0:00

Oh, oh my gosh. Welcome

0:07

back to Behind the Bastards, a

0:09

podcast where unbeknownst up to this

0:11

moment to everyone who has been

0:13

listening for years, Matt

0:15

Lieb and I live in a

0:18

house that is essentially an exact

0:20

replica of Burton Ernie's home in

0:22

Sesame Street. And we're

0:24

just we're in bed. We're

0:27

getting relaxing from a long day of

0:29

watching terrible things on the Internet. Matt,

0:31

are you are you tired? Are you

0:33

bummed out all the time?

0:35

Every day is a new fresh

0:37

crop of horrors, which is why

0:39

I like to go home to

0:41

our special Burton Ernie house that

0:44

we live in together in secret. You do it. We

0:47

do. That was really tough on your wife,

0:49

but I think it was the right decision we made. Yeah.

0:52

I mean, she hates it. So,

0:54

you know, like it was pretty

0:56

clear in the green up that

0:58

I would continue to be living

1:00

with Robert Evans in our Burton

1:02

Ernie compound. Shockingly expensive. Unbelievably. The

1:06

rent on Sesame Street is a nightmare.

1:08

It's insane. It's just a lot of

1:10

gentrification now, you know. We are the

1:12

gentrification. Yeah. Well, sure. But

1:14

I mean, when we first decided to move in there,

1:16

you know, it was like it was a nice, you

1:19

know, neighborhood. It had a lot of culture, you

1:21

know. That's right. Well, there's just

1:23

a lot of Oscar the Grouches. Yeah. Just

1:26

say that, you know, they're in that

1:28

trash can. And I'm like, wow, maybe

1:31

try doing less fentanyl. You

1:33

know, speaking

1:35

of fentanyl, you know, the emotional

1:37

equivalent of fentanyl, Matt, is when

1:41

you accidentally, without trying to

1:43

have three straight weeks or

1:45

like six straight weeks of stories about

1:47

pedophiles on Behind the Bastards. Oh, God.

1:50

I didn't mean to. Right. I

1:52

mean, I did with the Margaret episodes that we were doing

1:54

talking about those German pedophiles. I

1:56

didn't realize that the next like

1:59

several weeks. would just happen to, I

2:01

mean, when I started researching the Thomas Jefferson

2:03

episodes, I should have know, realized like, oh

2:05

no, I'm just doing another pedophile. I got,

2:07

I got locked into a bad pedophile loop

2:09

is what I'm saying, man. Sure. It

2:12

happens to the best of us, you know,

2:14

you're trying to do your regular podcast schedule

2:16

and it's just pedophile after pedophile. Oops, all

2:19

pedophiles. Oops, all pedophiles. But

2:21

you finally went outside. You got some

2:23

fresh air. Oh yeah.

2:25

I went off-roading on a mountain and

2:27

I came back and spent an entire

2:29

week reading about the Olympics. And I

2:31

am, I am proud to say, Matt,

2:33

no babies die in this episode except

2:36

for like off screen and

2:38

no pedophilia in these episodes. You know,

2:40

we're safe. We're safe. I'm

2:43

so excited. Here's a round of applause.

2:46

No, that was laughter. Fuck.

2:48

The point is, is I have a sound board, but

2:50

I have not figured out exactly which sound does what.

2:53

So it's going to be a test. We'll see. Okay.

2:56

Okay. A lot of tests this

2:58

week. Well, that's good. I just want to promise

3:00

everyone before the cold open closes, we got a

3:02

fun one this week. So when we come back,

3:05

we're going to start talking about Avery Brundage, who

3:07

was the American who kind of

3:09

ran the Olympics in the United States. And

3:11

eventually he's going to be on the IOC

3:13

and he's going to run the Olympics for

3:15

everybody. And he is just a,

3:18

just a Nazi, just a real good

3:20

old fashioned American Nazi. And

3:22

so now I understand why it got the

3:24

call. Yeah. Yeah. We're

3:27

going to have fun with this one. Anyway, that's the cold open.

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news. agents on global players. Ah,

6:07

and we're warm. Matt, before we

6:09

roll into this episode, you got

6:11

any pluggables to plug? Yeah, that's

6:13

right. I waited for after the

6:15

cold open, guys. Yeah, I mean,

6:17

I do have some pluggables. I

6:20

actually started a new podcast, and

6:23

this podcast is about Israeli

6:25

propaganda. It's called Bad

6:28

Has Barra, the world's most moral

6:30

podcast. Has Barra,

6:32

of course, being the word for

6:34

explaining, which is kind of a

6:36

euphemism in Hebrew and Israel for

6:39

PR propaganda. Yeah. And

6:41

so, yeah, I started that podcast a

6:43

few months ago, and just, yeah, if

6:45

anyone out there is looking

6:48

for sort of information

6:51

about what's going on in

6:53

the news regarding all this

6:55

Israel-Palestine stuff, yeah, that's what

6:57

I've been doing. I've been

6:59

doing it from an anti-Zionist Jewish bent

7:01

so that people can more

7:05

fully understand what they are seeing and hearing

7:07

with their eyes and why people are telling

7:09

them not to believe what they see and

7:11

hear with their eyes and ears. Well,

7:14

that does kind of fit in with our

7:16

subject of today's episode, because as is going

7:18

on right now in Gaza, we are talking

7:20

about a time when a bunch of horrible

7:22

stuff was being done by the government of

7:24

a country and a lot of

7:26

other countries, everyone just kind of tried to

7:28

pretend it wasn't because it was really inconvenient

7:30

to deal with the problem. Now, in this

7:32

case, the country's Germany. Oh,

7:34

yes. Yeah.

7:37

So we're going to get to that. But

7:39

first, we kind of need to start this

7:41

episode. We really have to peel back a

7:44

couple of thousand years here because it's worth

7:46

talking about what the Olympics was in the

7:49

years. We have to start from thousands of years

7:51

ago. Yeah, we do. God

7:54

damn. All right. When was the first? Oh, that's right.

7:56

The Olympics is this thing. Yeah,

8:00

no further than that. This is

8:02

the ancient Greeks, right? Yeah. Yeah,

8:04

they are they're much older Once

8:06

could you do once upon a

8:08

time once upon a time?

8:11

There were these guys called the ancient

8:13

Greeks and you know, they

8:15

invented Western philosophy and they invented some chunk

8:17

of mathematics I don't know which part of

8:19

mathematics, but I remember learning that some of

8:21

math was invented by the ancient Greeks Sure,

8:24

and they made a lot of art that

8:27

said well They did a lot of great

8:29

stuff. They spent the bulk of their time

8:31

murdering each other in really terrible ways The

8:33

ancient Greeks loved killing each other Yeah,

8:35

but in the late 700s BC

8:37

the ancient Greeks decided let's do

8:40

something besides killing each other and

8:42

philosophy Let's do sports. I

8:44

love that. It's kind of right in

8:46

between. It's right in between. It's a

8:48

mix, right? Yeah, it's like everyone fights.

8:50

Okay, but yeah, we're not gonna kill

8:52

at the end. We're just gonna you

8:54

know You're not gonna give a trophy

8:57

Yeah So

8:59

this is not a new sports was not

9:01

a new concept in the 700s BC people

9:03

had been Sportsing for basically as long as

9:05

we've had cities at least in some fashion

9:07

or another nice But the idea that became

9:10

the Olympics was new which is that all

9:12

of these cities that are periodically, you know

9:14

At war and conflict with each other Regularly,

9:17

we're all gonna come together and everybody's gonna

9:19

compete without murdering each other, right? That is

9:21

kind of a that's a novel idea at

9:23

the time Yeah, the first Olympics,

9:25

you know, I think the dates there's always a

9:27

little bit of flex in dates this far back

9:29

But was probably around 776 BC And

9:34

it was initially not a great show It's

9:36

just a single 200 meter race

9:38

which given that ever people are like, you know

9:40

If you're traveling if you're walking five days

9:42

to get to another city 200

9:48

meters Lost

9:50

three children on my way to watch

9:52

people sprint for a while my family

9:54

died But boy that guy was slightly

9:56

faster than anyone I'd ever seen before

10:00

It's sad, but also I won $500 in a bet with DraftKings.

10:05

With DraftKings, that's right. DraftKings first started in

10:07

776 BC. Yes.

10:10

Yeah. So everyone seems to have

10:12

agreed that like doing a whole Olympics for

10:14

one little race was kind of bullshit and

10:17

not worth the trouble. So they started adding

10:19

games pretty quickly. Now running is always going

10:21

to be a staple as it is today,

10:24

but the Greeks were like modern humans, is

10:26

that once they figured out the idea of

10:28

big international sporting events, they all kind of

10:30

solidified that the best thing to gather to

10:32

watch other people do was beat the shit

10:34

out of each other and fighting. Yeah, I

10:36

mean, right? It's so sad because they were

10:39

probably trying to get away from that. Can

10:41

we do something like sportsmanship like and peaceful?

