrimination">an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint noted</a>, the women brought in nearly $20 million more in revenue than the men the previous year but earned a quarter of their pay. Also, according to the latest lawsuit, were a woman to play in and win 20 national team games in a year, she’d net $99,000, 38 percent of the $263,320 a man would earn in bonuses for the same feat. And, as European club salaries for women continue to rise, as Andrew Helms <a href="https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/7/18651308/womens-world-cup-uswnt-lindsay-horan-psg-france-portland-thorns">pointed out for <em>The Ringer</em></a>, elite U.S. talent will essentially be forced to remain in the NWSL and potentially earn lower wages to maintain the right to play for USWNT, where they earn a fraction of their value.</p>
<p id="23bzMa"> Other issues on the table in the lawsuit include equal playing and travel conditions, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/06/the-sad-gender-economics-of-the-womens-world-cup/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bef7ce30b0f5">promotion</a>, and development. For example, women often play on artificial turf, which is considered less safe, while the men do not; women say the men get chartered flights more often, while women fly commercial. In May, U.S. Soccer denied discrimination. The USWNT players <a href="https://twitter.com/itsmeglinehan/status/1125750820732047360">responded simply</a> to U.S. Soccer’s denial: “We look forward to a trial next year after the World Cup.” (U.S. Soccer did not respond to a <em>Ringer</em> request for comment.) </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="AFRFNu"><q>“It’s 2019. Why are we talking about this? It should be equality.” —Brandi Chastain</q></aside></div>
<p id="zxxfMX">“I really hope U.S. Soccer comes to the table with them and is honest and open and legitimately has talks, not just ‘Well, let’s placate them until after the World Cup and then forget about it,’” says Briana Scurry, the decorated U.S. goalkeeper who guarded the net in ’99. It’d be about time to come to the table: The women’s labor rights issues are far from new. This iteration of their public fight dates back to 2016, when five players—then-keeper Hope Solo, an outspoken activist, plus four other starters, Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, and Becky Sauerbrunn—filed the EEOC complaint. But the overarching inequality dates back as far as the 1985 formation of the team itself. In 1988, in the first FIFA women’s soccer tournament, the U.S. wore the men’s hand-me-down kits. Due to a dispute over low pay in a new contract they were offered for the following year, nine prominent players, including Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Scurry, boycotted training <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-12-06-sp-10918-story.html">before the 1996 Olympics</a>. Then, <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/for-briana-scurry-labor-fights-are-the-most-indelible-part-of-1999-womens-world-cup-legacy-c45e08069b1e/">in the aftermath of their unforgettable ’99 World Cup win</a>, all 20 members of the winning squad boycotted the January 2000 Australia Cup after being offered just $6,300 per player and no per-game bonuses for a couple of months of friendlies. That’s all to say nothing of the ongoing, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/soccer-moms-womens-world-cup/396893/">arduous battle for maternity leave and child care</a>. </p>
<p id="eacKDN">On top of all that, players in the ’90s sometimes had to alert the public to their very existence—and this was before social media allowed them to broadcast themselves and their concerns online. “We would show up to the city about four days, five days before [a match],” says Mia Hamm, a two-time FIFA World Player of the Year who ranks third on the USWNT all-time list for caps and second in goals scored. “Pretty much the marketing that was put into place was with local clubs. We would go on radio and television and tell people we were playing a game in four or five days. People would be like, ‘We didn’t even know you guys were coming.’”</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iksyMeYkyxHXZHd8yoC1kffzAWE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16325743/52734252.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>USWNT players embrace superstar Mia Hamm after the 1999 World Cup win.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="Ifdmnj">In an effort to raise awareness of the team’s brand, the late DiCicco and longtime former USWNT mental skills coach Colleen Hacker fostered an environment that prioritized activism, allowing players to decide how they wanted to juggle their responsibilities. So Chastain’s appearance on <em>Letterman</em> or Hamm’s attending the dedication of a building in her name on Nike’s campus had had the same goal: up media coverage of women’s soccer, draw people to games, and secure treatment equal to that of male soccer players. (The men were, Foudy says, totally supportive of the women’s fight.)</p>
<p id="GgN0km">With limited resources but much support from their coaches, the ’99ers fought hard for the support they knew they deserved—and still do deserve. “Where now, one tweet can get retweeted tens of thousands of times and accomplish at the speed of light, these guys at that moment did it one appearance at a time, and they did it over and over,” Hacker says. “<em>They</em> were the retweet.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="USaszQ">There’s an old, grating dichotomy in the sport, and most sports: There’s soccer, and then there’s <em>women’s</em> soccer. This applies to everything from club football to the international game, and it also applies to what happens off the pitch. Men, it seems, are awarded the freedom to be who they want to be, to stand for something or for nothing at all. Men have personalities; women have platforms.</p>
<p id="1JIPZI">Reading Gemma Clarke’s recently published <em>SoccerWomen</em>, which profiles famous soccer players from the 1890s through today, it’s easy to see a clear transition in the slant of the bios: Naturally, a host of ’99ers have chapters, which zero in on their advocacy efforts. But later on, increasingly, players are granted personality-driven writeups, with notes on their practice antics and social media presences. “I just think with social media today you have much more access,” says Julie “Loudy” Foudy, self-appointed goofball and prankster of the ’99 team. “Even if you’re not necessarily watching games, you’re following that athlete, you can find out more about who she is and what she stands for.”</p>
<p id="YnclZR">We’re increasingly seeing the players for who they’ve always been. The ’99 World Cup–winning, Hamm-starring team eventually gave way to a bridge generation of sorts, featuring star forward Abby Wambach and then names like Rapinoe and Ali Krieger, and now the younger cohort, who are well-known off the pitch too. The current stars, just like the past ones, are distinct, fun, and engaging—everyone from players like <a href="http://www.espn.com/soccer/fifa-womens-world-cup/story/3858221/get-readyworld-here-comes-mal-pugh">Mallory Pugh</a> and <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2721506-from-last-chance-to-the-american-messi-the-rise-of-rose-lavelle">Rose Lavelle</a> up through the older guard, led by Rapinoe, the veteran fireball winger with 44 international goals who was instrumental in the 2015 World Cup win. “I think they’re fun and goofy,” Clarke says. “I think that’s one of the good things about social media is they can connect with fans and build their presence and build icon status that way.” </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="QP0k7J"><q>It’s tough to focus on crafting celebrity image when you’re caught up in trying to show people that your team even exists.</q></aside></div>
<p id="mZ5jpC">The old guard of the current USWNT has set a strong example for the younger generations, and no one more than Rapinoe, 33. I asked four current and former players about public image, and all four—including Hamm and Foudy—mention her. There’s a corn maze of her face. Her image plasters the largest of several World Cup–hyping billboards clustered on Broadway in midtown Manhattan. She graces a Nike commercial, a <em>Sports Illustrated</em> swimsuit issue, and a “Body Issue” featuring her and her famous girlfriend, WNBA great Sue Bird. She’s also helped spearhead the USWNT equal pay battle since 2016. “I feel like I’m a walking protest,” Rapinoe recently told <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/megan-rapinoe-is-a-walking-protest-162416461.html">Yahoo Sports</a>, which called her “the most courageous, open-minded social justice warrior American soccer has ever known.” It’s activism coupled with playfulness to boost her platform.</p>
<p id="NlZfkF">The shift toward more visible athlete activism ties into a broader cultural moment. “Athlete activism is sort of taking more of a front stage,” says Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “We have Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, and you see athlete activism sort of front and center because of Colin Kaepernick. It’s now becoming a little bit easier for athletes to be activists.” Paradoxically, although Kaepernick was forced to sacrifice his own career for his cause, activism has been normalized enough that it can often comfortably exist alongside other key characteristics of an athlete’s brand. Players like Rapinoe, the first white athlete to kneel in solidarity with Kaepernick, are encouraged to stand for something—when they’re not being scolded to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/1/30/16046088/sportswriters-media-donald-trump-politics-a8b332bc48cf">“stick to sports,”</a> at least—and it’s now easier than ever to stand for something without that defining their identity in the public imagination.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="ksvrN0"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="CxF8jT">Leaning into celebrity is a premeditated choice on Krieger’s part. “Football doesn’t define me,” says the 34-year-old right back who just <a href="https://www.teamusa.org/News/2019/May/17/Carli-Lloyd-Scores-Twice-Ali-Krieger-Reaches-100th-Cap-In-US-Soccer-Teams-Shutout-Of-New-Zealand">notched her 100th cap</a>. Krieger’s engagement to teammate Ashlyn Harris this spring was reported by the likes of <em>People</em>, <em>New York</em> magazine, and more. “I have an excellent life outside of soccer and I have other things that I want to do with my life. I also understand that I have a platform to really help change the way people think about football.” It’s a level of responsibility she now considers ordinary.</p>
<p id="dHrpmL">Pugh, a vibrant forward likely to provide energy off the bench in France, has her own <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/us-soccers-mallory-pugh-on-age-confidence-and-staying-in-the-game"><em>Teen Vogue</em> profile</a> at 21, with rumors of a book on the way. The youngest player to debut for USWNT since Heather O’Reilly in 2002, she’s known by her teammates for <a href="https://twitter.com/USWNT/status/726104748584108032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E726104748584108032&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ussoccer.com%2Fstories%2F2017%2F04%2F27%2F21%2F46%2F20170427-feat-wnt-5-things-about-mallory-pugh">singing loudly and often</a>. She and her friends on the team “speak in Vines,” she says. Lavelle, a 24-year-old midfielder <a href="https://theathletic.com/1007336/2019/06/04/watching-rose-bloom-friends-family-recount-uswnt-star-lavelles-rise/?source=dailyemail">entering her first World Cup</a>, brings the same lightheartedness to her online brand—and even <a href="https://www.instagram.com/wilmajeanwrinkles/?hl=en">that of her bulldog, Wilma Jean Wrinkles</a>. It’s a far cry in appearance from the ’99ers, who had their fun all the same when Pugh was an infant, but never with so much public attention or approval. It’s tough to focus on crafting celebrity image when you’re caught up in trying to show people that your team even exists.</p>
<div> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Australia v United States" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ESoNsB0ZH03VVkMKidO0YRhA3oo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16325772/1140525321.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Mallory Pugh</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="fQhcLn">The ’99ers were neither the first nor the last among female athletes in the fight for recognition as legitimate athletes owed fair pay. See: <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/the-wnbas-players-fight-for-their-future-687e232c7863/">WNBA players</a>, along with legends like Billie Jean King, who herself advised the soccer players. In turn, the ’99ers have personally supported U.S. women’s hockey in <a href="https://www.theringer.com/olympics/2018/2/20/17031044/united-states-women-hockey-winter-olympics-sport-future">their own equal pay fight</a>. None of those athletes are household names on the level of Hamm or Rapinoe—but maybe one day they too will be allotted freedom to be themselves and still be treated fairly and taken seriously on and off the ice.</p>
