During the past year, podcasts have had a moment, exploding onto the cultural scene and changing the way people get information. Maeve Duggan, BA’11, MA ’12, and her former roommate, Brynn Kolada realized a need for a female perspective on sports, and together launched the podcast “Not Your Boyfriend’s Sport Show.”
“I don’t think you can underestimate Serial, and that being kind of the’ gateway drug’ of podcasts,” said Duggan.
Serial is the wildly popular podcast hosted by journalist Sara Koenig that kick-started the frenzy over podcasts and turned them into a cultural phenomenon. Podcasts offer a platform for people with great ideas and niche audiences to disseminate their ideas with few production costs.
“I think that people have become really accustomed to being able to select content and media that is of interest specifically to them,” said Duggan. “So there’s room for lots more niche material because you don’t have to play to a general audience.”
The immediate inspiration for the podcast came to Maeve and Brynn when they lived together and were watching an episode of ESPN Sports Center. They were huge sports fans but it always bothered them that sports shows largely omitted women’s voices in the discussion featured the same male players, ignored comprehensive coverage of women’s sports and the role sports play in society.
“The societal impacts of sports gets a heyday every once in a while when an athlete does something terrible or an athlete does something really charitable, but there’s so much in between that that’s so often not addressed,” said Duggan.
That night, they set up an email and a URL address for Not Your Boyfriend’s Sports Show [NYBF]. The next step was actually figuring how to produce a regular show. With the help of another SMPA alumnus, Michael Moffett, they designed the logo, quickly gathered tips for production, and began creating content.
A new episode of NYBF is released on a bi-weekly schedule and every moment leading up to a show is critical. For each show, Maeve and Brynn adhere to major themes, and conduct research on that topic for an entire week. They gather articles and as much information as they can from players, coaches, administrators, and fans to get as holistic a perspective as possible. The aim is to make each episode conversational, smart and fluid.
The podcast is ultimately uploaded to their official website as well as to iTunes or Stitcher. They also write a newsletter to go along with each episode.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into the episode before we record it and a lot of work that goes into the episode after we record it,” said Duggan. “The episode itself is the fastest but also the most fun part to do.”
Some of their more highly rated shows have included guests such as USA Today sports reporter Nicole Auerbach as well as other women who work in sports and share their experiences about navigating a male-dominated field. NYBF addresses other compelling issues outside of gender that relate to sports such as injuries, apparel and doping. Some topics might be controversial but they serve as critical forays into more enlightened sports talk.
“I think that sports can be a really powerful window into some of the major cultural conversations that we’re having outside of sports,” said Duggan. “Sports doesn’t live separately from the rest of our culture and society. It’s a product of it.”
For some of the subjects they tackle on the show, the goal may not necessarily be to settle on a definite answer, but to simply have an interesting discussion. In one of their episodes they talk about athletes participating in social movements, particularly the Black Lives Matter movement. Duggan and Kolada raised the question about whether athletes had a responsibility to use their notoriety to raise awareness about certain causes.
“Why do we have these expectations of athletes? Do they have a responsibility to seek out and be leaders in their community?” said Duggan.
Other episodes are less heavy. One of Duggan’s favorite shows is their Mother’s Day episode where they interviewed their mothers. They both grew up during the Title IX era in the 70s, and shared how it impacted their lives.
“It was a good reminder that the experiences that Brynn and I had playing sports growing up are very different from our mother’s generation…,” said Duggan. “Then also thinking forward about how much farther there’s left to go before women’s sports are taken as seriously.”
Duggan says there is a list of folks she would love to have on the show at some point, a few of them hosts of other podcasts that she really admires. Ultimately, Duggan hopes that the podcast will help women who enjoy sports to become more conscious consumers. She also wants to encourage people to pay attention to the deeper conversations about sports and the social issues they inevitably highlight.
“I hope that more people wake up to the narratives that sports can tell outside of touchdowns and baskets, and goals,” said Duggan.