10:43

What's the furthest thing from war? Running. Yeah.

10:46

Listen, there's got to be blood or else why are these

10:49

people going to risk the lives of their kids to walk

10:51

all the way over here? Yeah, I literally can't even get

10:53

hard without watching a guy die anymore. Like, what are we

10:55

doing? So

10:57

wrestling was added in at the

10:59

18th Olympiad in 708 BC. Boxing

11:03

entered for the 23rd Olympiad in 688

11:05

BC. And

11:07

then pankration was added in the 33rd

11:09

Olympiad. You're going to have to explain

11:11

that one. It's basically, yeah,

11:14

it's ancient MMA. It's like the first

11:16

kind of MMA, right? Like it's like

11:18

a proto MMA style competition, right? OK.

11:21

So this is what eventually leads to the

11:23

invention of Joe Rogan. Oh,

11:25

damn. Yeah, who as we all

11:27

know is an undying immortal figure.

11:30

Yeah. He's the Alpha and the Omega. That's

11:32

right. That's right. He's essentially the emperor from

11:34

Warhammer 40,000. But he really,

11:37

really just focused on fighting sports in

11:39

the Alpha male and the Omega male.

11:43

So the ancient Olympics had a pretty good

11:45

run. They're doing this for like not far

11:47

off from 1,000 years, something

11:50

like that, a little over. Because they finally died. It

11:52

goes like 776 to 393 AD, thereabouts. Again,

11:58

these are kind of soft. dates

12:00

on the last of the ancient

12:02

Olympics is two. The

12:04

end of the old Olympics is

12:06

generally blamed on Emperor Theodosius I,

12:09

who is said to, he's one of these

12:11

big Christian Roman emperors, and he's said to

12:13

have considered it pagan idolatry. I

12:15

think that more rigorous scholarship has cast

12:18

a lot of doubt on this because

12:20

he doesn't seem to have actually banned

12:22

them explicitly. But whatever the truth, whatever

12:25

specifically leads to the fall of

12:27

the Olympics, they do stop doing

12:29

them. Right? By the

12:31

time, yeah, it's a bummer. Well, I don't know. I don't

12:33

actually like the Olympics. I

12:35

mean, listen, I don't know whether or not

12:37

the Olympics is good. I just said that

12:39

there was like the first nerd emperor who's

12:41

like, Oh, no sports ball, please. Maybe he may

12:44

have just, it may have just been that

12:46

he was banning other pagan shit, but like

12:48

that stuff was less popular than the Olympics.

12:50

And so people kind of lied about it.

12:52

I don't know. I'm not an emperor

12:54

Theodosius, the first expert. I just know people have cast

12:56

doubt on the fact that the idea that he killed

12:58

the Olympics. Sure. We'll never know. Probably.

13:01

At any rate, by the time

13:03

the Roman Empire, the Western Roman Empire falls,

13:05

we're not doing Olympics anymore. They are a

13:08

fading memory and they would stay that way

13:10

until a French man with a ridiculous mustache

13:12

was born in 1863. I'm

13:14

going to ask Sophie to get us a picture of that

13:16

man's mustache up on the old screen

13:19

here. Yeah. His

13:21

name was Pierre de Coubertin and

13:23

he became French by which I

13:25

mean he was born at a

13:28

terrible time to be French because when

13:30

he's seven or so, he's born in like 1863. So

13:32

he has seven or eight when the emperor Napoleon III

13:35

decides, you know who I want to start a

13:37

fight with? Prussia. Yeah.

13:40

Best Napoleon. Yeah. Best

13:42

Napoleon. He's my favorite guy. He just went

13:44

in there and was like, I'm going to be like my

13:47

great uncle. What was he? It was like a nephew or

13:49

something. He was like a great uncle. I

13:52

don't mind if I get the actual, it's kind of a tortured. Yeah.

13:54

But he's like, I'm going to do it, but more

13:56

shitty and lose faster. I'm going to be really bad

13:58

at it. Instead of beating

14:01

the Prussians at a war, I'm gonna

14:03

lose so badly that they create Germany.

14:06

But look at this guy's mustache. My

14:09

God, what a, that's a, one thing

14:11

you can't critique the man on is

14:13

his facial hair. He looks great. Yeah,

14:16

he looks like he's just railed a

14:18

triple. It's incredible stuff. I

14:20

love it. Oh my

14:22

God, this guy. Every pick I click,

14:25

it just gets better. This

14:27

man, this man couldn't, it's

14:29

what I know he actually did live

14:31

outside, like past the 1800s, but he

14:34

shouldn't have. Like that is an 1890s

14:36

face. That's perfect

14:38

for the 1890s. Pierre's

14:40

family were aristocrats and he was their fourth

14:43

child. His dad, and again, they're aristocrats, so

14:45

his dad doesn't have to do anything for

14:47

a living. So he's like a painter and

14:49

he's a royalist. He believes in bringing, I

14:52

think it might've been the borbans back as

14:54

kings. And his

14:56

childhood suffered from the fact that the whole

14:58

royalist cause in France kind

15:00

of takes a shit after 1871, which

15:03

seems to have made his dad miserable and his dad

15:05

seems to have kind of taken it out on the

15:07

family. Unlike a lot of European

15:10

aristocrats, de Coubertin is going to grow

15:12

up profoundly anti-war. He is actually never

15:14

kind of not unique in this period,

15:16

but it's kind of refreshingly rare. He's

15:18

never one of these guys who's like,

15:20

ah, the gallantry of combat. Because his

15:22

earliest memories are like, we got our

15:24

asses kicked. We should never have a

15:26

war again. Yeah, we're not

15:28

good at it anymore. We had one

15:31

good Napoleon and the other guy sucked.

15:33

Everything's got to shit sense him. We

15:35

had borbans, we had the duked Orléans

15:37

guy became the thing. We can't do

15:40

any of this shit. Let's stop. So

15:43

he's a great student. He goes to Jesuit

15:45

school, which is like, if you're

15:47

like at all Catholic-y, that's where you want to go

15:50

back in this period. But he

15:52

refuses to follow his father's wishes because his dad

15:54

wants him to join the military, which again had

15:56

been kind of the expected thing for folks in

15:58

his chunk of the aristocracy. By

16:01

the time he's a young adult, DeCuberteen

16:03

has decided he wants to study law

16:05

and history, and he seems

16:07

to have kind of thoroughly concluded that

16:09

like my father's France failed, right? Like

16:11

the culture in which I was raised

16:14

in is a failure and we need

16:16

to make changes, which he's not wrong

16:18

about. At age 20,

16:20

he encounters a book called Tom

16:23

Brown's School Days. This

16:25

is a really influential, maybe the

16:27

most influential piece of fiction in

16:29

educational history, because it both,

16:31

because of how popular it is, like

16:34

the English boarding school system had existed

16:36

before, because this book is literally about

16:38

it. And in fact, it's like fictionalizing

16:40

an actual English, like basically

16:42

principal Tom Arnold, who was like- Tom

16:45

Arnold? Yes, yes, that Tom Arnold. He

16:47

has deep roots, deep roots. He has

16:49

also been around for a while, goddamn.

16:51

And was, yes, this was the thing he

16:54

did before he wasn't, what was it, coneheads? He was

16:56

a conehead, yay. Oh, he was in the stupids. The

16:58

stupids, the stupids. Jesus Christ.

17:02

So this is one of the most

17:04

influential pieces of fiction in educational history,

17:06

because not only does it like create

17:08

the cultural image of the

17:10

English boarding school system as this incredibly

17:12

like renowned and like, it's part of

17:14

why people from all over the rest

17:17

of the world start enrolling like rich

17:19

people in English boarding schools, right? Is

17:21

the success of this book. And

17:23

it also launches the genre of

17:25

boarding school novel as like

17:27

a thing. So this is literally like the, this

17:30

is like the start of the DNA line that

17:32

ends in Harry Potter is Tom Brown's two days,

17:34

right? These are directly related. Like we get Harry

17:36

Potter because of Tom Brown's school days. This is

17:38

like the first YA novel. Yes. I love this.

17:41

Yeah, it, I mean, it has a lot to

17:43

do with that, yeah. Tom

17:45

Brown's school days focused on the rugby school, which

17:47

is again, run by Tom Arnold. In

17:50

one later article on the subject, a

17:52

guy named Volker Kluge writes, Arnold sought

17:54

to educate his students by including sports

17:56

and community games for Christian gentlemen. I

17:59

was confronted with... something completely

18:01

new and unexpected. Athletic education,

18:03

Coubertin wrote. Now,

18:05

Arnold actually didn't like sports. He's one

18:07

of those guys where he's like, I

18:10

think this is kind of like a

18:12

little common for me, but

18:15

if you don't give boys away to

18:17

tire themselves out, they'll masturbate. So this

18:19

is the best option that we have.

18:21

Right? It always goes back to that.