<p id="oVjpKK">Even if USWNT does complete their quest for equal pay, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/football/norway-football-equal-pay-agreement/index.html">as their Norwegian counterparts have</a>, their causes for activism won’t just disappear (<a href="https://theathletic.com/975890/2019/05/13/">just as their Norwegian counterparts’ haven’t</a>). Many players still push for greater access to the sport for kids of all races and socioeconomic classes, among other things. Despite this constant, aggressive push in women’s soccer, media coverage of women’s sports either dropped or, at best, held steady in some outlets from 1999 to 2014, according to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2167479515588761">a 2015 study</a> in <em>Communication & Sport</em>. As much progress as ’99ers made off the pitch, the struggle for equal rights was only just beginning.</p>
<p id="w5WPTA">On the club level, the NWSL—<a href="https://30for30podcasts.com/episodes/back-pass/">the third such domestic league since ’99</a>—is still rife with issues; Sky Blue FC famously <a href="https://deadspin.com/the-nwsls-sky-blue-fc-is-falling-apart-on-the-field-an-1828043155">doesn’t even have showers</a> in their locker rooms, at least as of last season. And although promotion and branding beyond the players’ own efforts have come a long way since ’99, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. “Ad time, connecting with the community, getting players to call into radio stations beyond TV, researching what’s the best outside the players putting on their Facebook, Twitter account,” says Hamm, rattling off opportunities she wished the team’s governing body supplied more consistently. “You have to invest the time and the resources to build the product, to build the excitement.” But their concerns coexist in the public imagination alongside <em>Teen Vogue</em>–worthy moments and, oh yeah, an unrivaled on-field track record.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="kcGpTa">“These women get to wake up knowing that women’s soccer exists,” Chastain says, reflecting on the new generation. “Their fight is now a next-level fight because ours was just, ‘Can we build the platform? We’re gonna put the seed in, we’re gonna pour the water.’ And now all of a sudden you see the fruit come out from that lid.” You can, indeed, and it’s more colorful than ever before—hopefully the money follows.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/soccer/2019/6/10/18656696/us-womens-national-team-world-cup-lawsuit-1999-megan-rapinoeJulie Kliegman2019-01-16T08:46:36-05:002019-01-16T08:46:36-05:00Marc Summers and the Never-ending Obstacle Course
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<img alt="Marc Summers against a slime-splattered checkered background" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xL5BA6gdRy75SAFn77E59-4fWP8=/400x0:2800x1800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62853955/marc_summers_portrait.0.jpg" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="http://mariozucca.com/" target="_blank">Mario Zucca</a></figcaption>
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<p>A beacon of nostalgia, the host of the euphoric late-’80s kids game show ‘Double Dare’ is back with Nickelodeon for a 2019 reboot—but the intervening years haven’t been as easy as his famously sunny demeanor would suggest</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="HZkays">“And then over here is the nose,” Marc Summers says, introducing the oversize orifice for approximately the 1,037th time since <em>Double Dare</em> debuted on Nickelodeon in 1986. He gestures to a handful of 20-something men on stage clutching beers, as he drapes his arm over one nostril. A fan in a robin’s-egg blue <em>Rocko’s Modern Life</em> T-shirt takes it upon himself to pick the nose, which is not yet oozing with lime-green slime.</p>
<p id="M9nsaH">It’s the week before Thanksgiving, and several inches of snow coat the roads in Newark, New Jersey, an early-season storm that’s essentially shut down the tristate area, as Summers greets the “dedicated humans” who made it out to the second night of his <em>Double Dare Live</em> tour stop at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Before the show, which involves a series of physical challenges and a tense game of musical pies before the familiar <em>Double</em> <em>Dare</em>–style segment, Summers invites VIP fans onstage and cheerfully promises them he’ll pose for however many pictures they want. Selfies abound. Meanwhile, a 7-year-old boy sprints through the obstacles again and again, continuously dislodging the <a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BTMkYDp_YiE/WxrN-kBSYjI/AAAAAAAA6uk/TD5HwSr_GmIAh5FiO2KS8c61GkKFhxqyQCLcBGAs/s1600/down-the-hatch-mouth-obstacle-course-game-double-dare-2018-set-studio-nickelodeon-nick_5.jpg">Velcro teeth</a> from their gums; a man in his 30s wearing a gray suit does the same, hoisting himself up a wall and smashing through bricks. Eventually, Summers puts on a black blazer and walks out to a small but screaming crowd to bellow out the words anyone who grew up with a TV set in the ’80s or ’90s would recognize. “On your mark, get set, go!”</p>
<p id="eK5xJ4">At 67, Summers is plunging ahead in a career that’s been perhaps one-third slime, one-third Food Network, and one-third sheer toughness. The veteran game-show host left the stand-up circuit in the mid-’80s and rose to fame as the face of Nickelodeon’s <em>Double Dare</em>, and then <em>What Would You Do?</em>, before switching networks and adding producing to his résumé. He’s since made stops along the way at channels like Lifetime and the History Channel, before trying his hand at theater in a one-man show in Indiana. Now, Summers is returning to the familiar: The <em>Double Dare </em>live tour is meant to promote Nickelodeon’s televised reboot, which is finishing its first season, and in which Summers does color commentary alongside new host Liza Koshy, a 22-year-old YouTube influencer. (“I have no idea what that word means,” Summers offers of her title.)</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PMvbp0EsQmh4v7T3WgI9hfR2RFg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13693283/GettyImages_1002161940.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images For Nickelodeon</cite>
<figcaption>Summers with Michael Phelps, new <em>Double Dare</em> host Liza Koshy, and Chris Paul at Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Sports 2018</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="sq2f12">In 2019, Summers’s enduring charm is a breath of fresh air in a media landscape saturated with cynicism and rote reboots. He’s reviving his old-school appeal for a new generation of Nickelodeon viewers—often the kids of the kids who watched him all those years ago. Summers is familiar in that sense, just like <em>Double Dare</em> is: the same dad jokes, the same spiffy dude in white sneakers in the middle of a complete mess. The key, those around him insist, is that he’s just being himself. It’s a lesson Summers picked up from his late idol turned mentor, Soupy Sales. “The same guy onstage was the same guy offstage, and I like to think that’s the same with me,” Summers says. “I think what you see is what you get.” But beneath the warm comfort in the consistency of his personality and presence, there’s plenty more worth exploring, as Summers settles in again on his home network. He’s not just a Nick and Food Network elder statesman; he’s also a Magic Castle–vetted magician, <a href="https://www.eater.com/2016/9/12/12846708/eater-upsell-marc-summers-double-dare-interview">smoked salmon salesman</a>, and former <em>Mary Tyler Moore Show</em> page and Lifetime talk-show host, among many other odd jobs (a DJ and a wet-T-shirt-contest judge, to name a couple). And his life outside work has often been darker than his sunny demeanor would suggest.</p>
<p id="cgIYop">Summers, née Berkowitz, long wanted to be in television—after <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/blogs/242072/television-host-producer-marc-summers-bar-mitzvah-changed-life/">he decided not to be a rabbi</a>, that is—but he never imagined working with kids until he took an audition that a ventriloquist buddy of his passed on for a little-known network called Nickelodeon. They shot the pilot for <em>Double Dare </em>in a basement. The cast and crew would hole up at a Four Seasons in Philadelphia, congregating in someone’s room each night to review the day’s footage. “It was like being in a college dorm,” Summers says. In Newark, none of the charisma of his early tapes is gone. He builds conversation onstage by looking kids in the eye and addressing them the same way he does adults. “What do you do for a living?” he earnestly inquires of a girl who looks to be about 10. </p>
<p id="1HB5MO">“Whether you’re watching him on television or whether you’re hanging out with him having a slice of pizza, he’s going to be very much the same man, and I believe strongly that’s why we all connected with him so intensely as kids. Because we knew he wasn’t bullshitting us,” says Mathew Klickstein, who wrote <em>Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age</em> (2013) and has stayed in touch with Summers ever since.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fqu-zecnw1InMNTsmPRtmgLXKRw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13693287/GettyImages_178289900.jpg">
<cite>NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Burt Reynolds pours water on Summers during a <em>Tonight Show</em> appearance as Jay Leno looks on</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p id="6qA3z9">Summers is used to unfavorably comparing himself with the likes of David Letterman and Jay Leno, with whom he shared the stand-up circuit in Los Angeles before their late-night appointments—the latter of whom witnessed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X-L8z52v4M">Burt Reynolds dumping a mug of water on Summers’s lap on <em>The Tonight Show</em></a>. “I’ve always thought of myself of being a player in AAA baseball and never quite making the big leagues,” <a href="https://people.com/tv/marc-summers-beat-ocd-and-escaped-death-twice/">he said</a> in the first cut of <em>On Your Marc</em>, a documentary directed by Klickstein. But his outlook has improved since he embarked on the first leg of the live tour in the fall of 2018. “I didn’t realize what <em>Double Dare</em>, and in some ways, what my performance meant to these people. When people say to me, ‘I grew up watching you. I idolized you. You were my first friend.’ … I really had no idea.”</p>
<p id="t9dlFM">Whether he realizes it or not, Summers’s Triple-A magnetism is enough to stop major leaguers in their tracks. Summers himself recounts a brief interaction at the White House: “Here comes Michelle [Obama], and I was on my phone looking at emails. And I looked up and there she was. And she said, ‘I know you,’ and I went, ‘I know you too.’” Another time, Lin-Manuel Miranda spotted him at Richard Rodgers Theatre and invited him backstage. “I wanted to talk about <em>Hamilton</em>, and he wanted to talk about <em>Double Dare</em>.” Summers has also <a href="https://twitter.com/realmarcsummers/status/1014300490534936579">tweeted at Miranda</a> to join him for a <em>Double Dare</em> taping, which itself is a reminder for him that seemingly anyone could be open to doing anything for him, and be absolutely thrilled about it. “I throw <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f0/e6/2a/f0e62a7a7b25ced4ef14b350fef0c181.png">a marshmallow into a cup</a>, I’m gonna get a standing ovation, you know? It makes me laugh. And because parents can take a ball with a plunger and put it on one side of the stage to the other, they get excited.”</p>
<p id="HNgdW1">In 2019, <em>Double Dare</em>’s messy, childish escape is perhaps more important than ever—both comforting and cathartic, a necessary reprieve from real life. “It was a time in our life that it feels good to fall back on, and to remember the way you might listen to an old song that you really love, or read an old book, even a children’s book that you might have loved as a younger person, or even just flipping through a photo album,” Klickstein says. “It was also very special that the entire conceit of the show was about doing something you’re not supposed to do.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/R97F6ODAApLSdxfu5DK0FgUSipc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13693286/GettyImages_53371600.jpg">
<cite>The LIFE Images Collection/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>A <em>Double Dare</em> challenge in motion</figcaption>
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<p id="9pJ2wp">The most visceral thrills of <em>Double Dare</em> and later <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VabVrzzjrTc"><em>What Would You Do?</em></a> were born of watching kids and their families mess with each other—and often Summers too. Seeing a grown man have so much <em>fun</em> at work, in a suit and a tie but still at the mercy of rebellious children (and his crew), was aspirational—a promise that adulthood can be carefree and, well, daring. Often, the show’s best candid moments highlighted not the actual children, but the playful, brother-sister dynamic between him and his longtime on-camera assistant, Robin Russo, that developed into a lasting friendship off-set. “Backstage every day was just pure laughter,” she says. “It’s so silly to think about it now, what we were doing, but it just worked.” To be clear, by “it,” Russo is generally referring to <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5p1vhr">Summers tackling her</a> in Lake Double Dare, or <a href="https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5p1vhr">slathering Summers</a> in blue gak obstacle after obstacle, while both of them labored to breathe through laughter.</p>
