Episode 41: “Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back” with Kavitha Davidson and Jessica Luther

In this week’s episode, Johanna and Nathan are joined by co-authors of the hot-off-the-press Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Sports Fan, Jessica Luther and Kavitha A. Davidson, to chat about what it means to be a fan as moral and ethical dilemmas complicate the sports that we seem to love so dearly. In the first part of the episode, Jessica and Kavitha walk us through the compelling connections between the books key arguments and everything we are currently witnessing in sport – from the pandemic to racial injustice and white supremacy and to the powerful labor mobilizations we are seeing in the sporting world. The discussion then shifts to where sports fans and fandom fits into all of this as we ask, “what responsibilities do fans have in this moment?” The episode concludes with reflections form Jessica and Kavitha on harm done by the Olympics and its governing bodies and their own fandom as it relates to sport. This is an episode you surely do not want to miss.

Kavitha Davidson is a sportswriter for The Athletic, and former writer for ESPNW and Bloomberg. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and NBC News Think, and among many others. She is also the host of The Athletic’s podcast, The Lead.

Jessica Luther is a journalist, co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast, and Ph.D candidate in Physical Culture and Sport Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. Her work has appeared in countless venues such as ESPN Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Buzzfeed, and on and on. She is the author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape (2016, Akashic Books).

Together, they are the authors of the BRAND NEW book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Sports Fan (2020, University of Texas Press). Check this book out!

You can follow both on Twitter @KavithaDavidson and @JessicaLuther, and while you’re at it follow @BurnItDownPod!

For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Credit @punkademic)

After listening to the episode, check out our most recent pieces:

“Red-Scare Rhetoric Isn’t Gone From Histories of American Sport” in Jacobin Magazine

"Canceling the College-Football Season Isn't Enough" published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“'We are being gaslit': College football and Covid-19 are imperiling athletes” in The Guardian

“Canceling the college football season is about union busting, not health” also in The Guardian

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