18:23

It's always someone trying to stop you

18:25

from coming as a teen. What the

18:27

fuck? The entire route of Victorian civilization

18:29

is stopping boys from coming. That's

18:31

all that it's about. How do we stop this? In

18:35

an article for The Daily Beast, Candida Moss

18:37

writes, Arnold believed that in

18:39

order to create Christian gentlemen, he had to

18:41

replace bad impulses with good. Arnold himself wasn't

18:43

a particular fan of sport, but he preferred

18:45

it to fighting or poaching. If you exhaust

18:47

young men and promote the idea

18:49

of sportsmanship, you will keep them out of

18:51

trouble. So Coubertin, he

18:53

takes on this and he's going to take

18:56

it further, right? But this idea that sporting

18:59

kills bad impulses in young

19:02

men, right? And he's

19:04

not as obsessed with coming as he

19:06

is with violence, right? But he's going

19:08

to become increasingly convinced that somewhere in

19:10

sporting lies the solution to all of

19:12

these wars that keep happening. Yeah,

19:15

I kind of feel that. There's something

19:17

to that there where you're just like, what

19:19

if instead of everyone just

19:21

killing a bunch of people every

19:23

few years, what if

19:25

we all just fucking had a Magic the

19:28

Gathering tournament and figured out from there, you

19:30

know, I get it. Yeah, I've seen some

19:32

like, not quite sports riots, but I've seen

19:34

some like really rowdy fights over sports in

19:36

Germany between like German and French fans. And

19:38

I thought at the time was like, well,

19:40

this is a real move up from World

19:42

War I. Like this is so much better

19:44

than the last time you guys got angry

19:47

at each other. No one's getting gassed, you

19:49

know? Everyone is just kind of like using

19:51

a couple teeth. What an innovation. Cooper

19:55

teens spent the 1880s traveling around the

19:57

world through the US and UK and

19:59

Sweden. Switzerland and meeting all sorts of advocates

20:02

for youth sports and sporting organizations. Particularly

20:05

influential was a meeting with the

20:07

Peace League. And this is

20:09

an activist group who taught that boxing

20:11

was a great way to prevent war,

20:13

right? Like if you, and

20:16

I guess partly, yeah, I

20:19

get that giving people a healthy outlet for

20:21

physical aggression could be useful in that. But

20:23

also, there's a lot of head injuries that

20:26

come with boxing. And we know that head

20:28

injuries. Contribute

20:30

directly to war. Yeah, listen,

20:32

there's pros and cons to this idea, but

20:37

I get it, I get it. You know,

20:39

it could've, you know. You

20:41

can see the logic. It doesn't stop

20:43

war. You know, they were ultimately wrong.

20:45

Yes, but I get to trying it

20:47

out for a little bit. It's not like,

20:49

yeah, it is. It's one of those things I both

20:51

want to make some bit jokes because of how like

20:53

wrong this guy is. But also, I can

20:56

see the logic. Like at the time you

20:58

can't, it's not

21:00

dumb or like shitty for like wanting

21:02

this to work. I also wish it

21:05

had worked. It's better logic than, you

21:07

know, oh, this will stop kids from

21:09

coming. Yeah. That

21:11

of course is not gonna be, I don't

21:14

even know what their thought process is because

21:16

I've never been too tired to jack off.

21:18

No, no, no, no young man ever has

21:20

been. No young man has ever been. We

21:23

all always have a little extra room for

21:25

jell-o, if you know what I mean. Yeah.

21:27

It's also like he's got better logic than

21:29

the guys who are like, well, we've built

21:31

the deadliest gun ever. Surely this will stop

21:34

war. Yeah. No

21:36

one's gonna wanna get in front of one

21:38

of these guys. So war's over. Yeah, no

21:40

one's gonna feed an entire generation of their

21:43

young men into these things. We

21:45

built a giant human meat grinder. Anyways,

21:47

war is over now, right? Yeah. Oh

21:50

no, the conveyor belt is pulling more men into

21:52

it. Oh, cruel fate.

21:57

So, Cooper Teen wrote that boxing

21:59

could be be a peacemaker. And

22:02

still, again, this whole process is

22:05

what culminates in him being inspired to

22:07

revive the Olympics. He arrives in the

22:09

Olympics because he has this messianic belief

22:11

in the power of sports to end

22:13

global conflict. And I think he's mostly

22:16

when he talks about ending war, he's

22:18

not talking about ending all these little

22:20

colonial wars. He's primarily talking about avoiding

22:22

another European war. Right? Yeah. Right. Right.

22:25

Right. Yeah. A war that will

22:27

cost more lives for his own

22:29

people. Whereas a nice colonial

22:32

war is just like, no, that's just a simple

22:34

eradication. Yeah, we don't even hear about that on

22:36

the news, really. Yeah, exactly. That's not even people.

22:38

Don't worry about that, Chet. You can kill all

22:40

them. So as DeCuberteen wrote,

22:42

let us export rowers, runners, and fencers. There

22:44

is the free trade of the future. And

22:46

on the day when it is introduced within

22:49

the walls of old Europe, the cause of

22:51

peace will have received a new and mighty

22:53

stay. Sure. It's a nice idea. Yeah.

22:56

Eventually, he convenes a Congress in 18.

22:59

And obviously, I am yada yada-ing a lot about this

23:01

process. Sure. Because we don't need to get into the

23:03

weeds of it. But they have a Congress in 1893

23:05

to decide, like

23:08

he and a bunch of other folks

23:10

who are part of major sporting organizations

23:12

in the West, how are we going

23:14

to revive the Olympic Games? Right? It

23:16

is decided that these games should be

23:19

for amateur athletes only, not paid professionals.

23:22

This is the first of what are going to

23:24

become mini breaks with the original Olympics. In

23:27

the ancient Greek Olympics, there was no rule

23:29

against them making money for winning, right? You

23:31

could bet on shit. They didn't have any

23:33

problem with that. As far

23:35

as we know, there were no rules against doping. Now,

23:38

doping was different in ancient Greece. We know

23:40

that they would eat a lot of beef

23:42

because they thought it was like it worked

23:44

the way steroids do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You

23:47

know, if you eat a lot of beef, then you

23:49

become strong as cow. Everyone knows.

23:51

It's simple. Yeah, beef makes you cow strong. Yeah,

23:54

if you eat a whole horse, you become run

23:56

as fast as horse. It's

23:58

simple logic. Everyone

24:00

knows you. You can play a vehicle. You can

24:02

fly real hard. Everybody

24:07

knows this. Now,

24:09

the other thing I should notice that, like,

24:12

at the start of the revived Olympics, there

24:14

are no rules against doping. And in fact,

24:16

people are going to do lots of drugs

24:18

in the early Olympics. And it's fine. Yeah,

24:21

I'm OK with that. Early Olympics. Yeah. No,

24:23

that's they were figuring shit out. It's

24:25

considered. It actually may have been less

24:28

common than just because it was considered

24:30

ungentlemanly, but it wasn't like forbidden for a

24:32

while. Right. And so a lot of times people

24:34

wouldn't do dope just because they wouldn't dope just

24:36

because like, well, I am a

24:38

gentleman, you know. Yeah. Anyway, there's

24:40

a lot of confusion in trying to understand what

24:43

the Olympics were meant to be when they were

24:45

revived in the use of the word amateur, because

24:47

like if I were to

24:49

say, it were to say, oh, that golf player

24:51

is a real amateur, you would you would interpret

24:53

that to mean, well, he's not very good. Right.

24:56

Right. Yeah. You would not an average person would

24:58

never look at a world class Olympic gymnast and

25:00

go, wow, what an amateur. Right. Right. Of course,

25:02

not how we use that word. Yes. But in

25:04

the late 1800s and early 1900s,

25:06

that word had a very different meaning. And

25:09

I want to quote from an article for

25:11

Vice by L.A. Jennings here. Sports

25:13

in the 19th century remained a luxury

25:15

of the middle and upper classes with

25:17

lower class athletes routinely excluded from participation.

25:19

The rules for the 1878 Henley Regatta declared,

25:23

no person shall be considered an

25:25

amateur oarsman or scholar who is

25:27

or has been by trader employment

25:29

for wages, a mechanic, artisan or

25:31

laborer. Sports historian Alan Gutman

25:33

explains that in its earliest institution, rules

25:35

of amateurism were invented by the Victorian

25:38

middle and upper classes to exclude the

25:40

lower orders from the play of the

25:42

leisure class. That sounds

25:44

about right, though. That's yeah,

25:46

that's kind of what it is.

25:49

I mean, listen, yeah, whenever people

25:51

talk about, you know, NCAA basketball players

25:53

like trying to get a little

25:55

bit of money for their the

25:58

fact that the schools use their. images and

26:00

sell merch based on them, but they

26:02

can't make a single dime. It

26:05

does feel very similar. It's like, no, we've

26:07

put these rules in place so that you

26:09

stay poor and we can make

26:11

some money. Yeah, and that is,

26:14

we are talking about the origins of why

26:16

the NCAA be that way, right? Like that

26:18

all has its roots in this. And

26:20

in fact, the bastard for the Avery

26:22

Brundage is the guy who is, like

26:25

has a major role in why the

26:27

NCAA adopts those like student athlete regulations.