<p id="4Kk98S">Watching the show’s popularity endure through his stint with Food Network, Summers <a href="https://news.avclub.com/marc-summers-climbs-over-obstacle-course-of-his-own-mak-1798271941">pushed and pushed</a> for a revival. Now it’s finally here, in full, nostalgia-funneling force: The reboot closed out its first year in late November with a finale starring none other than <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOqwpq2ucA8">Kenan and Kel</a>. “I didn’t even imagine, like, getting to be <em>on the stage</em>,” Koshy <a href="https://www.nbc.com/access/video/liza-koshy-says-it-was-so-surreal-to-have-kenan-kel-on-double-dare/3834279">recently told NBC</a>. “And then to have the honor and the blessing to be able to be here hosting with Marc and be in the moment, it’s so fun. It’s so fun, dude, and I get covered in slime every time.” </p>
<p id="krvQ1O">Summers hasn’t found the same success in mining nostalgia at his other longtime onscreen home, the Food Network, where he started in 1999. His first big gig was <em>Unwrapped</em>, in which he traveled the country to show audiences the origins of iconic foods from Crunch Bars to Fruity Pebbles. The show, one of the channel’s longest-running, benefited from Summers’s preexisting fan base and launched his career on the network in front of and behind the camera. He went on to take projects that fostered his game-show vibe like <em>Dinner: Impossible</em> and <em>The Next Food Network Star</em>, which spawned the career of Guy Fieri, who refers to Summers as Obi-Wan. “I don’t think I get the respect I deserve from the channel, quite honestly,” Summers says. He mentions that he’s recently talked to the network about reviving <em>Unwrapped</em> as part of a nostalgia-themed week that Emeril would partake in, too, but things apparently haven’t panned out.</p>
<p id="PMrKkS">“It’s kind of like I don’t exist anymore,” he continues. “<em>People</em> magazine just came out with a 25th-anniversary of Food Network <a href="https://people.com/food/stars-of-food-network-people-special-edition/">magazine special edition</a>. I have, probably, the longest-running continuous show on Food Network, and they didn’t mention it. Such is life. I don’t need those pats on the back. But I feel more sorry for Emeril. Emeril never really got the dues, the respect he deserved for making that channel what it is.” </p>
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<figcaption>Summers and Guy Fieri</figcaption>
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<p id="iVAwE3">Summers’s outspokenness extends to social media, where he manages his own Facebook and Twitter pages himself—he’s into reading comments, <a href="https://twitter.com/realmarcsummers/status/1063479215486570497">playing</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/realmarcsummers/status/1065294087304077313">with</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/realmarcsummers/status/1066745853556080641">Photoshop</a>, and DMing reporters. “Come to the stage door,” he tells me over Messenger, as if I’m <em>not</em> a stranger who sent him an unprompted message a day ago. This is a mostly endearing aspect of his public persona, but the snowy night in Newark proved an exception. He says that the venue refused to cancel the show despite the dangerous road conditions, and initially blamed him to concerned fans hoping to reschedule. (An NJPAC spokesperson says the venue cancels events only when the governor declares a state of emergency or when an artist can’t make it.) “I basically had a gun to my head and hated every minute of what was going on there,” he says. Facing a barrage of negative Facebook comments arguing he personally endangered kids’ safety, Summers exposed a facade in his clumsy, uncle-like persona. He called a couple of commenters “mental midgets” and suggested to another it was “time for [her] meds.”</p>
<p id="MujF6b">“Is that sort of a sick way of going about it?” Summers asks, not necessarily looking for an answer. “Was there anger there? You bet your ass there was anger there, OK?”</p>
<p id="9VTlPo">That Summers, with all his imperfections, is still in the business at all is anything but a given. “He may be one of the longest survivors in the history of television,” the writer of <em>From Scratch: Inside the Food Network</em>, Allen Salkin, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aiScgvwToc">once said of him</a>, speaking to his adaptability over decades of TV while hinting at his resolve off-camera. There is, of course, his OCD, of which much has been made, to Summers’s chagrin. To reporters and fans, it was often something to pity, a sign of Summers’s fragility. Oprah Winfrey herself <a href="http://www.oprah.com/own-oprahshow/nickelodeon-game-show-host-marc-summers-on-his-ocd-video">suggested as much</a> in March 1997, when Summers broke ground by disclosing his OCD on her show: “While on the outside he always looked like he was having a lot of fun getting all messy, on the inside he was living a <em>very</em> <em>painful</em> secret,” Oprah said, hyping the segment. Summers says opening up cost him a job hosting a <em>Hollywood Squares</em> reboot the following year, based on rumors that he was “crazy” and hard to work with.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="qVXFCe"><q>“I throw a marshmallow into a cup, I’m gonna get a standing ovation, you know? It makes me laugh.” —Marc Summers</q></aside></div>
<p id="XMnH8N">The OCD was severe, but Summers says he was never secretly miserable getting messy on TV. “Maybe it was therapy that I didn’t even know existed,” he says of being alternately smeared in peanut butter and pelted with whipped cream to earn a living. The medication and therapy he <em>did</em> know existed helped too. Summers says he still has moments when OCD slows him down and he gets caught up, say, reading labels in a grocery store, but that it’s nothing like it used to be. “I don’t want anybody to pity me,” he says.</p>
<p id="VdUTeP">News of another of the host’s longtime medical struggles wasn’t shared as widely: his cancer. After learning his diagnosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia about a decade ago, Summers and his wife, Alice, sat in a Los Angeles oncologist’s office filling out a mountain of paperwork. When he was done, the doctor wanted to take a bone marrow biopsy. “I started to walk toward the door, and my wife said, ‘Where are you going?’ And I said, ‘I can’t do cancer. I just want to go home and die.’ And I left.” Summers doubted whether he was strong enough to go through with treatment, but persuaded by his doctor and his wife, two days later he walked back in and took a needle to his pelvis. He went on to get two years of chemotherapy, under the fog of depression for about half of that time.</p>
<p id="HYDWqh">Summers’s cancer returned in the fall of 2017, prompting another six-month treatment. He’s in remission now, a reprieve from what’s been a decade eerily full of near-death experiences. Like in 2012, when Summers was riding without a seat belt in the back of a cab in Philly when it hydroplaned on I-95, sending him crashing into the car’s partition. He underwent surgeries to repair his face and lost about 70 percent of his memory, which took about a year to regain. “If I get the opportunity to host anything, can I even do it?” he wondered at the time. “Will I remember how this works?”</p>
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<figcaption>Summers in the iconic <em>Double Dare</em> mouth</figcaption>
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<p id="tUXy2o">Summers has been doling out motivational speeches—whether it be to groups of aspiring DJs or broadcasters—for ages, but he acknowledges that these more recent experiences have made them a bit easier to deliver. “I’m not as lackadaisical about what life is about as I might’ve been prior to those things happening to me,” he says. Even with a lot of current projects in the works—<em>Double Dare</em>, a potential revival of his one-man show, Broadway prospects (he’s waiting to hear back on an audition he did for <em>Waitress</em>), documentaries—he tries to avoid making business his life. Despite feeling perpetually out of place in L.A., aside from having a go-to Jewish deli, he and Alice moved out there in 2017 to be closer to their grown kids, Meredith and Matthew, and Matthew’s 4-year-old son, Oliver. Summers and his wife make a point to babysit their grandson a couple of times a week. One day, once his schedule cools off a bit, he hopes to coach Oliver’s baseball team. He did, after all, make time to lead Matthew’s squad for eight years, even when it took 6 a.m. flights between coasts to make a late-morning game. That sort of dedication is standard for Summers. </p>
<p id="x02VO4">“Marc is relentless in his pursuit of success. He doesn’t take no for an answer,” Russo says. “And he’s usually pretty right on. He has more energy than my two kids put together.” Once an all-star third baseman and catcher on his own team growing up, he seemingly can’t help but put the same effort into even recreation that he does into work. “The most frightening thing I ever did was throw the first pitch out at Fenway Park,” Summers, a decades-long Red Sox fan, says, “because if you don’t get it across the plate, the crowd will kill you. I practiced for three months throwing balls. The morning of that game, I got up, went to a sporting goods store, bought 25 baseballs, found a park, and just threw baseballs for, like, two hours that morning. … I have something called obsessive-compulsive disorder.”</p>
<p id="QucN9T">“I always want to be better. I always want to learn something,” Summers tells me—though, if he’s being honest, his drive always comes back to one thing: “I’m pretty lucky to be alive.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ZjdU9E">On July 19, 2003, after playing catch with a player in foul territory, Summers walked to the mound in a white Red Sox jersey, blue jeans, and Sambas. He kept his head down, turning the baseball over in his hand. The second the announcer finished introducing him, he wound up and fired. The pitch sailed a bit high, but crossed home plate. Letting out a brief shout, Summers punched his glove and walked off the mound smiling.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/1/16/18183768/marc-summers-double-dare-unwrapped-food-networkJulie Kliegman2018-05-07T06:20:01-04:002018-05-07T06:20:01-04:00The State of Mental Health Care in the NBA
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<p>Stars like DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love speaking out on their personal experiences has helped drive forward the conversation around depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses in the NBA. But experts say there’s still work to be done to abolish stigmas and ensure proper treatment.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="rj4g2u">“This depression get the best of me …” In the middle of the night, during All-Star Weekend in his home city, DeMar DeRozan <a href="https://twitter.com/demar_derozan/status/964818383303688197?lang=en">tweeted</a> the simple line. The Raptors shooting guard initially deflected the groundswell of support and concern from fans, saying that he was merely quoting a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8yzTNlWTOo">song</a>. A week later he reversed course, putting aside his characteristic reticence to let the world in on the depression and anxiety he’s struggled with from a young age.</p>
<p id="3kfEV4">“I’m so quiet, if you don’t know me,” DeRozan told the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/raptors/2018/02/25/raptors-derozan-hopes-honest-talk-on-depression-helps-others.html"><em>Toronto Star</em></a> in February. “I stay standoffish in a sense, in my own personal space, to be able to cope with whatever it is you’ve got to cope with.”</p>
<p id="EeCuky">DeRozan’s disclosure was followed in short order by two more from prominent players — the Cavs’ Kevin Love recounted a November panic attack in <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/kevin-love-everyone-is-going-through-something"><em>The Players’ Tribune</em></a>, and former first-round pick Kelly Oubre Jr. <a href="http://www.nbcsports.com/washington/wizards/kelly-oubre-jr-depression-anxiety-and-his-own-battles-mental-health">chimed in</a> to say he can relate to Love’s and DeRozan’s stories.</p>
<p id="EQmL7q">That several professional basketball players — including LeBron James’s right-hand man and an All-Star Game starter — have spoken openly about their mental health this season, let alone in the same two-week span, is notable. DeRozan, Love, and Oubre didn’t <em>start</em> the conversation, but their name recognition propelled forward dialogue that Metta World Peace, Royce White, and WNBA standout Chamique Holdsclaw had boldly broached years ago.</p>
<p id="b2O4fx">“Some of these guys in this league, it’s almost like they have to put a cape on when they play,” says Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, a <a href="https://nesn.com/2018/03/brad-stevens-thrilled-with-increased-conversations-about-mental-health-in-nba/">staunch supporter</a> of mental health discussion in the league. “And oh, by the way, they have to do that against the best players in the world.”</p>