26:30

But it's important to know that like kind of where we

26:33

are now with like these student athletes and it's like,

26:35

well, you know, we can make millions of dollars off

26:37

of you and you can mortgage your body and your

26:40

future health, but you can't make any money off of

26:42

it because then you wouldn't be an amateur. That

26:44

has its origins and like the origins of that

26:46

are these rich people being like, well,

26:49

poor people like sports too and they're

26:51

often better at them than us. So

26:53

let's just say if you make money

26:55

doing anything, you can't compete with us.

26:58

If you have to work for a living, you can't

27:00

play our games. These

27:03

are just for amateurs. Yeah, yes.

27:07

That is exactly why it was invented.

27:09

Absolutely. We're just like, man, these guys

27:11

are way too good at rowing. Yeah,

27:13

exactly. And to be fair, Cupertin and

27:15

the Olympics are actually a step forward

27:17

from this very regressive. It's still regressive

27:19

by modern standards, but from that 1878

27:21

rule of like, yeah,

27:23

nobody can take part in this if you have to work for

27:26

a living. Quote, when Pierre de Cupertin

27:28

called for the revival of the Olympic games in 1892,

27:31

the primary discussion amongst the elite group of educators

27:33

and public figures who formed the first version of

27:35

the Olympic committee was to determine who would be

27:37

allowed to compete in the games. In

27:39

other words, who counts as

27:42

an amateur? Because this word is still very

27:44

important to them, but they are going to

27:46

kind of redefine it. Initially, it had meant

27:48

like, well, only rich people can have the

27:50

time to become world-class athletes because they don't

27:52

have to like work for a living. And

27:55

it's going to evolve through this period. In

27:57

1894, the workers' rights movement has made enough

27:59

in-revolving roads that even the kind of out

28:01

of touch elites that the Coobertine works with

28:03

to start the Olympics, they're not going to

28:05

say if you have to work for wages,

28:07

you can't compete, right? But

28:10

they are going to try and exclude

28:12

working class people anyway by basically saying

28:14

you just can't make money from sports,

28:16

right? Which still excludes people, because only

28:19

rich people can afford to like practice

28:21

enough to become world class without ever

28:23

making money on it, right? Yeah, it's

28:26

still mostly excludes people. I mean, I

28:28

don't know. I mean, I guess it's

28:30

like someone if they run for

28:33

a living because they have

28:35

a job as circus performer

28:37

running away from crazy,

28:40

crazed lion. But like for the

28:42

most part, it's like, yeah, no

28:44

one's playing basketball on any other

28:46

level except for professional leader, for

28:48

money. And there's also

28:51

a degree of a legitimate concern, which is

28:53

that these guys, as much as they hate

28:55

to admit it, recognize that like pro boxers

28:57

are always going to be better. Like,

29:00

and most pro boxers are like poor

29:02

people who came up fighting like the

29:04

nastiest kind of fights you can fucking

29:06

conceive of, right? To be able

29:09

to become like make a lot of money as a boxer.

29:11

That guy, some like rich dude, he's

29:13

like the 14th Earl of Trunks a

29:16

Barrier or whatever. That guy is going

29:18

to get his skulls turned into powder

29:20

by 1890s Mike Tyson, right? We

29:25

must ban anyone who does it professionally

29:28

unless we get our heads mashed in

29:30

by an Irishman. Yeah. A

29:33

man whose ears are entirely cauliflower.

29:35

Yeah. They're

29:37

like, he's not allowed. No,

29:40

he can't compete. No, no, not him. So

29:44

eventually they come up with a new

29:46

definition for amateur, which is somebody who

29:48

is profited specifically for their participation in

29:50

a sport that they want to compete

29:52

in for the Olympics. And as Alan

29:55

Goodman notes throughout, through most of the

29:57

20th century, amateurism was defended with the

29:59

argument that fair play in good sports.

30:01

sportsmanship are possible only when sports are

30:03

an athlete's avocation, never his or her

30:05

vocation. Part of what's

30:07

going on here, we're going to see this

30:09

with, when we finally do get to Avery

30:11

Brundage, there's this attitude among the wealthy and

30:13

the aristocracy who all have

30:16

a lot of money that there's

30:18

something gross about capitalism still. They are

30:20

the winners of this system, but they

30:23

recognize that the way in which we

30:25

compete under capitalism ruins fun stuff. But

30:30

their way of dealing with- Kind of write about that. Yeah.

30:33

Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

30:36

But their way of dealing with it is to just try to keep poor people

30:38

away. Right. Yeah.

30:40

So the first actual Olympics is going to hit in

30:42

1896. It

30:45

is more gender woke

30:47

than the original Olympics. Women

30:50

had not been allowed to participate in the

30:52

original Olympics. Sure. The ancient Greeks.

30:54

Not really big fans of women. They

30:57

didn't even fuck them half the time. Yeah. Not

31:00

famous for that. So

31:02

the new Olympics is going to be a lot

31:04

better at that, but it is biased heavily towards

31:06

men and women of means. In the

31:08

longer term, the fact that this veneration of

31:10

amateurism is initially bundled up in the heart

31:12

of the whole idea will provide an opportunity

31:14

for Olympic officials to execute petty

31:17

grievances and fuck with athletes they don't

31:19

like for whatever reason. We

31:21

are talking bullshit power trip stuff, and

31:23

the king of that kind of shit

31:25

is going to be the future of

31:27

international Olympic committee president, Avery

31:30

Brundage. Now we finally

31:32

got into our bastard. So let's take

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an ad break here and then we'll

31:36

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34:43

back. Do you like the Olympics, Matt? Like watching

34:45

them and stuff? This is an Olympic year, I

34:47

think. Yeah, so I don't

34:51

like them nor watch them, but

34:54

when it's on, it's

34:56

something that like occasionally I'll just like turn

34:58

on a TV and I'll be like, oh

35:00

shit, losing, you know? Or like, oh, that

35:02

guy's doing a shot put. And I'll sit

35:05

and watch for a second and then I'll

35:07

think to myself like, how the fuck did

35:09

they fill up all those seats? That's

35:11

usually the question I have, but I

35:14

don't mind people who love it. You know,

35:16

if you like watching people throw a javelin,

35:19

no power to you. I wish I was that

35:21

easily entertained. Yeah. I'm

35:23

torn because like you, I don't really like

35:25

watching the Olympics and I also recognize that

35:28

they often destroy the cities that they're hosted

35:30

in. A hundred percent. Yeah. I kind of

35:32

think we should have just picked one place

35:34

to do them and. Right. Yeah. And destroy

35:36

that and. Destroy that. Yeah. Really fuck up

35:39

a single city in Greece. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

35:41

Well, they're not using it. No, or, or

35:43

do it in like downtown Dallas. Just,

35:46

just absolutely annihilate, like force all

35:48

of these international dignitaries to get

35:50

on the fucking high five for

35:52

17 and a half hours. They've

35:54

got to go to Dallas. Every

35:58

two years I'm in fucking Dallas. just

36:00

absolutely take one of the worst traffic cities.

36:02

I mean, they're trying to do it in

36:04

LA. That won't be any better. What

36:06

a fucking nightmare. I

36:10

was, my mom prides herself in

36:12

letting me know that I was conceived during

36:14

the 84 Olympics. Yeah,

36:17

but which event? I don't know. I

36:19

don't want to, she just says it and

36:21

I run away. I don't want to know

36:23

where she fucked during when. I

36:25

don't, don't take this the wrong way, but you do seem

36:27

like a shot put baby. I don't

36:29

take that the wrong way. I mean that as

36:31

a compliment. No, that's, yeah, for sure. Honest sport,

36:34

yeah. Yeah, top heavy guy. I

36:36

see what you're saying. I didn't eat that. So,

36:39

Avery Brundage. Yes, yes,

36:41

there we go. Avery Brundage, let's talk

36:43

about Avery. Born on September 28th, 1887 in

36:45

Detroit, Michigan. Hell

36:50

yeah. Avery would be nine years

36:52

old for the very first Olympics. He was

36:54

one of the people, the aristocrats behind the

36:56

early Olympic games actually wanted to keep out

36:59

because he is definitely working class. He's going

37:01

to be very rich, but

37:03

he is born a working class kid. His

37:05

dad is a stone cutter. Damn.

37:08

Yeah, that's like, that's the OG

37:10

working class job. Yeah, that's the

37:12

original fucking working class job. Yeah.

37:15

Stone cutter and pit digger. And

37:17

in classic working class fashion, his

37:19

father abandons the family when Avery is

37:21

five, which is a thing people could get away with

37:24

a lot more easy, back before

37:26

the internet. Yeah, you could just walk.

37:28

Just leave. Yeah, he goes out for

37:30

a packet of smokes. Where's

37:33

dad? Gone forever. I don't fucking know. He's

37:35

gone forever. Who are you gonna ask? You're

37:37

the man of the house now, Avery. Hope

37:41

you know what it is, taxes. Avery

37:45

has one younger brother, Charles, and they spend

37:47

their early childhood bouncing around with relatives. We

37:49

don't get a lot of context. It's

37:51

how this impacted him, but it doesn't interfere with

37:53

his schooling. He is an excellent student. He wins

37:56

an essay contest in 1901 at age 13. That

38:01

secures him a trip to see

38:03

President McKinley's second inauguration Yeah,

38:06

he really got in on the McKinley train right before the

38:08

end of it there. So that's not the one who oh,

38:11

yeah Yeah, he gets got yeah, Anton show

38:13

Josh Was

38:16

like an anarchist kills him sure was sure that's

38:18

the one one that we got Yeah,

38:23

there's a there's a pretty good song from a

38:25

musical about that sung by Doogie

38:28

Howser so check that one out Yeah

38:31

in general aside from the dad abandoned

38:34

them thing his you know, not a

38:36

bad early 1900s childhood He

38:38

survives so that's doing good. You know,

38:40

he makes it past the all the

38:42

cholera and the the Spanish flu So,

38:45

you know, he's not doing bad He

38:47

makes a living as a teenager is

38:50

like a boy delivering newspapers It's

38:52

kind of unclear to me how poor he really

38:54

is one source I've read claims he had to

38:56

sell newspapers to help his mother buy bread and

38:58

that when he got into sports in high school

39:01

He had to build his own equipment to be able

39:03

to play I

39:05

kind of have come to think some

39:07

of this is myth making right? He

39:09

is definitely working class But he has

39:11

a big family that seems to have

39:13

been very supportive of he and his

39:15

brother and his uncle ed is the

39:17

Republican leader of Chicago's Northside During

39:20

a time that means you are taking every bride

39:23

conceivable like his His

39:26

his uncle ed is the Attorney General

39:28

of Illinois eventually like that man is

39:30

that man is getting so bright Yeah,

39:34

there's no way okay, this is really

39:36

poking holes in the whole working-class hero

39:39

thing here Yeah, mmm. Mm-hmm.

39:41

So one thing everyone agrees upon is

39:43

that Brundage was an exceptional athlete He

39:46

becomes a track star near the end of

39:48

his public school life And when he graduates

39:50

and moves to the U of Illinois to

39:53

study civil engineering He plays basketball and continues

39:55

to do track. He is

39:57

sort of a stereotypical jock. He's a

39:59

popular kid. He's the leader of his fraternity.

40:01

He's one of those guys who would have posted

40:03

quotes from Friday night lights on their Facebook wall

40:05

every like hour and a half if he had

40:08

lived to see the modern era. Hell yeah. So

40:10

a cool guy is what you're saying. So a

40:12

cool guy. A cool guy. My favorite guy from

40:14

high school. Why is that the show that pops

40:16

up in your brain? Because I

40:18

grew up in Texas, Sophie. No,

40:22

it is a vibe. That's great. My

40:24

high school sports stadium was more expensive

40:26

than most state sports stadiums, and my

40:28

high school did not have a good

40:30

football team. That's just we just had

40:32

a 10 million dollars stadium because you

40:34

do. Yeah, you got to be ready

40:36

in case someone gets good. Yeah. So

40:38

you might have a kid who's really

40:40

good at some point. Or is that

40:42

you find Kyle, Kyle Chandler to be

40:44

very handsome man. I don't

40:46

even know who that is. Both things can be true,

40:49

Sophie. Sophie, I didn't watch

40:51

my parents watch that show. I avoided it

40:53

like the plague. I just know what it

40:55

means to people. Speaking

40:58

of what sports means to Avery, since

41:00

they don't have Facebook, he has to settle

41:03

with writing articles for his school paper.

41:05

If he had Facebook, he would have found his dad.

41:07

He would have found his dad? But

41:11

no. But no. So he's got to write

41:13

shit like this, which I found in a 1972

41:15

Sports Illustrated article that's

41:17

talking about his life. One

41:19

of his contributions was entitled, The Football Field

41:22

is a sifter of men. No better

41:24

place than a football field could be

41:26

chosen to test out a man. Here,

41:28

a fellow is stripped of most of

41:31

the finer little things contributed by ages

41:33

of civilization. And his virgin nature is

41:35

exposed to the hot fire of battle.

41:37

It is man against man. And there

41:39

is no more thorough a mode of

41:41

exposing one's true self. Oh,

41:44

you've definitely exposed your virgin

41:47

nature. Okay, buddy. Yeah, man.

41:49

Football, the crucible of manhood.

41:53

Watch one boob, bro. You want

41:55

a fucking game that's a crucible

41:57

of manhood. There's

41:59

a burst The Afghan

42:01

version of polo, which is played on horseback

42:03

with the corpse of a goat as the

42:05

ball. Yeah, that's right That's

42:07

a crucible of manhood right there.

42:10

Yeah, yeah, play some buskashi, right?

42:13

Don't give me this football shit. You guys didn't even

42:15

know what a tackle back then So

42:18

Avery is look they hadn't invented steroids.

42:20

It couldn't have been very good football.

42:22

No. Yeah, they were wearing all leather

42:25

Exactly. No one was you know, they

42:27

were the people were definitely getting hurt

42:29

But yes, yes, very little but not in

42:31

a way that was impressive as the way our

42:34

Current professional monsters hurt each other. Yeah.

42:36

Yeah, you don't know shit about CTE.

42:39

Yeah So

42:41

Avery is a smart kid who's obsessed

42:43

with sports and like kuber teen He

42:45

comes to see them as a potential

42:47

remedy for every problem of modernity Now

42:50

kuber teen is obsessed with peace because

42:52

you know his childhood had been defined

42:54

by a war And

42:56

avoiding conflict through sportsmanship Avery

42:59

on the other hand seems to because

43:01

he is a poor kid who makes

43:03

a lot of money as an adult

43:05

He comes to see athletic competition as

43:07

proof of the fact of the wisdom

43:09

and goodness of capitalism, right? Because he's

43:11

good at capitalism, right? And so it

43:13

says to mirror the thing that he

43:15

has found meaning in sure Avery gets

43:17

a job as a construction Superintendent for

43:20

a major architectural firm and he personally

43:22

supervised the construction of three percent of

43:24

the buildings Built in Chicago during the

43:26

years that he had this job. So

43:28

he is very very capable real money

43:30

He has all the bribes this guy's

43:32

taken my god Christ throughout his early

43:34

to mid 20s He continued to compete

43:37

as an amateur In fact working a

43:39

day job completely outside of the field

43:41

of athletic endeavor Avery Brundage

43:43

was the very model of what the

43:45

Olympics now meant by the term amateur

43:48

now the early 1900s are a Different

43:50

time in athletic competition and Avery was into some

43:52

stuff that I was going to say was very

43:54

weird sports stick shit until I realized This sport

43:57

is still a sport today. We just don't talk

43:59

about it because it's kind of lame,

44:01

but I'm gonna read from the Sports

44:03

Illustrated article about his chief sport. Although

44:06

heel and toe walking, the discus and

44:08

shot put were his specialties, he became

44:11

a devotee to the torches of the

44:13

pentathlon, decathlon, and most excruciatingly of all,

44:15

what he fondly calls the old American

44:17

all around. Now I'm not shitting on

44:20

the pentathlon and decathlon and stuff, those

44:22

are like really difficult, physically demanding things.

44:24

It's just incredibly funny to me that

44:26

heel to toe walking is a

44:29

sport. I'm trying

44:31

to picture heel to toe walking, is

44:33

it just, is that gallivanting?

44:36

What is? Did

44:41

you ever live in a place where there

44:43

would be groups of usually, I don't say this

44:45

to insult them, but usually middle aged women who

44:47

would have a walking group together. I mean, speed

44:49

walk, my mom's speed walk. It looks like that

44:51

to me, but when people describe

44:53

it, they're always like, this is a

44:56

shockingly intense, race walking is actually

44:58

one of the most intense and physically

45:00

demanding sports you can do. And I'm sure they're right,

45:03

but it also does, I don't believe them.