<p id="CQlBAe">Retired guard Keyon Dooling has <a href="http://grantland.com/features/keyon-dooling-recovery-from-childhood-sex-abuse-nba-boston-celtics-miami-heat/">shared his story</a> of post-traumatic stress disorder for years since abruptly leaving the Celtics in 2012. As the National Basketball Players Association’s first wellness counselor, he hasn’t stopped since, even penning a <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/keyon-dooling-the-ghost"><em>Players’ Tribune</em></a> piece last week tackling the mental health stigma that he argues still pervades the NBA and the African American community.</p>
<p id="5vb9ts">“For so long, we weren’t ready to speak about some of the challenges in our lives,” Dooling told <em>The Ringer. </em>“For [players in 2018] to speak about it in plain and normal terms, it just really makes it very relatable for what everyone in society is going through at different times in their lives.”</p>
<p id="9un0Xg">What distinguishes this wave of discussion is that it’s backed by tangible action from the NBA and the players association: an initiative in the 2017 <a href="http://3c90sm37lsaecdwtr32v9qof-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2017-NBA-NBPA-Collective-Bargaining-Agreement.pdf">collective bargaining agreement</a> to further mental health and wellness, complete with a dedicated new position to helm those efforts. Dooling will soon report to a <a href="http://www.nba.com/article/2018/03/12/morning-tip-nba-nbpa-addressing-mental-wellness-issues#/">director of mental health and wellness</a>, who will operate an independent wellness program funded by the NBA and the players association. The NBA, which declined to talk to <em>The Ringer</em> on the record, has not specified whether the new hire will have authority in determining when a given player presenting mental health issues is fit to play. Dooling will serve as a liaison between players and the new program’s resources.</p>
<p id="t4hCxi">The new director position shows that the NBA is indeed making progress, but also that there’s still much work to be done to take care of players’ — and coaches’ — mental health.</p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Vr4g5z">Head coaches Tyronn Lue (chest pains, lack of sleep) and Steve Clifford (severe headaches) made headlines this season for taking medical leave to address physical ailments. The willingness of those coaches to set aside time to treat their stress-related (though not mental-illness-specific) health concerns emphasizes the importance of seeking treatment and recognizing the toll that pressure-filled NBA seasons can take on the body and mind.</p>
<p id="V68XGk">“As [my headaches] got more severe, we just used stronger medication,” Clifford, then still the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, <a href="http://www.espn.com/espnradio/play/_/id/22847454">told ESPN’s Zach Lowe</a> in March. “And what you find out is, it doesn’t take care of the headaches, and then you get to a point where you have to change, as Dr. [Joe] Garcia, our team doctor, and our neurologist, Dr. [Ki] Jung said, you have to find out what the cause is and you have to change it. A lot of times in coaching it’s similar to what [Lue’s] doing. It’s lack of sleep. Some of it is stress-related, some of it is too much work, and a lot of it, frankly, is the schedule, the travel, and not getting into regular sleep patterns.”</p>
<p id="hJKewK">Other coaches took note. “I’m sure all the coaches stopped in their tracks when they saw [Lue step away],” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told <a href="http://heatzone.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2018/03/20/heats-erik-spoelstra-believes-mental-health-will-become-main-topic-among-coaches-in-offseason/"><em>The Palm Beach Post</em></a> in March. But it also started a long-overdue dialogue. Spoelstra said that he talked to other coaches in the wake of Clifford’s leave, and that he expects mental health discussions to be a main focus of coaches this offseason.</p>
<p id="rzeqtw">Access to mental health professionals is a big part of the NBA’s changing attitude toward mental health, for players and coaches alike. Teams aren’t required to employ them, but more seem to be offering that support.</p>
<p id="nnH6qS">“I am aware of several NBA teams that historically have not had psychologists involved that are now in the process of looking for psychologists,” says a sport psychologist who practiced part time for an NBA team from 2013 to 2016. (They requested anonymity from <em>The Ringer</em> to protect the privacy of players they treated.)</p>
<p id="HoRmbA">Many teams choose to hire clinical psychologists or sport psychologists. The former serve as therapists who counsel players who present symptoms of mental illnesses like anxiety and depression as well as issues with family relationships or grief, while the latter work with players to improve aspects of on-court performance like mindfulness and communication. Sport psychologists can offer referrals for clinical specialists to players who may need them, but are not typically licensed to provide regular talk therapy or prescription medicine.</p>
<p id="m8rvPI">As a February <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2018/02/20/dallas-mavericks-sexual-misconduct-investigation-mark-cuban-response"><em>Sports Illustrated </em>investigation</a> into sexual harassment and violence shows, the Dallas Mavericks’ office culture has not been progressive in every respect. But the Mavs were the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/sports/basketball/minimizing-need-for-a-second-star-can-be-perilous.html">first team</a> to bring a full-time sport psychologist on board, hiring Don Kalkstein around the turn of the century. “We don’t want the thought process to be ‘I have to make this shot,’” Kalkstein <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/nba/la-sp-nba-psychology-20151227-story.html">told the <em>Los Angeles Times</em></a> in 2015. “We want the thought process to be, ‘I’m going to catch and shoot, I’m going to get myself in a good position.’ So they concentrate and focus more on the process, which eliminates what we consider pressure and anxiety.”</p>
<p id="1cCXDK">Other teams, like the Bucks, Pacers, and Kings, are also known to have positions dedicated to supporting mental health and performance. The Celtics have a part-time clinical and sport psychologist available for players and coaches. Stevens says he’s started the past couple of training camps by going over statistics about mental illness with players, the importance of vulnerability in strong leadership, and the resources available should a player choose to seek confidential help from the psychologist.</p>
<p id="LyHvL2">“We don’t want to try to look like we’ve got this all figured out or that we’re some trailblazer, trendsetter,” Stevens says. “We just wanna make it so that people know that our guys are talking about it.” Stevens came to coaching after a job as a <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/10/27/after-corporate-detour-brad-stevens-was-drawn-back-basketball/QzMiIWq4oGYWEWtiNwMOwN/story.html">marketing associate</a> in the pharmaceutical industry, which he says opened his eyes to how life-changing psychiatric care can be. The support of a renowned coach like Stevens can make all the difference in players’ mental health care, the anonymous sport psychologist stresses.</p>
<p id="fJC4nV">“I did not have the full buy-in from the coaches and therefore the players to use me as a resource,” they say. “Not one of [the head coaches] would allow me to stand up for five minutes in front of the team.” The psychologist, who works in private practice, would consider rejoining the NBA, but only if the GM’s hiring decision is backed by enthusiasm from the coaching staff, which then normalizes the process of players asking for help.</p>
<p id="y2wKxI">It can be easy for jaded fans to write off NBA players’ mental illnesses as ridiculous or privileged, given their fame and apparent wealth. In the shootaround before the Malice at the Palace, Pistons fans taunted Metta World Peace (then Ron Artest) for his on-court anger issues with signs reading “Ron Artest Is Crazy” and “Ron Artest Needs Zoloft.”</p>
<p id="Ygii9S">“They just look at them as superhumans, the men and the women,” says Holdsclaw, who has spent much of her time after retirement working with young basketball players and encouraging them to express their feelings. “I’m quick to tell [critics], man, ‘Let me tell you something, this does not discriminate. It don’t matter what race you are, how much money you got, your socioeconomic status. It doesn’t matter your gender, it doesn’t matter if you’re from the city, from rural America. This hits everyone.’”</p>
<p id="2W5kCx">Athletes themselves can be critical of peers who are upfront about their mental health. The grit and independence required to play professionally and emotionality seem mutually exclusive. For example: “A lot of people are afraid to take medication,” says Holdsclaw, who was initially wary of the psychiatric pills she was prescribed and how it’d affect her game. “Especially athletes, because we think we can work through everything.”</p>
<p id="0VL7o5">Stigma will live as long as athletes themselves equate mental illness with weakness. “[Love’s essay is] great for awareness and mental health — and that’s absolutely fantastic and you need that — but then there’s a side at the same time where it’s like, ‘Oh OK, your enemy is going to read that,’” Chris Bosh <a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-bill-simmons-podcast/episodes/e58db1e3-f95c-44e7-af80-4ea334b20144">said on <em>The Bill Simmons Podcast</em></a>. “That’s great that we’re all friends, but at the end of the day there’s one trophy.”</p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="sMcirl">Although resistance to mental health advocacy remains, it’s less pervasive than before, thanks in part to icons like Holdsclaw and her NBA counterparts. In 2004 the Washington Mystics star, Pat Summitt protégé, and former no. 1 draft pick let people in on a new, less perfect dimension of her life: She lived with depression.</p>
<p id="2fwMNE">“I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk,” Holdsclaw told <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/10/29/mystics-all-star-cites-depression-for-her-absence/2e9c02c8-3c25-40f8-bf05-9d95d9926604/?utm_term=.79f6a0d1b351"><em>The Washington Post</em></a>, describing how she felt after her the death of her grandmother, who raised her in New York. “I was like, what is going on?” Holdsclaw was more recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which she still gets treatment for.</p>
<p id="zlmrYU">More recently, Holdsclaw’s NBA peers have spoken up about their own mental health — including her former teammate on a Queens Boys & Girls Club basketball team. World Peace, after winning the 2010 championship, gave a shout-out that helped change the league’s perception of what athletes could and should be.</p>
<p id="0Wks78">“I definitely want to thank my doctor, Dr. Santhi — my psychiatrist,” he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMCeZK3OiKM">told ESPN’s Doris Burke</a>. “She really helped me relax.”</p>
<p id="WGPZ2x">Reflecting on the memorable moment, World Peace told <em>The Ringer</em>: “I didn’t know how much publicity it would get.” His forthcoming autobiography, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34734830-no-malice"><em>No Malice</em></a>, addresses his mental health throughout his childhood and playing career. “I didn’t think about it. I think I was one of the first ones to actually come out like that.”</p>
<p id="ep8gh6">In 2015, new Laker Roy Hibbert, who had worked with counselors during his time with the Pacers, credited World Peace with paving a path for honesty about mental health in the NBA. “I felt that when he did that, it kind of opened the doors to make it somewhat OK,” he <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/13382086/roy-hibbert-looking-career-resurgence-los-angeles-lakers">told ESPN</a>.</p>
<p id="haJUi0">The NBA’s growing acceptance of and advocacy for mental health awareness dovetails with a larger movement throughout sports and beyond. The former NBA sport psychologist credits increased mental health talk among pro sports leagues to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/10/26/16535274/ncaa-student-athletes-mental-health-care-initiatives">activism and slow but steady reform</a> at the college level. Many schools now offer student-athletes access to the care they need within their athletic departments, alongside other essential resources, like athletic training and academic tutoring.</p>
<p id="ErwRWR">Chatter is also growing louder outside the classroom. The world’s most decorated Olympian has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/19/health/michael-phelps-depression/index.html">shared</a> that he has wanted to kill himself. NFL wide receiver Brandon Marshall has <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/brandon-marshall-nfl-mental-health-awareness">long been outspoken</a> about his borderline personality disorder. MLB players are slowly coming forward: All-Star closer Roberto Osuna <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/mlb/la-sp-baseball-shaikin-20170819-story.html">attributed</a> a missed relief appearance to anxiety, and journeyman catcher Mike Marjama <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/mariners-catcher-opens-battle-eating-disorder-230311312.html">opened up about his anorexia</a>. In addition to speaking about their own personal experiences, DeRozan and Love filmed a PSA for the NBA encouraging mental wellness. (DeRozan, Love, and Oubre declined comment for this story.)</p>