45:08

That did you picture the caveat Hills Park? Yes,

45:10

I did. I was just like, there's a

45:13

first thing I thought of. I was like,

45:15

I've seen all these old ladies doing the

45:17

speed walk and you know. I'm willing to

45:19

believe it's good exercise, but as an adult

45:21

and president of the Olympic committee, Avery Brundage

45:24

told Sports Illustrated that an 880 yard heel

45:26

and toe walk was

45:29

quote, the closest a man can come

45:31

to experiencing the pangs of childbirth. I

45:34

don't know, man. It's possible. I don't

45:36

know, man. I bet it's taxing, but

45:38

the problem is, is that

45:41

you can't think about it without being like, well,

45:43

is there Olympic crab walking? Is that

45:45

also a thing? That doesn't seem that bad. I make it silly. My

45:48

mom did speed walking and the only thing she

45:50

ever compared to childbirth was getting a little bit

45:52

of a speed walk. I mean,

45:54

I think she's a little bit of a speed

45:56

walk. The only thing she ever compared to childbirth

45:58

was kidney stones. Which

46:01

seems to be pretty widely done. So I

46:03

assume kidney stones are a comparable experience in

46:05

some ways, but I've never had either. I've

46:07

never had either. So I would rather do

46:09

heel to toe walking than push a kidney

46:12

stone through my dickhole. Absolutely, I'll heel to

46:14

toe walk all day long. All day long,

46:16

I don't do a fuck. Anyway,

46:19

race walking is still an Olympic event, even though

46:21

I made fun of it. So if you're a

46:23

race walker out there, I'm sure we're going to

46:26

get the race walking hive, get really angry at

46:28

us on Reddit or something. I'm not

46:30

trying to shit talk your sport, but it's

46:32

very silly that he compares this to childbirth.

46:36

But he is a really good athlete. In 1914, at age 26, Brundage

46:40

won the US Championship in the American

46:42

All Around, which is like,

46:44

it's a series of 10 events, the

46:46

100-yard dash, a high jump, high hurdles,

46:48

shot put, broad jump, 56-pound weight throw,

46:50

pole vault, and then that 880-foot walk,

46:54

plus like a hammer throw and a run, all

46:56

done in a single afternoon, which is like, that's a

46:58

whole thing to do, right? That

47:00

sounds taxing. That's a lot. He's very good at it.

47:02

Sports writers in 1918 call him the

47:05

greatest athlete of his day. So that's

47:07

all very impressive. You could look

47:09

at Avery Brundage's early life as an

47:11

almost seamless path of success from poverty

47:13

to like wealth to athletic greatness, with

47:17

one gap in his resume of perfection. And

47:19

that gap is this. In

47:21

1912, he partook in his only Olympics

47:23

as a competitor. In Illinois,

47:25

he had been a star, but in the

47:27

Olympics, he finishes sixth in the pentathlon in

47:29

15 in the decathlon. And if we're looking

47:32

at objective terms, neither of those is bad,

47:34

you know? Yeah, no, dude. You made it

47:36

to the Olympics, that's pretty good, right? Yeah,

47:38

you got to hang out in the Olympic

47:40

village. That sounds sick. Yeah, you got to,

47:42

I mean, I assume they had less sex,

47:44

I assume at least Avery wasn't having that

47:46

much sex. Well, definitely Avery was not. He

47:48

was writing essays like that. This guy's- Talking

47:50

about racewalking. Yeah. Yeah,

47:54

yeah, he doesn't have much game. Anytime

47:56

he meets a lady, he starts talking about how

47:58

he knows the pain of childbirth. Yeah. The

48:00

virgin virtues of heel to toe

48:02

walking. You'll never understand it. But

48:06

he actually drops out of the pentathlon before

48:08

finishing because he realizes he can't get enough

48:10

points to actually medal, which I

48:12

don't know, might kind of seems like bad sportsmanship, but

48:15

I've never been to the Olympics, I don't know. Jim

48:17

Thorpe, the best athlete in the field at

48:19

the time, wins gold in

48:22

both events. Jim Thorpe is a

48:24

Native American athlete, right? This

48:26

is going to be very important because later in

48:28

life, Avery is going to nurse something of a

48:30

grudge against Thorpe. When Avery

48:33

becomes president of the International Olympic Committee, Thorpe

48:35

loses his medals, and there was like a

48:37

move to like, come on, give him back.

48:40

He was a great athlete. And Brundage

48:43

is always going to be like, no, fuck it. He

48:45

broke the rules, right? Some

48:48

people will suggest maybe it's because he was kind of

48:50

jealous still. He

48:52

never got over losing. Despite his

48:54

frustration, or perhaps because of it, the

48:56

whole experience of participating in the Olympics

48:59

hit Avery as a sort of religious

49:01

experience. He later wrote this.

49:04

What social, racial, religious, or political

49:06

prejudices of any kind might have

49:08

existed were soon forgotten and sportsman

49:11

from all over the world with

49:13

different ideas, assorted viewpoints, and various

49:15

manners of living mingled on the

49:17

field and off with the utmost

49:19

friendliness, transported by an overflowing Olympic

49:21

spirit. My conversion, along with many

49:23

others, to Coubertin's religion, the Olympic

49:26

movement was complete. And

49:28

I kind of think that what's happening here is that people

49:30

didn't travel as much internationally back then.

49:32

It was harder. And he goes

49:35

overseas as a young man and makes a

49:37

bunch of friends and has an intense physical

49:39

experience. And he walks away in the same

49:41

way people do when they go to raves

49:44

and stuff now, festivals, right? He has that

49:46

kind of, this is like Burning Man, right?

49:48

Yeah, yeah. They're like, damn. It's

49:52

the only place in the world where you can

49:54

feel at one with all of humanity. Right. And

49:56

it's like, what are you talking about? It's like,

49:58

Bonnaroo? Exactly. And like

50:00

any kind of person who has that sort of

50:03

experience as a young person, he's

50:05

going to spend some time convinced this is

50:07

the way to save the world. And unlike

50:09

most people, he never moves past that, right?

50:11

It's normal to take ecstasy at a really

50:13

good concert and be convinced that you found

50:15

the secret to war. But like, you haven't,

50:17

no one has. But then you find yourself

50:19

a few years later taking ecstasy

50:21

just to play some video games at home and

50:23

you're just like, I have a drug problem. Oh,

50:25

this is no longer as fun as it was.

50:30

So it was not uncommon for

50:32

dedicated Olympians, particularly those who went on

50:34

to work for the Olympics professionally to

50:36

kind of worship the games. This is

50:38

a religion to the people

50:40

who are most into it. It really

50:43

is. In his book Berlin Games, Guy

50:45

Walters writes, "'Cuberteen was almost regarded as

50:47

Christ and Ballet L'Etour," who is like

50:49

his second in the Olympic committee, as

50:52

his disciple, "'These men were infallible because

50:54

they embodied an idealism that far transcended

50:56

the grubby quotidian strivings of humanity. It

50:59

was a pagan idealism. It's pageantry godless,

51:01

but its chauvinist adherents were nothing less

51:03

than fanatics, men for whom no other

51:05

point of view was acceptable. If anyone

51:08

obstructed their ideals, then they would be

51:10

subjected to the most vicious ad hominem

51:12

attacks.'" So they

51:14

have a toxic fan base.

51:17

Yeah, the Olympics is breaking new ground

51:19

there. They're Star Wars nerds. Yes,

51:21

yes, yes. This is like

51:23

how everything works now, but it is noted

51:26

at the time as being pretty unique, right?

51:28

There's nothing quite like the Olympics and its

51:30

toxic fan base. Yeah.

51:32

I told them that I don't really like

51:34

the heel to toe running and they called

51:36

me a slur. Yeah. They

51:39

mailed a bomb to my

51:41

dad's house because I joked

51:43

about walking not being hard.

51:50

I think in 1919, Brundage

51:52

began to take on more because again, by 1919, he's not

51:54

old, but he's

51:56

like old for competitive athletics. So he

51:58

starts taking on more and more. roles

52:00

in sports administration. He

52:03

initially takes on roles in the

52:05

Amateur Athletic Association, or AAU, which

52:07

is at one point the rival

52:09

of the NCAA. This

52:11

is one of those things where they both kind

52:13

of come up at the same time, and they're

52:15

kind of trying to do at least very similar

52:17

things, and so they hate each other, right? There's

52:20

like- No, I'm going to rip these kids

52:22

off. No, no, no. Yeah, I want to rip off these children.

52:24

I'm going to profit from their pain. No, no,

52:26

no, no. They like- Fight

52:28

them. They're in a pretty

52:30

nasty fight for a while. They're like, there's a

52:33

period where athletes will get blacklisted for playing in

52:35

NCAA events or AAU events

52:37

by the other group, right? And

52:39

Avery's actually going in to negotiate a

52:41

detente between the AAU and the NCAA.

52:44

And part of how he does this

52:46

is he offers the NCAA the power

52:48

to certify college students as amateurs, right?

52:51

Oh, shit. Yeah, he is the start of

52:53

all this. Now, at the point he does

52:56

it, college sports is not an industry in

52:58

the way that it is today. I don't

53:00

even think it's realistic to say he would

53:02

have conceived of- Sports period, isn't? Sure.

53:05

Professional, the best professional players of

53:07

the day are making decent

53:09

money, but not like they're not getting

53:12

hundreds of millions of dollars. They're not getting even close

53:14

to that, right? Right. In

53:16

fact, he probably thinks it's anti-CAA events or

53:18

AAU events by the other group, right? And

53:21

Avery's actually going in to negotiate a

53:23

detente between the AAU and the NCAA.

53:26

And part of how he does this

53:28

is he offers the NCAA the power to

53:30

certify college students as amateurs, right? Oh, shit.

53:33

Yeah, yeah. He is the start of all

53:36

this. Now, at the point he does it,

53:38

college sports is not an industry in the

53:40

way that it is today. I don't even

53:42

think it's realistic to say he would have

53:44

conceived of- Sports period, isn't? Sure.

54:00

to sportsmanship to make money off of it.

54:02

Yes, yes, he does. And

54:04

it's important to note that, well, that is an

54:06

excuse now for ripping these kids off. At his

54:08

time, there's not the industry behind it to profit

54:10

from. So I do think he comes by this

54:13

belief honestly, even though I think this is a

54:15

really dumb move. I don't

54:17

think he's actually, I don't think he's full

54:19

of shit in the way that modern NCAA

54:21

officials are. Yeah, I know. They all know

54:23

what they're doing. But he might have been

54:25

just a little bit more idealistic about it.

54:27

Right, right, right. And this is a bigger

54:29

story than we have the time to lay

54:31

out. But the gist of the problem that

54:33

comes from this is that colleges are going

54:35

to immediately realize that taking a hard line

54:38

on amateur status allows them to let kids

54:40

work for free and keep all the money

54:42

for themselves. This has led to some, this

54:44

leads very soon after Avery does what he

54:46

does. This leads to some horrific situations. And

54:48

I'm going to quote from an article by

54:50

Ellie Simpson and Lauren Chang Pradit about

54:52

this. Ray Dennison was an

54:54

Army veteran, father of three, and a football

54:56

player for the Fort Lewis A&M Aggies on

54:58

a scholarship. In September 1955, he

55:01

shattered the base of his skull on the knee of

55:03

a ball carrier during a game. He

55:05

died 30 hours after the incident. Dennison's

55:08

wife, Billy, filed a lawsuit against Fort

55:10

Lewis A&M for workers' compensation. The National

55:12

Collegiate Athletic Association argued that Dennison was

55:15

a student athlete because he was on

55:17

scholarship, meaning he was not eligible to

55:19

receive benefits. In its defense, the

55:21

NCAA avoided such terms as club,

55:23

since that was how professionals referred

55:25

to their teams. The organization added

55:27

an amateurism pledge to every scholarship

55:29

signing. The NCAA won the case.

55:32

Coined by then NCAA president Walter Byers

55:34

for that case, the term student athlete

55:36

is used as legal precedent to limit

55:38

the benefits and compensation college athletes can

55:40

receive while playing full time. So

55:44

that happens not all that long. We're talking

55:46

like 40 years, a little less than 40

55:48

years, but that is the ultimate result of

55:50

what Avery sets in motion. So

55:53

in 1928, Avery has

55:55

elected the head of the American

55:57

Olympic Association, replacing Douglas MacArthur, the... Oh

56:00

shit. The guy who went in there. The guy

56:02

who went in there. Not long after this, going

56:04

to try to nuke Korea. Yeah, I love that.

56:08

Doesn't that kind of put

56:10

to rest the whole idea of sports

56:12

being a way to stop war when

56:14

Douglas MacArthur is... He's

56:17

out. Avery's in 1928. And

56:20

by this point, the new Olympics has gone through some

56:22

growing pains of its own. After almost 20 years

56:25

establishing itself, World War I through a wrench in

56:27

the plan to 36

56:29

Berlin games. The games had

56:32

been basically set before Hitler came to

56:34

power. Sure. I mean, it's not in

56:36

power in 1928, but Hitler comes to power in 1933. The

56:38

games had been set before then. And

56:40

once the Nazis take over, this is

56:43

going to become a serious issue. But

56:46

the games, even before Hitler is in, the

56:49

fact that there's going to be an Olympics

56:51

in Berlin is a big deal for Germany.

56:53

Because after World War I, Germany is this

56:55

pariah nation. And the

56:57

36 Olympics are seen by the

57:00

Germans, not wrongfully as being like,

57:02

this is kind of us re-entering

57:04

the community of nations. Yeah, yeah,

57:07

exactly. Everything's cool now.

57:09

Everyone will be normal. This is the

57:12

Weimar guys talking. Don't worry, by 36,

57:14

everything will be so fucking chill. People

57:16

will welcome us with open arms. We've

57:20

got some problems, but we'll have some figured out

57:22

by 34. 35 at the latest. Yeah.

57:26

It'll just be a few years from now,

57:28

but people will still love Germany's end. Don't

57:31

worry. So

57:33

Brundage gets elected president of the American Olympic

57:35

Committee in 1929, a role he

57:38

will hold until 1953. But

57:41

later that year, disaster struck. The economy

57:43

crashed and Brundage lost his first company

57:45

and the bulk of his fortune. On

57:48

the brink of bankruptcy, he responded

57:50

to losing his money by bullshitting that

57:52

he was still rich. He describes going

57:54

about town with, quote, my chest out

57:56

and not a nickel in my pocket.

58:00

except my accountant and secretary.

58:02

He's like, I'm gonna still

58:04

look rich, even though I'm poor. Yeah. And

58:07

I don't know if he's really- His monocle just gets

58:09

bigger and bigger. He's like, oh, I just made more

58:11

money. Again, he's

58:13

described as having lost all his money, but

58:15

the way he writes things, I kind of

58:17

think he took a hit, but he was

58:20

not on the streets or anything, right? He

58:22

was not, it just hurt him, right? But

58:24

he does start another company. He does recover

58:26

and rebuild his fortune. I kind

58:28

of think he just kind of exaggerates the degree

58:31

to which he was down during the depression, because

58:33

it's more impressive if you come back from being

58:35

completely broke, as opposed to like, well, I went

58:37

from rich to kind of struggling

58:39

middle class, and then I got rich

58:41

again, you know? Yeah, yeah. There's no

58:43

rapper who's just like started from the

58:45

middle. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like- Started from

58:48

honestly, doing pretty okay. Yeah, yeah, started

58:50

from the top, still at the top.

58:52

Yeah. Everything's fine,

58:54

has always been fine. Either

58:57

way, whatever the truth is, he would

59:00

later mock businessmen who lost their money

59:02

and committed suicide in the depression, by

59:04

saying they lacked, quote, the character building

59:06

discipline of competitive sport. Wouldn't

59:08

have shot himself if he'd done more heel

59:10

and toe walking. Yeah, exactly. There's

59:13

all these people jumping out of buildings. Have

59:15

you tried jumping over a hurdle?

59:18

Yeah, over something slightly higher than you know

59:20

you can jump over and seeing how well

59:22

you do. Yeah, yeah.

59:24

Stop shooting yourself in the head.

59:26

Stop, just start shooting and javelin.

59:29

Shooting put, yeah. Shooting put. Oh,

59:32

man. By the

59:34

early 30s, Avery is back on top,

59:36

and we were gonna talk about what he does next,

59:39

but you know who's never not been on top? Who?

59:42

The sponsors of this motherfucking podcast. That's right, they

59:45

started from the top, still at the top. That's

59:47

right, that's right. Now we're gonna buy some socks,

59:49

or I don't know, I don't know what the

59:51

product is. Could be socks. Neither are we. Could

59:53

be the Washington State Highway Patrol. No way to

59:56

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Sponsored by 11-11 Media. We're

1:02:49

back. So by the

1:02:51

early thirties, he's rich again, I assume. That seems to

1:02:53

be when he got rich again. It's a little unclear.

1:02:55

I don't have access to the man's bank statements. Either

1:02:57

way, he does get rich again. When he dies, he's

1:02:59

worth like $20 million. He

1:03:01

seems to have credited his love of the

1:03:03

Olympics and sportsmanship with instilling in him the

1:03:06

values that made his recovery possible. But

1:03:08

he was worried despite the fact that

1:03:10

things are doing better for him. He's

1:03:12

worried about the growth of sinister socialist

1:03:14

movements in Russia and beyond. At the

1:03:17

same time, he finds himself intrigued by

1:03:19

a new political strain in Germany.

1:03:21

This Hitler chat has some interesting

1:03:24

ideas. Fucking A.

1:03:27

Why does it always go back to Hitler, Robert?

1:03:30

Why? Part of why it

1:03:32

goes back to Hitler is that Brundage is

1:03:34

like an Olympics worshipper and he comes

1:03:37

to see the Olympics in somewhat eugenic

1:03:39

terms. And in fact, he seems to

1:03:41

have felt about athletes the way Hitler

1:03:43

felt towards Germans. Great. And

1:03:46

I'm gonna quote from Guy Walters here.