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<p id="3NiBaz">Meanwhile, mental illness also pervades pop culture. “I had a 9-year-old say to me, well, you know, <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/selena-gomez-rehab-therapy-mental-health-depression">Selena Gomez checked herself into a clinic</a> because ‘I’m suffering from depression,’” Holdsclaw says. “For me, being with [kids], I see how they attach to people with similar struggles, how it’s great to have people who are open and honest. Now, because of that young lady, I can give other people this example of Selena Gomez, who they may identify with more than Kevin Love or DeMar DeRozan.”</p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="kHQczD">Most people who talked to <em>The Ringer</em> celebrated society’s progress with mental health awareness and the NBA’s place within it, especially given the renewed discussion among players and the new joint NBA-NBPA initiative. But Royce White, who left the NBA in 2014 and later joined its Canadian counterpart, <a href="https://www.esquire.com/sports/a54756/royce-white-im-fucking-weird/">isn’t sold</a>, even as he admits the current discourse in the league represents some positive momentum.</p>
<p id="LQd57Q">“We are first-and-40, and we’re acting like a 10-yard pass is anything other than us still being 30 yards behind where we need to be,” White says. “It needs to be acknowledged that we are re-having a conversation that we already had.”</p>
<p id="9vG7r9">White, who rejects the characterization that he left the NBA solely because he couldn’t manage his anxiety while on airplanes, also says that the “mental health conversation” in the league is shallow, with administrators and fellow players alike unwilling to engage with his deeper criticisms and policy ideas, including the NBA’s lack of protocol surrounding mental illness and time off for players, as well as its partnership with Anheuser-Busch, which he believes fosters an unhealthy culture at games. He also believes mental illness has been an issue in the league for far longer than many would like to admit, pointing specifically to substance use (often closely linked with mental illness), particularly <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-02-16/sports/8601120608_1_nba-drug-program-relapses-drug-problem">cocaine</a> in the ’70s and ’80s. “What you need to come out and say, [NBA commissioner] Adam Silver, is that we should’ve done something about mental health a long time ago.”</p>
<p id="fAGdi8">Even among those cheerleading the NBA’s latest steps to support players’ mental health, there’s disagreement about the right approach. While some would like to see all teams required to have a full-time mental health counselor or sport psychologist on staff, that’s not a setup that would necessarily be comfortable for all players. Those professionals are bound to confidentiality agreements, but the optics of being seen receiving mental health treatment in a team facility can still discourage players from using them.</p>
<p id="4yFv76">“What happens to a player who is having some mental struggles?” the former NBA sport psychologist said. “Does he want the coaches to know that, who might not give him as much playing time? Does he want the front office to know that?” Teams would also do well to ensure that players who wish to seek help outside the team, like World Peace and Holdsclaw did years ago, know how to do so and can get reliable referrals from team officials.</p>
<p id="0r4zJK">The NBA’s work won’t end with the installment of a mental health and wellness director. The league will continue to work with Dr. Victor Schwartz, the chief medical officer for the Jed Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on sustaining emotional health and preventing suicide in young adults (and for which Holdsclaw serves as an ambassador). In addition to focusing on the NBA, Schwartz will take a look at what, if any, changes should be implemented in the WNBA (which has a different collective bargaining agreement) and the G League to best help a broader range of professional basketball players.</p>
<p id="E6TAfI">As the NBA — along with the WNBA and G League — further prioritizes mental health care and advocacy, that effort will ideally trickle down to younger generations of players and fans.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="w5hdFG">“Anxiety, depression, maybe bipolar, whatever the case may be, those are things that people don’t always know what they’re going through,” Stevens says. “They know that they don’t feel right. They feel sad. They know that they would like to get better and maybe what DeMar and what Kevin and what others are doing is telling you, ‘Hey, not only can you get better, it’s good to talk about it so that you can find the answers right around the corner.’”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/5/7/17320362/mental-health-nbaJulie Kliegman2017-10-26T09:15:02-04:002017-10-26T09:15:02-04:00College Athletes Are Only Starting to Get Access to the Mental Health Care They Need
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<img alt="Madison Holleran running a cross country race at Penn" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/jUQDsdWD013LXQdL-SAM5zh9jhg=/0x0:2000x1500/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/57330925/maddy_run.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo courtesy of <a href="http://letsrun.com">LetsRun.com</a></figcaption>
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<p>NCAA athletes have long been supported both physically and academically. Over the past few years, destigmatizing and treating mental illness has become a national priority—but there’s still a long way to go.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Re1rgE">Transitioning to life as a college athlete, author Kate Fagan writes, is “like walking through an obstacle course wearing a blindfold.” In her 2017 book, <em>What Made Maddy Run</em>, the ESPN reporter draws on her personal experience adjusting to Division I basketball as she spells out the unique challenges that student-athletes face. “No context exists for how hard the workouts will be, how long they will last, what each class will be like, what events are fun, what should be avoided. There is no yin-yang, either; no understanding that one week might feel grueling, unmanageable, but just hang on, because the following week will be light and easy. For someone who struggles with the unknown, freshman year of college can feel like walking a path lined with landmines—heart racing, disaster around every corner.”</p>
<p id="hEtSnb"><em>What Made Maddy Run</em>, released in August,<em> </em>tells the story of Madison Holleran, a standout high school soccer player and track runner from New Jersey who died by suicide in January 2014 during her second semester at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s an expansion of Fagan’s <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagram-account-university-pennsylvania-runner-showed-only-part-story">2015 feature</a>, which prompted a national dialogue about mental illness and thoughts of suicide among college students. In her chronicle of Holleran’s efforts to seek help for her depression and anxiety while adjusting to the pressure of college life and the expectations of the track team, Fagan notes that many struggling student-athletes don’t have mental health professionals to visit within the confines of their athletic departments. Counselors outside that bubble, both on campus and off, often aren’t familiar with the specific challenges that college athletes face, which can leave them feeling unheard. Fagan reports that a few months before Holleran died, she left her initial appointment with a therapist at Penn’s general counseling center feeling misunderstood.</p>
<p id="WAbCAl">Fewer than 25 Division I schools had a full-time licensed mental health practicioner on staff in the athletic department as of January 2014, <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10335925/awareness-better-treatment-college-athletes-mental-health-begins-take-shape">according to ESPN</a>, let alone more resource-strapped Division II and III schools. While that number of professionals has been growing in recent years—per <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28452636">one 2016 survey</a>, mental health clinicians are now in as many as 39 percent of Division I athletic departments—there’s still a critical gap in mental health care for student-athletes who often have access to the support they need physically and academically. That will persist unless this issue remains at the forefront of the college sports conversation.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="ZCytR3"><q>“The stereotype is that student-athletes are tough somehow or more put together than others. No, people are people.”<br>—Brian Hainline, NCAA chief medical officer</q></aside></div>
<p id="8xe7TL">When players are expected to leave the athletic department’s facilities to seek care, they get the message that they’re outsiders, that what they’re dealing with isn’t a problem common among their peers. They can get the impression that they need to separate who they are as student-athletes from the ways in which their brains work.</p>
<p id="etfEaw">“Within the athletic department, a full-time mental health professional that you would point athletes to, that’s something that even top-level FBS schools are just trying to get on—in my opinion—the right side of,” Fagan tells <em>The Ringer</em>.</p>
<p id="kqALnv">Having the ability to access mental health support in the same place that they often meet with trainers, watch game tape, and work with academic tutors is key for student-athletes, who face pressure to push down any perceived on- or off-field weaknesses, even when they experience mental illness. College athletes experience anxiety and depression at slightly lower rates than their nonathlete peers, according to an <a href="http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/MindBodySport.pdf">American College Health Association survey</a> based on students’ experiences in 2011, but they’re less likely to seek help for those issues. And while anxiety and depression are two common, relatively low-stigma mental illnesses, they’re far from the only ones student-athletes face: Experts say they also routinely see athletes with eating disorders, personality disorders, and substance-use disorders.</p>
<p id="PzhpY1">“The stereotype is that student-athletes are tough somehow or more put together than others,” says Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer. “No, people are people.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="JLxMdQ">Virginia Tech was ahead of the curve in caring for student-athletes’ mental health, hiring Gary Bennett as its in-house clinical and sport psychologist in 2000. Bennett says he now sees about 50 student-athletes each week for individual counseling, and a colleague, who splits his time between the campus’s general counseling center and the athletic department, has a caseload of between eight and 10 athletes. “They don’t have to go anywhere else,” Bennett says. “The campus counseling center is literally 200 yards away on the other side of the parking lot. But it might as well be 200 miles.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="XLcxSZ"><q>“The campus counseling center is literally 200 yards away on the other side of the parking lot. But it might as well be 200 miles.”<br>—Gary Bennett, Virginia Tech in-house clinical and sport psychologist</q></aside></div>
<p id="qTKBfG">Austin Cannon, a redshirt freshman on the Hokies football team, has been seeing Bennett for his depression for about a year. The left guard arrived at Virginia Tech in January 2016 after spending a semester at a military academy. As he went through his first spring practices, his great grandmother died. A couple of months later, his dog died. Then his dad got diagnosed with kidney cancer. Right before Cannon reported to training camp last fall, his long-term girlfriend broke up with him. During an August scrimmage, he sustained a concussion when a teammate accidentally kicked him in the back of the head as he tried to get off the ground.</p>
<p id="hCWlIu">All of that stress and sadness, on top of his struggles to make friends and adjust to his college course load, added up. “I couldn’t hold the world over my head anymore,” Cannon says. “It was just crashing down.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Austin Cannon" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lx1aRWTz0IVGACQ87Pv75N6-6Hw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9535907/21686023_10210255159039925_5523584034612510729_n.jpg">
<cite>Evan Watkins–247 Sports</cite>
<figcaption>Austin Cannon</figcaption>
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<p id="Nu4Kbv">In his dorm room after the scrimmage, Cannon tried to kill himself. Yet he grabbed his phone and saw missed calls from his team’s training staff, who were trying to check in on him post-concussion. He called one of them and asked for help. Head coach Justin Fuente, other football staffers, police officers, and EMTs came to his room. He had never cried in front of a coach before that day. “It’s just a man thing, I guess,” Cannon says. “You have pride. You’re not going to cry. That’s something that you don’t show in front of people.”</p>