1:03:48

Brundage also saw an Olympism an enshrinement

1:03:51

of his own racist ideals, ideals he

1:03:53

shared with the Chicago Association of Commerce

1:03:55

in November, 1929. Perhaps

1:03:57

we are about to witness the development

1:04:00

a new race? A race of

1:04:02

men actuated by the principles of

1:04:04

sportsmanship learned on the playing field,

1:04:06

refusing to tolerate different conditions than

1:04:08

the other enterprises of life. A

1:04:10

race physically strong, mentally alert, and

1:04:12

morally sound. A race not to

1:04:14

be imposed upon, because it is

1:04:16

ready to fight for right and

1:04:18

physically prepared to do so. A

1:04:20

race quick to help an adversary

1:04:22

beaten in fair combat, yet fearlessly

1:04:24

resenting injustice or unfair advantage. Yes,

1:04:28

such a short trip from race walking to

1:04:30

race science. Yeah,

1:04:33

that's less than 880 yards for sure. Some

1:04:37

problem with, you know, just the word

1:04:39

itself being you're super into race. That's

1:04:41

how you become racist. God damn it.

1:04:44

Great stuff. Like I, it's,

1:04:46

it's just, I, I don't want to say I get

1:04:49

it, but it's like, it's one of those things where

1:04:51

you just, I, whenever

1:04:53

people, this

1:04:55

is a problem I have with the

1:04:57

Olympics in general that makes me uncomfortable

1:04:59

is there is something of a, you

1:05:01

know, when they say like, yeah, all

1:05:03

the nations, you know, are competing and

1:05:05

whatnot. It does feel somewhat like race

1:05:09

wars, the sport. Yeah. It

1:05:11

has that element to it a little bit.

1:05:14

And it's always made me feel icky. And

1:05:16

there's this, this other thing that like

1:05:18

the Olympics to Cooper teen seems to legitimately have

1:05:20

come by his, I think that this could

1:05:22

help us, you know, get past war as a

1:05:25

society. And I, I respect those utopian ideas,

1:05:27

but it does seem like we eventually walk back

1:05:29

around to like, well, this isn't literally war,

1:05:31

but like, what do you do in war? Well,

1:05:34

you heard a lot of kids and I think

1:05:36

about like Larry Nassar molesting all those gymnasts. He's

1:05:38

not the only, he's not the

1:05:40

only gymnastics coach to have done that. No,

1:05:42

I think about like, oh, you know, the,

1:05:44

the, the systematic mistreatment and

1:05:46

abuse of young men as foot soldiers.

1:05:48

I think about stuff like, you know, Soviet

1:05:51

union doping athletes or like athletes doping it

1:05:53

all sorts of countries, right? Like this

1:05:55

obsessive need to like, well, we have to win and

1:05:57

anything that we have to do to these, these. athletes

1:06:00

in order to allow them to win is OK.

1:06:02

So it shoot them up with whatever the fuck

1:06:04

we can shoot them up with. Right. And including

1:06:06

creating a lot of this. And the shaming of

1:06:08

people, you know, of like athletes,

1:06:10

they're trying to like ban fucking at the

1:06:13

Olympic Village. That's the one great

1:06:15

thing about the Olympics. That's why you

1:06:17

get good at sports. Right. Yes. Yes.

1:06:19

You can eventually someday be in some

1:06:21

sort of fuck village. Nobody ever became

1:06:23

the best at a sport to not

1:06:25

get laid. I'll say that. Right. Come

1:06:27

on. So

1:06:30

the fact that Avery is kind

1:06:32

of arriving at race science by

1:06:34

way of here to tell. Walking.

1:06:36

Yeah. Race walking leads him

1:06:38

to occupy an awkward cultural position

1:06:40

as Hitler takes power in Germany

1:06:42

before Hitler's election. The 1936 Olympics

1:06:45

had again been promised to Berlin after

1:06:47

Hitler comes to power. Many Americans, a

1:06:50

lot of them are Jewish American athletes, but

1:06:52

not exclusively. There's a lot of just people

1:06:54

who don't like Nazis decided like,

1:06:56

well, now that the Nazis are in

1:06:58

charge, we shouldn't participate in these Olympic

1:07:00

games, right? Because it will normalize the Third

1:07:03

Reich and its oppression of its Jewish citizens,

1:07:05

not just the Jews. They're not just there's

1:07:07

a lot of people who are because it's

1:07:09

not just Jewish citizens being oppressed, but in

1:07:11

general, the Third Reich is doing a lot

1:07:14

of terrible shit. And if we show up

1:07:16

there to play the games, we'll kind of

1:07:18

be handing them a win and legitimizing the

1:07:20

regime. And we shouldn't write. Right. A lot

1:07:22

of people are arguing. Yeah. This enrages Avery.

1:07:25

His most rigid principle is that the Olympics

1:07:27

should never be political. Now, of course, that's

1:07:29

not really true. That's what he says. But

1:07:32

the way Avery treats the Olympics is

1:07:35

deeply political. He just because it whenever

1:07:37

he's thinking about something he believes deeply,

1:07:39

he doesn't consider that politics. Right. It's

1:07:41

not politics. That's just his that's just

1:07:44

reality. Is everyone else is just is

1:07:46

just perverting his reality, which is the

1:07:48

only true reality. Yeah. And

1:07:51

I want to I want to quote again from that Berlin

1:07:54

Olympics book quote. He also frequently insisted that

1:07:56

more than the future of amateur sport was

1:07:58

at stake and shielding. sport from

1:08:00

political manipulation. Upon sport for

1:08:02

sport's sake depended the healthy psychological valuation of

1:08:04

individual effort and excellence that was at the

1:08:07

very heart of a democratic way of life.

1:08:09

Moreover, fit bodies and competitive spirits were

1:08:11

in Brundage's view essential for the continued

1:08:14

success of American capitalism at home and

1:08:16

abroad. But we never acknowledged the political

1:08:18

coloring of his vision of the Olympics.

1:08:20

He regarded them as a kind of

1:08:23

international mission for spreading democratic values in

1:08:25

the continuing ideological battle between communism and

1:08:27

the American way of life. Yeah.

1:08:30

Yeah. But that's not political. That's

1:08:32

not political. That's just the natural state of things.

1:08:34

That's just fine. It's just normal stuff. You know,

1:08:36

that's not politics, right? Right. Yeah.

1:08:39

God is a capitalist. Reality is a capitalist. Right.

1:08:42

Communism is the devil. And most people who

1:08:45

self-identify as apolitical are the most political people I've ever

1:08:47

met in my entire life. Yes. Right.

1:08:50

Of course. It's a, that's like, uh, you

1:08:52

know, it's, uh, the height of privilege is,

1:08:54

is the apolitical nature of your viewpoint when

1:08:56

you're just like, Oh, I don't know. I've

1:08:59

always felt like politics is weird. Status quo

1:09:01

always seems cool and great. Yeah. You

1:09:03

know, I, I, I, back when I lived out in

1:09:06

the middle of nowhere, I ran into one guy who

1:09:08

identified as apolitical and actually was. And the reason why

1:09:10

I believe him is when I told

1:09:12

him that Hillary Clinton was running for president, he

1:09:14

was like, wasn't a Clinton just president? Yeah. And

1:09:16

I was like, and it like did not seem

1:09:18

to be aware of the Bush years, but this was

1:09:20

a man who had been out in the mountains that

1:09:22

entire time, not really aware of the Bush or the

1:09:24

Obama year, just kind of missed like 16 years. Yes.

1:09:28

Yes. Yeah. No, if

1:09:30

you're going to be apolitical, you have to be like almost

1:09:33

literally living under a rock. No, no. I

1:09:35

literally have not talked to anyone in 20

1:09:37

years. All my

1:09:40

best friends are animals. I really don't

1:09:42

know what politics now in fact, are

1:09:44

a political sir. Wow. Yeah.

1:09:48

Uh, all right. So Matt,

1:09:50

you've got any pluggables to plug? Well,

1:09:52

if you are an apolitical

1:09:54

person like me, um, I,

1:09:57

uh, yeah, no, I have

1:09:59

a. a new podcast

1:10:01

out there called Bad Has Bara,

1:10:03

the world's most moral podcast, in

1:10:06

which me and some

1:10:08

great guests, we talk about what's going on

1:10:10

in Israel and we break down some of

1:10:13

the hilarious new propaganda

1:10:15

that seems to be dropping on

1:10:17

a daily fucking basis. So

1:10:20

yeah, if you want to check that out, you

1:10:22

can get it wherever podcasts are

1:10:24

given away for free or go

1:10:27

to YouTube and type in Bad Has Bara. The

1:10:29

channel is called Frotcast because I used

1:10:31

my old YouTube channel that

1:10:33

no one watched and I started posting

1:10:35

on there and now it's mostly Bad

1:10:38

Has Bara content. But Frotcast is the

1:10:40

name of the channel. Can

1:10:42

I change it? Probably will I?

1:10:44

I don't know. I don't know how YouTubes

1:10:46

work. How do you spell that? F-R-O-T-C-A-S-T.

1:10:49

That's the name of the channel

1:10:52

and the podcast again is

1:10:54

called Bad Has Bara. H-A-S-B-A-R-A. Check

1:10:58

it out! All right. Behind

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