<p id="oHIPwN">Opening up to Fuente and other staff that day saved Cannon’s life. After being discharged from the hospital, he spent a week at a mental health facility, where, to his surprise, he was visited frequently by the team chaplain, Fuente, and other coaches. That season, Cannon started meeting with Bennett for counseling. “It’s a really good thing that Dr. Bennett is here in the facility with us,” Cannon says. “I feel more comfortable going to see him rather than seeing a counselor somewhere else. He’s been talking to athletes. That’s what he does for a living. I think it’d be easier to talk to [someone like that] and he’s more understanding than a regular counselor.”</p>
<p id="2su2mX">Fuente regularly asks Cannon how he’s doing mentally and emotionally. And in rallying around Cannon, Virginia Tech’s football team sent the message that it’s OK for athletes to express vulnerability and ask for help. Cannon says his health has turned around in the past year. “I do have my moments where I get down,” Cannon says. “But I don’t think about taking my life again.”</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="Pw3UiQ">In recent years more athletic departments have created positions similar to Bennett’s as a result of a few factors: the NCAA’s influence, student-athletes’ vocalness about their needs, and national news stories like Fagan’s.<strong> </strong>When Hainline, a neurologist, joined the NCAA in January 2013, he was focused primarily on concussions, but student-athlete advisory groups quickly asked him to also prioritize mental health. The issue was already on the NCAA’s radar before Hainline came along; he just devoted additional resources to it, putting together a <a href="http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/ncaa-mental-health-task-force-holds-first-meeting">task force</a> in his first year on the job. That led to the association’s 2014 publication of <a href="http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/MindBodySport.pdf"><em>Mind, Body and Sport</em></a>, a comprehensive guide to mental health challenges student-athletes face and what resources are available, and a 2016 <a href="http://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/HS_Mental-Health-Best-Practices_20160317.pdf">best practices guide</a> for the athletic departments working to support them.</p>
<p id="8bh5Xm">“Through the effort of Dr. Hainline it has become a priority of the NCAA and there is no doubt that this is a giant step in the right direction,” Alabama football head coach Nick Saban, who <a href="http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/03/nick_saban_gives_his_support_t.html">consistently advocates for mental health awareness</a>, says via email.</p>
<p id="nrXygP">One challenge that the NCAA faces with this initiative is coming up with recommendations and policies that apply to its more than 1,100 member schools, which span from small D-III schools to sports powerhouses like Alabama, whose athletic department has a director of behavioral medicine on staff and outsources to professionals including psychologists, psychiatrists, and addiction specialists. And while Hainline doesn’t think it’s necessary for every athletic department to have a dedicated mental health care provider on staff—as is, not every member school even has team physicians on site, preferring to contract out—he could foresee the NCAA implementing a policy requiring D-I, D-II, and D-III schools to have an interdisciplinary health care team that includes a licensed mental health professional.</p>
<p id="PuIL5S">Student-athletes are also a driving force in the push for better mental health care. As mental illness—particularly common diagnoses like anxiety and depression—becomes less stigmatized, players feel more comfortable speaking out. In addition to its association-wide initiatives, the NCAA in 2014 funded <a href="http://athletesconnected.umich.edu/">Athletes Connected</a>, a University of Michigan <a href="https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/d7mp3a/athletes-connected-inside-the-university-of-michigans-new-approach-to-mental-health-for-athletes">campaign to destigmatize mental illness</a> among college athletes and encourage them to seek help.</p>
<p id="k3ogkF">Kally Fayhee, a swimmer who graduated from Michigan in 2013, embraced being part of Athletes Connected after contemplating backing out about five or six times. At that point, she says, only a handful of people knew about her bulimia. She’d been swimming competitively since she was 10, but her experience in college felt different. “When I got to Michigan, it was a whole other level of competitiveness, of trying to live up to the expectation, the swimmer that your scholarship means that you are,” she says.</p>
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<p id="AdNcXB">During her freshman year, Fayhee started feeling what she calls “race anxiety,” which hampered her performance. “The harder I tried to control it and white-knuckle it, the worse it got, and the worse the anxiousness got,” she says. Needing to feel some element of control over her races, she started restricting her diet as a sophomore, thinking that if she were lighter, she could go faster. By junior year she was purging. With the help of a close friend and teammate, she began weekly visits to Barb Hansen, a clinical social worker and athletics counselor at Michigan.</p>
<p id="knX9ZV">Joining Athletes Connected in 2014 meant that, for the first time, the former team cocaptain would speak publicly about her bulimia and how everything in her life wasn’t as perfect as it may have seemed. “You know what, the only way that we’re going to break down the stigma around mental health is if we have a conversation about it,” she remembers telling the first crowd of Michigan student-athletes she spoke to alongside <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ7OXOrliGY">Will Heininger</a>, a former Wolverines defensive lineman who has experienced depression. After one of the sessions, a current student-athlete approached Fayhee to say that she needed help. It made Fayhee’s late nights and early morning commutes between Chicago, where she worked, and Ann Arbor worth it. “Honestly, at that point I would’ve woken up at 3 in the morning and done that until the end of time if we could help kids where I was,” Fayhee says.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="1Nv0d6"><q>“Football’s not going to last forever, and doing this is so much bigger than strapping up on Saturdays.”<br>—Austin Cannon, Virginia Tech football player</q></aside></div>
<p id="8D4wt6">As Cannon recovered, he also wanted to help his peers, so he started a <a href="https://twitter.com/SU_Movement">SpeakUp campaign</a> to remind his classmates, especially fellow athletes, that they’re not alone in experiencing mental illness. “Football’s not going to last forever, and doing this is so much bigger than strapping up on Saturdays,” he says. He recalls speaking to a service fraternity about depression, nervous to be addressing a large group for the first time, and seeing that his teammates were there to support him. Open discussion of mental illness from student-athletes like Cannon has the potential to be particularly impactful because male football players are <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1941738115587675?journalCode=spha">at the highest risk of suicide of all student-athletes</a>.</p>
<p id="yLgfw1">“If there aren’t student-athletes saying they need help, then why would athletic departments—unless they’re proactive in a way that’s out of this world—[take steps to get them help]?” Fagan says. “You’ve seen now more student-athletes talk about this issue, and you’re seeing athletic departments wrap their heads around this issue.”</p>
<p id="jpIEgS">Ian Connole, the director of sport psychology at Kansas State, thinks student-athletes feel more comfortable speaking about their mental health needs than they have been in the past because they see their professional-athlete idols doing the same. “We see LeBron James meditating on the bench. You see him close his eyes,” Connole says. “He centers himself in the NBA Finals. He clears his mind to prepare for that next trip down the court. [Student-athletes] see what they’re doing, and they want that.”</p>
<div id="AfhVYN"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SCR7OfRuQd4?rel=0&" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="ys5gbA">Those positive examples don’t stop at simple mindfulness exercises. Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall has spoken out about his <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/page/hotread140707/chicago-bears-brandon-marshall-spreads-awareness-nfl-mental-health-crisis-espn-magazine">borderline personality disorder</a>. Blue Jays closer Roberto Osuna said he missed a game this season due to his <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/06/24/blue-jays-closer-roberto-osuna-anxiety-unavailability/426127001/">anxiety</a>. Every voice makes a difference, and there’s still much progress to be made.</p>
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<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="ioV6Mo">While student-athletes can be motivated to speak out and seek help by both hearing from their peers and watching professionals, school administrators may be most driven to enact change by tragedy. Holleran and five other Penn students took their lives during a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/education/edlife/stress-social-media-and-suicide-on-campus.html?_r=0">13-month span</a>, and in February 2014 the university put together a task force that <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v61/n23/pdf/task-force-psychological-health.pdf">recommended sweeping changes</a>, including an expansion of counseling-center hours. “Unfortunately, I think [schools] don’t recognize the importance of it until something really bad has happened,” Virginia Tech’s Bennett says. “And [by then] it’s too late.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="CxA0Jn"><q>“Unfortunately, I think [schools] don’t recognize the importance of it until something really bad has happened. And [by then] it’s too late.”<br>—Gary Bennett</q></aside></div>
<p id="8OjjC0">Laura Sudano, the director of behavioral science at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, says that the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27893262">national research</a> she and her colleague Christopher Miles did on the subject suggests that the key to better addressing mental illness in student-athletes is more closely integrating that care with their routine physical treatment in the training room. In practice, this approach could mean that teams would include a mental health portion in their standard preparticipation exam for student-athletes, which covers physical basics like injury history. It could also mean that, when a team’s trainer is following up with a student after surgery, that person can introduce the player to someone like Sudano, facilitating a seamless transition that makes mental health care part of the typical rehabilitation process.</p>
<p id="SnMLLu">“When you’re in the athletic training room, which is oftentimes a place for camaraderie as people are coming in for treatment, it sort of normalizes that experience,” says Sudano, a licensed marriage and family therapist who routinely treats Wake Forest athletes. “Hopefully it reduces that barrier or stigma that so many athletes feel about addressing those mental health issues.” </p>
<p id="TtiTIv">For schools looking to support student-athletes’ mental health, professional therapists licensed to provide counseling are an obvious option, but not the only one. According to Connole, Kansas State is one of seven schools that has a full-time sport psychologist on staff who works with students to strengthen their proactive mental habits, such as communicating, rebounding from mistakes, and supporting teammates. Connole can’t counsel athletes experiencing mental illness, but he regularly meets with teams and individual players to work on those proactive skills. When students come in presenting signs of mental illness, he refers them to trained clinicians, on campus and off.</p>
<p id="EbG7Y6">“Whether you’re at your absolute best and your confidence is where you’d love it to be, and you have no stress, or whether you’re going through the hardest time in your life, across the board we’re still working to be a family that supports each other to be better every single day,” Connole says. He attends practices and travels with the teams, which means that players and coaches always know where to find him. More importantly, they know that mental health is a top priority for Kansas State. It’s in the university’s strategic plan, Connole says, to hire a licensed mental health provider to work in tandem with him on the sport psychology program.</p>
<p id="aB91y1">Connole, Bennett, and Sudano all played college sports: basketball, baseball, and volleyball, respectively. They might not have been on the elite stage that their Division I athletes are, but they’re all acutely aware of what makes student-athletes tick. All three also have a vested interest first and foremost in students’ mental health, not their statistics and accolades. It’s that culture of familiarity with mental health resources and professionals that other schools should be striving to replicate.</p>
<p id="5qdGO7">More research is needed, Sudano says, to shed light on how best to help student-athletes. “You just want people to be whole,” Sudano says. “They are going to experience adversity, but how can we give them the skills and tools to be successful not just during their time in participation, but beyond?” There’s a ways to go until the culture of speaking up and asking for help feels commonplace across college sports. Still, there’s reason to be optimistic that several NCAA institutions are on the right track.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="oskOo7">Prominent stories like <em>What Made Maddy Run</em>, student-athletes’ advocacy efforts, and NCAA initiatives are pushing many schools in the right direction. “For athletic departments that may not have a student-athlete, thankfully, who has taken their own life, Madison’s story can be like, ‘Let’s be one of those proactive athletic departments,’” Fagan says. “‘We might not have a student-athlete raising their hand, but there might be someone struggling silently.’”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2017/10/26/16535274/ncaa-student-athletes-mental-health-care-initiativesJulie Kliegman2017-09-19T19:12:29-04:002017-09-19T19:12:29-04:00NBA League Hack Week
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<figcaption>Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Humble suggestions for making the NBA even greater</p> <p id="6HVfhP">There’s always room for improvement. So even though the NBA is now a 12-month league that we can’t look away from, we here at <em>The Ringer</em> have a few humble suggestions to make it even greater. Welcome to League Hack Week—the first of four weeklong series leading up to opening night of the 2017-18 NBA season.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2017/9/19/16334262/nba-league-hack-weekKevin O'ConnorJason ConcepcionJonathan TjarksMark TitusThe Ringer StaffJohn Gonzalez2016-09-29T08:30:22-04:002016-09-29T08:30:22-04:00We’re With Her
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<img alt="Fox" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iEzstUmE0c5jHmgT9UXAE4GdiHQ=/131x0:2220x1567/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/55908425/1__WSVnB07qZi33YL0kJD8VA.0.jpeg" />
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<p>‘Pitch’ can’t actually put a woman in the majors, but for all the girls and women already succeeding in baseball, it can jump-start dreams</p> <p>By the time Ginny Baker takes the mound for a fictionalized version of the San Diego Padres in <em>Pitch</em>, a new Fox drama, she’s racked up comparisons to quite the variety of U.S. icons: Jackie Robinson, Hillary Clinton, and Kim Kardashian. As a stadium jam-packed with fans, many of them young girls, awaits the first-ever major league debut by a woman, it’s hard not to think of another set of girls watching intently: the ones at home.</p>
<p>For young, female athletes who have their skills doubted by male peers, coaches, and communities, the show, which premiered last Thursday, validates what they already know to be true: that girls and women can succeed at the highest levels of baseball. In fact, they already do. It’s neither new nor rare to see women thriving in organized baseball, starting with when they took up the sport in the 1860s at the Seven Sisters colleges. In the 1940s and ’50s, <a href="https://www.aagpbl.org/index.cfm/pages/league/12/league-history">more than 600 women</a> played in the all-women baseball league famously chronicled in <em>A League of Their Own</em>. Three black women <a href="http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/mlb_negro_leagues_story.jsp?story=women">joined the Negro Leagues</a> in the ’50s. The <a href="http://web.usabaseball.com/womens_national_team.jsp">U.S. women’s national team</a>, started in 2004, has found success in international tournaments. Mo’ne Davis is one of <a href="http://www.littleleague.org/learn/newsletters/LittleLeaguer/2015/llfebruary1/girls-who-made-llbws-history.htm">many girls</a> to excel in Little League. This summer, Kelsie Whitmore and Stacy Piagno made the Sonoma Stompers, a team in the independent Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs, the first coed professional baseball team <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/06/sonoma-stompers-kelsie-whitmore-stacy-piagno-history-women-baseball">since the days of the Negro Leagues</a>.</p>
<p>“All of my girls would love to play baseball in the major leagues,” says Ava Benach, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/breaking-gender-barriers-in-baseball-and-in-life/2016/08/05/b8e41b90-4ab1-11e6-bdb9-701687974517_story.html">coaches the DC Force</a>, an <a href="http://dcgirlsbaseball.com/">all-girls baseball team</a>. “They all think that they can do it, despite the fact that there’s never been anybody to do it. This makes it a little more real for them.”</p>
<p>Like the rest of Benach’s players, Harper Dunn, a 12-year-old who plays third base for the Force, couldn’t wait to watch Ginny (Kylie Bunbury) in the <em>Pitch</em> premiere. “I didn’t think that they’d make a TV show about a girl who played baseball,” says Dunn, who fell for the game at age 5. Despite what some publications might have you believe, sports enthusiasts and girls aren’t <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimesarts/status/776832296263544839">mutually exclusive groups</a>, and Dunn and her teammates represent the young athletes that cocreators Dan Fogelman and Rick Singer want tuning into the drama, which <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/ratings/tv-ratings-pitch-thursday-night-football-1201868914/">brought in just 4.3 million viewers</a> for its premiere episode.</p>
<aside><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Television Airing in Plain Sight","url":"https://theringer.com/fall-tv-airing-in-plain-sight-256ca3341cdc"}]}'></div></aside><p>The show’s attention to detail is, in part, what the creators hope helps Ginny’s story feel real to young girls. <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2016/09/12/pitch-realistic-mlb-fox">Much has</a> <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/09/how-pitch-stages-its-fake-baseball-games.html">been made</a> of <em>Pitch</em>’s authenticity, made possible by extensive cooperation from MLB and Fox: Ginny’s Padres play at the real Petco Park, former major leaguer Gregg Olson is Bunbury’s off-screen pitching coach, and Joe Buck is a <a href="https://theringer.com/joe-buck-nfl-mlb-troy-aikman-announcer-f9657c5674f9#.gndz5r5i9">familiarly irritating presence</a> in the broadcast booth. And, in an age when activists and critics discuss the importance of diversity both <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/arts/television/smaller-screens-truer-colors.html?_r=0">in front of</a> and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/10/diversity_in_the_tv_writers_room_writers_and_showrunners_of_color_lag_far.html">behind</a> the camera, it helps that <em>Pitch</em>’s nine-person writers’ room is racially diverse and includes multiple women. The creators also <a href="https://twitter.com/molly_knight/status/775348451005476864">sought baseball expertise</a> from Molly Knight, <a href="http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Best-Team-Money-Can-Buy/Molly-Knight/9781476776309">who wrote a book</a> chronicling two pivotal years in the Los Angeles Dodgers clubhouse.</p>
<p>“We’re excited about the prospect of young girls watching a show under the heading of ‘seeing is believing,’ and being able to visualize something certainly lends itself to becoming a reality,” says Singer, who also serves as an executive producer on the show. “We don’t think that it’s at all preposterous for someone to see this, recognize it as something they want to do, and set it as a genuine goal.”</p>
<p>Through the three episodes Fox has screened so far, both the show’s storytelling and point of view are promising. <em>Pitch</em> doesn’t shy away from addressing the ups and downs of being a woman in the spotlight or let Ginny off the hook as a role model, particularly in Episode 2, as she struggles with how to react to another female athlete’s sexual assault. Watching her build positive relationships with teammates, coaches, and the media while staying true to her own personality and beliefs is a compelling through line that nicely ties together the mounting box scores and clubhouse quips. There are hints of <em>Friday Night Lights</em>, as life itself is almost immediately more important than the sport at hand, and <em>Orange Is the New Black</em>, as regular flashbacks flesh out Ginny’s story (along with at least one more character’s by season’s end, Singer hints) and choice scenes cultivate empathy for characters that aren’t inherently likable.</p>
<aside><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Your 2016 MLB Award Picks","url":"https://theringer.com/the-lineup-2016-mlb-award-picks-380e28643aff"}]}'></div></aside><p><em>Pitch</em> isn’t perfect. There’s a soap-opera quality to it that feels more overbearing than <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/friday-night-lights-pilot-203051">that of <em>Friday Night Lights</em></a> — perhaps as a sexist play to what Fox executives <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/arts/television/that-padres-pitcher-in-pitch-shes-got-a-mean-screwball.html">may <em>think</em> female viewers need to tune in</a>. The pilot ends with a <em>Sixth Sense</em>–esque reveal that Ginny’s father, her biggest supporter, has been dead for much of her journey to the majors. Her interactions with teammates are played mostly for laughs, but they too are a bit of a stretch. In a matter of days, team captain and aging superstar catcher Mike Lawson (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) goes from giving Ginny a demeaning ass slap (which she returns in the same scene) to an Oscar-worthy, in-game pump-up speech that gets her throwing strikes.</p>
<p>In real life, meetings between female players and their male teammates don’t always go so poorly. “There was not one guy on the team that we just could not stand, that just hated us,” Whitmore, a pitcher and outfielder, said on <a href="https://soundcloud.com/ringermlbshow/ep-28-producing-pitch-and-the-tv-verdict-from-two-real-life-pro-players"><em>The Ringer MLB Show</em></a> last week when discussing her summer with the predominantly male Sonoma Stompers. Fellow Stomper Piagno, a pitcher and infielder, echoed the sentiment.</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?visual=true&url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F283793705&show_artwork=true" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 400px;" allowfullscreen></iframe><p>Their U.S. women’s national baseball teammate Malaika Underwood, who plays first base, says she recognizes the show must exaggerate tension to play up drama. Ginny pulls herself from her humiliating first start after 10 pitches — some of them wild, all of them balls — because the pressure got to her. “I think had she gotten to that point in her career, she would’ve earned it and she would’ve been in high-pressure situations way before that,” Underwood says. “It’s hard for me to believe she would’ve taken herself out of the game like that.”</p>
<p>Ginny, who settles down in her second start and notches her first win, tops out in the high 80s (Bunbury herself can hit 60 mph). In a male-dominated league, though, her fastball isn’t enough of a threat to be her main pitch. Her go-to is the screwball, a trick pitch that’s fallen out of fashion. Singer says the writers landed on that offering because their other leading option, the knuckleball, wouldn’t have required her to display the same strength and velocity to master, but Benach thinks there were other possibilities.</p>
<p>“I don’t know why she couldn’t have a devastating curve,” Benach says. “Even the name ‘screwball,’ if you say someone’s a screwball, as an individual, it means they’re odd and freakish. I think that was a bad editorial decision.”</p>
<p>“One of the things that I hope the Fox show does is generate some conversation around the fact that [women in baseball are] not a flash in the pan,” says Underwood, a 10-year Team USA veteran. She, like everyone else interviewed for this story, thinks women will break into Major League Baseball sooner or later. Jennifer Ring, who teaches the politics of sports at University of Nevada, Reno, says there are better questions to wonder about than when a real-life Ginny will break the gender barrier in the majors. “Why don’t we let them play any baseball?” asks Ring, who has written <a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Game-of-Their-Own,676180.aspx">two</a> <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/48yen7sx9780252032820.html">books</a> about female ballplayers. “How can we expect to develop a woman good enough to play Major League Baseball if it’s not encouraged or nurtured in the U.S.?”</p>
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<p>More than 100,000 U.S. girls play youth baseball. At the high school level, that number shrinks to just 1,000, according to <a href="http://www.baseballforall.com/about-ewdpu">Baseball For All</a>, a nonprofit that encourages girls to get in the game. There are several reasons for the precipitous drop: Some girls stop to focus on sports that could net them college scholarships. Benach says others may follow suit after a female player quits a team of predominantly boys, not wanting to be alone on an all-male squad. Still others take up softball because that’s what’s offered to them and also what’s expected of them. Dunn, the 12-year-old DC Force player, anticipates making the switch in high school, even though she prefers baseball.</p>
<p>“I think that all of the kind of groundswell and grassroots girls’ baseball movement is not going to go anywhere until there’s a place for them to go,” Ring says. “And that would be more serious, competitive baseball, when the girls that are good and love the game and want to go places with it aren’t told, ‘You have to play softball.’”</p>
<p>In the absence of an established pipeline making it easier and more common for girls to play baseball in high school, college, and beyond, perhaps even in an WNBA-like professional league, the Ginny Bakers that push through — who in real life come from families who believe in them and have the time and financial resources to devote to advantages like equipment and travel — will continue to look like freakish outliers, rather than indicators of how well girls and women, in general, are capable of playing if given the same opportunities as boys and men. While <em>Pitch</em> can’t address — or solve — all of those problems, it’s still an exciting look at what’s to come for the sport. One woman in the majors isn’t an ambitious enough end goal for baseball, even in fiction, but the show still depicts a giant step forward, thanks to a story line that has the potential to jump-start girls’ dreams.</p>
<p>“It can’t do any harm,” Ring says. “It’ll get another generation at least thinking that it’s possible. Then it’s up to us as a nation to build it. They will come.”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2016/9/29/16043868/pitch-isn-t-just-a-fantasy-4efea323819bJulie Kliegman2016-08-12T11:39:44-04:002016-08-12T11:39:44-04:00A Quiet Revolution on ‘BoJack Horseman’
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<p>Everyone’s favorite cartoon about depression turns its sights toward asexuality</p> <p>The most outlandish plotlines on <em>BoJack Horseman</em> don’t even belong to BoJack — they belong to his buddy Todd Chavez (voiced by Aaron Paul). In three seasons, the title character’s unemployed 25-year-old roommate has joined two jail gangs, penned a space-themed rock opera, and stumbled upon a Scientology-esque improv comedy troupe. He’s even facilitated a romance between two smartphones — but he’s never once had an even remotely romantic or sexual story arc for himself.</p>
<p>That’s by design. In a wide-ranging Season 3 finale jam-packed with spaghetti strainers and wild horses, a quiet scene between Todd and his sort-of high school sweetheart, Emily (Abbi Jacobson), stands out. Over massive ice cream sundaes, she confronts Todd, unable to tell after years of awkward moments and a couple of almost-sexual encounters if he’s interested in her as more than a friend. Emily asks if he’s gay.</p>
<p>“I’m not gay. I mean, I don’t think I am. But I don’t think I’m straight, either,” he says slowly, playing with his spoon. “I don’t know what I am. I think I might be nothing.”</p>
<p>The word “asexual” doesn’t come up in Todd’s answer, but it’s certainly implied. And that matters: Characters, especially prominent ones, coming out as asexual — or even thinking about coming out as asexual — isn’t something that happens all that often on TV or elsewhere in pop culture, even though aces (the umbrella term that covers people spanning the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/19/asexual-spectrum_n_3428710.html">asexual spectrum</a>) aren’t <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/10/14/asexual.study/">thought to be all that uncommon</a>. That spectrum includes straight and queer identities ranging from demisexual (people who are interested in sex, but only with people they have emotional connections to) to aromantic asexual (people who are not interested in pursuing sex or romance).</p>
<aside><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Lisa Hanawalt’s Hollywood Adventure","url":"https://theringer.com/bojack-horseman-season-3-lisa-hanawalt-d13005e77007"}]}'></div></aside><p>“Just the fact that they’re introducing him in such a natural, organic way, him not actually knowing what he is but he’s not sure he’s hetero or gay, it’s really refreshing,” Jahdai Soberanis Lara, a 22-year-old Mexican college student who identifies as asexual, tells <em>The Ringer</em>.</p>
<p>A realistic, understated depiction of a potentially asexual character isn’t something Soberanis Lara and others in the asexual community are accustomed to seeing. The characters that do exist typically aren’t labeled as asexual by the show’s writers, and even when they are, with few <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Shortland_Street_characters_%282007%29#Gerald_Tippett">exceptions</a>, they tend to play into misinformed stereotypes.</p>
<p>Most notably, a 2012 <em>House</em> episode <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/house_gets_asexuality_wrong/">features</a> its title character refusing to acknowledge a couple’s asexuality. The doctor ultimately finds a pituitary tumor inhibiting the man’s sex drive. Then, it’s revealed that the woman isn’t truly asexual; she was just pretending to be for her husband. In reality, asexuality, just like any other orientation, can be fluid, but it isn’t a fake or temporary status.</p>
<p>Other popular shows — think <a href="http://flavorwire.com/395770/doctor-who-and-the-fear-of-an-asexual-female-protagonist"><em>Doctor Who</em></a>, <em>Dexter</em>, and <em>Sherlock — </em>feature protagonists that send a different, but still harmful, message. “These characters all fit this narrow stereotype,” says David Jay, an activist who founded the <a href="http://www.asexuality.org/home/">Asexual Visibility and Education Network</a>. “They are in some ways literally and figuratively inhuman.” Those in the crew of “lanky, smart, white, male characters,” as he puts it, rounded out by <em>The Big Bang Theory</em>’s <a href="http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/big-bang-theory-sheldon-amy-sex-episode-spoilers-1201663562/">Sheldon Cooper</a>, often seem incapable of forming intimate, emotional relationships with others, even platonically.</p>
<p>“If I had had more positive examples and more accurate depictions of asexuality, I don’t think I would’ve felt as broken,” says <a href="https://laurenjankowski.com/">Lauren Jankowski</a>, a 31-year-old writer who identifies as an aromantic asexual. “I wouldn’t have been as lonely. I wouldn’t have felt like an outsider for as long as I did.”</p>
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<p>The portrayal of asexual characters on TV falls into a broader, ongoing conversation about how writers depict marginalized groups. Many shows — <em>Orange Is the New Black</em>, <em>Master of None</em>, and <em>Black-ish</em>, to name a few — are crafting smart story lines <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/features/television-race-diversity-ratings-1201712266/">centered on race</a>, with some even <a href="http://flavorwire.com/547060/lets-talk-about-tvs-obsession-with-police-violence-and-black-lives-matter">addressing</a> Black Lives Matter in sensitive, productive ways. <em>BoJack</em>, in its <a href="http://themembrane.kinja.com/bojack-gets-depression-right-where-others-failed-by-jul-1680150095">nuanced take on depression and substance abuse</a>, is part of a growing contingent of shows that offer viewers creative and nonstigmatizing representations of people with <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2015/12/mental-illness-got-some-respect-on-tv-in-2015.html">mental illness</a>.</p>
<p>In 2015, <em>Slate</em> <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/04/14/asexual_and_intersex_tv_characters_how_sirens_and_faking_it_brought_them.html">declared</a> asexuality “television’s new frontier.” June Thomas highlighted <em>Sirens</em>, a short-lived USA comedy about Chicago paramedics, for featuring the recurring character Voodoo, an asexual, female EMT. While some aces echo <em>Slate</em>’s praise, Jankowski calls the character “cringeworthy,” <a href="https://bitchmedia.org/post/were-not-broken-asexual-characters-in-pop-culture">arguing</a> that she was portrayed as an obstacle for a smitten male coworker.</p>
<p>“I’d say since the asexual-visibility movement has picked up steam, that’s probably why we’re seeing a couple more characters,” Jankowski says. “The backlash to the <em>House</em> story line also seemed to be kind of a tipping point, like, ‘Oh, maybe we should be more careful when we write asexual characters. There’s a whole crop of people that will be mad.’”</p>
<p>While <em>BoJack</em> seems to be taking a promising step toward more accurate representation of asexual characters, it’s too early to know for sure. Soberanis Lara wonders if Todd’s exploration into his orientation risks being erased next season if he meets an irresistible man or woman — if, to be blunt, <em>BoJack </em>pulls a <em>House</em>.</p>
<aside><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Office Argument: Is ‘BoJack Horseman’ Great or Terrible?","url":"https://theringer.com/bojack-horseman-season-3-episode-4-argument-1f461bfbeb45"}]}'></div></aside><p>“What I’m hoping they do, and what I think will be a lot more interesting, whether or not he uses the word ‘asexuality,’ is having him explore that experience the way people in our community do,” Jay says, adding that what Todd has articulated so far sounds to many aces like a familiar starting point for sorting out how they will identify. Jay hopes that we see Todd ask himself more questions. Is he interested in pursuing romantic relationships, or just platonic ones? Is he averse to having sex, or simply neutral toward it? Does he ultimately want to describe himself as asexual?</p>
<p>If <em>BoJack</em> lets Todd ponder those questions without shaming him or muting his warmhearted and patently absurd personality, the show will have succeeded in treating asexual people like actual human beings — a statement that should by no means feel bold in 2016, but, for <a href="https://erinfconley.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/giphy.gif">Hollywood</a>, would be a huge leap. Still, one TV portrayal can go only so far toward changing public perceptions of asexuality, especially when it’s delivered through a cisgender white (animated) man. As in society at large, the most underrepresented members of the asexual community, both onscreen and off, are those who are nonwhite, disabled, and/or genderqueer.</p>
<p>That said, all of the diverse, fictionalized asexual characters in the world wouldn’t even be enough to adequately represent ace stories. That’s because asexual representation behind the scenes matters even more. “I have a huge issue with more people being concerned about fictional asexuals than they are about actual asexual artists,” Jankowski says. The people most capable of telling creative, honest, and compelling stories about asexuality are those living it themselves.</p>
<p>Allosexual (nonasexual) creators can definitely tackle story lines like Todd’s and <a href="http://swankivy.tumblr.com/post/143567802305/write-an-asexual-character">write them well</a>, Jankowski says, but they would be wise to consult with people who can provide firsthand experience of what it’s like to be asexual. That’s much like what <em>Transparent</em> creator Jill Soloway has done by making a <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/transparent-launches-trans-affirmative-action.html">concerted effort</a> after Season 1 to work with trans women and hire a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-our-lady-j-transparent-first-trans-writer-20151211-story.html">trans writer</a>, who brings a much-needed perspective to the writers’ room. (It’s not clear whether anyone working on <em>BoJack</em> identifies as asexual, and Netflix declined to comment to <em>The Ringer</em> on the show’s depiction of asexuality.) Todd’s self-identification as “nothing” could be, in hindsight, derogatory — or, handled with care, the opposite: Jay says it’s common for asexuals to use language like that when they’re figuring out their orientation.</p>
<p>Asexual artists aren’t necessarily out to their coworkers, at least to the same degree that prominent LGBTQ creators and stars have been in recent years, but they are working in Hollywood. Many members of <a href="http://acelosangeles.tumblr.com/">Ace Los Angeles</a>, a social group for people on the asexual spectrum, have ties to the entertainment industry, says codirector Samantha Chappell. She and Shari B. Ellis, one of the group’s founders, note that it’s tough to come out with an orientation that often requires a lot of additional explanation and clarification — thanks in part to the misguided representations of asexuality on TV.</p>
<p>“All of these negative portrayals do very much come into the general public’s consciousness, whether they’re aware of it or not,” Chappell says, rattling off a few of the misconceptions she hears. “We just haven’t met the right person yet. There are people who genuinely argue that we haven’t gone through some sort of puberty yet. … I’ve had people ask me if I can sexually reproduce. Multiple people, not just one.”</p>
<p>Every televised example that signal-boosts even the simplest facts — that, say, not being interested in sex doesn’t make someone a psychopath, or vice versa — can make it that much easier for people to feel safe speaking openly about their orientation. By introducing a plotline that, at least so far, values subtlety over shock value, <em>BoJack</em> writers seemingly understand that asexual representations on TV need to start from square one. Viewers, like the character himself, need to bolster their asexual vocabulary before speaking the language. As Todd might say, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxK9qJCpH-8">Hooray</a>, correcting misinformation!”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/2016/8/12/16046836/bojack-horseman-asexual-representation-netflix-3c9d6c80d49dJulie Kliegman