Really Big Nerds with Jen Cooper and Richard Cohen

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, where we're still
loving life in America's hat, We're knee deep and poutine
and Tim Horton's and the only Orange Monarchs in sight
are the butterflies in our hotel garden. It's Thursday, June nineteenth,
Happy June teenth. On today's show, we'll be chatting with
women's soccer statistician and historian Jen Cooper and her Hoopstats
contributor Richard Cohen about the behind the scenes work that

(00:22):
goes into keeping track of records, rules, stats and salary
caps in the WNBA and NWSL. Plus a cap worthy
claim to fame, expert tips on spread and sheets, and
a record that might not ever need updating.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It's all coming up right after this joining us now.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
She's a researcher for the World Cup in the Olympics
and the official historian for the NWSL. She's the keeper
of keeper Notes, the only place NWSL fans can find
comprehensive statistics and records for every year of the league's history,
and she runs wo so Nostalgia, a YouTube channel featuring
a bunch of games from things like w USA and
conk CAF. She can tell you how many NWSL keepers
have recorded five hundred or more saves, It's five. The

(01:06):
number of players who have scored four goals in a
single game, it's three. And how many regular season minutes
Abbi dal Kemper has played in her NWSL career so far.
It's thirteen, three hundred and thirty seven. It's Jen Cooper, Hi, Jen.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hey, Sarah, I am so impressed with your stats. Well,
I'm great with yours. You can take my job.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Also joining us, He's a contributor to Her Hoopstats and
the Her Hoop Stats podcast. The man behind the now
defunct website WNBA leen dot com, an independent site that
covered women's professional basketball across the globe. He's a must
follow on Blue Sky for all his live WNBA game commentary.
Everything he says sounds smarter because of his accent. We
go out now to London for Richard Cohen.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
Hi, Richard, Hi, Sarah, And yeah, I wondered how you
were going to follow that intro for Jane. I don't
think I have quite quite the same level of qualifications,
but I'll try to use the accent to make it
sound better.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Honestly, I would say that British people can account for
so many shortcomings just by using that accent.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
In America, we barely notice anything else.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
You both have tremendous backgrounds, and you both offer a
lot to a space that oftentimes is lacking in that
statistics and record keeping in women's sports. So that's why
you're here. I want to talk about that. Jen, Can
you explain how you got interested in the.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Record keeping in stats side of soccer.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Well, I've always been kind of into archives. I think
that's why I was a yearbook editor in high school
and in college and just liked tracking things like looking
at the history, and so that was already in me
when you know, the soccer bug got me first in
ninety four and then of course in ninety nine and

(02:46):
really exploded with the birth of the WSA. But it
really wasn't until about ten years later when the US
women were playing in Houston, you know where I'm based,
and I was just curious about like, how big you know,
so this was a good crowd, how big is this
relative to previous games? And I started building this spreadsheet
and I just kept going over the years because I

(03:08):
was like, oh, how many times have they done this?
When this has happened. Oh well, I need to add
a new column to this spreadsheet.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
How about this, you know?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
And then when the Dash came to town, I was lucky
enough to be the analyst for the first three seasons
when all the games were live and free on YouTube.
And you know, since the league started really small and
started very quickly, you know, didn't have a lot of resources,
so there wasn't a lot of stats that the league
could give give me in the in the play by

(03:38):
play announcer. But so I started tracking. I was like, well,
I'll start you know, digging up you know, info for myself,
and it just it kept going and going, and I
had a lot of friends in Houston that said, you know,
this is really interesting stuff. Why don't you put this
together in something for fans. And so in twenty sixteen,

(03:58):
that's when I started publishing the Keeper Notes Almanac that
had all the NWSL data, and I've just built it
over the year, started actually printing it in twenty eighteen.
First it was just PDF and it remains a labor
of love. It is not something that you know.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Why but why in the labor of love, Because listen,
I'm listening to you talk and I'm thinking it's short
sighted of the NWSL when they started to not immediately
have someone in that job with the belief that their
league would last and it'd be worth keeping track of things.
But knowing that they didn't do that, now they've got
someone on the job who's offering it up, So why
not hire you for that?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Well, they did, they did.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
They had a stat service in the beginning, They didn't
have the funds in the very beginning to have a
lot of stuff that's available now. This stuff wasn't available
ten years ago period in terms of the elaborate analytical
stats and the coverage. So what I was doing. What
I was doing was compiling. I don't want to diss
the Andy Russell and say people they didn't do it.

(04:56):
They were doing it. They just you know, that league
started so quickly, so suddenly. But what was great once
twenty seventeen came around and you had A and E
get into the league, that's when boom, like they hired
a real stat service, right, and a much better website
and all these things. And we're seeing that progress now

(05:20):
where I come in is really filling in those holes
of those first three seasons that aren't on the same bandwidth,
and it's very similar to all the tracking that I've
done with US Soccer that there's really good records going
back to the Olympics in ninety six, right, but that
first decade, especially because it's basically pre Internet, right, you know,

(05:43):
and we forget that before the ninety four World Cup,
US Soccer did not have money. So it's not like
there's a lot of great men's records and no women's record.
It's just the records are just really a spotty.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
So it starts out as a passion project. And now
it's sort of a job. You do the work independently,
but you also work for several outlets.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
So who do you work for now? And where have
you worked in the past where you've sort of held
this statistician role.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Let's see, I haven't had a statistician, a paid statistician
role before this, but for a long time I was
the like the main stat person for my alma mater
for this annual event called beer Bikes, which you just
you just have to google, but it's it's a relay
erase where somebody chugs and then somebody rides a bike,

(06:29):
and I was I was the keeper of all of
you know, who won, what year, how many people had streaks, what,
what were the records? And so I did that for
a long time. So my background is actually graphic design.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
So you're not.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Working for Anny Networks now in that capacity, you're just
doing your website stuff.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
So I'm a contractor, uh for for Andy Broussel, you know,
year round, mostly helping broadcast, right, so so that all
the notes are ready, so all clubs if they have
a question, especially the older clubs that have so much data,
it's like, wait, is this the first time we've done this,
Like no, this happened in twenty fourteen, you know. And

(07:09):
I have a couple of great people helping me out,
you know, on the stuff, because it's just going to
get bigger and bigger, right, we got two more teams
coming next year. I also work on occasion as a
contractor when there's a big event, right. So I went
to France last summer to work the Olympics, following the
US team around. Basically I was the stat person in
the booth for John Champion and Julie Foudy as they

(07:31):
were calling James right, you know. And I have to
give props to Julie for dragging me along to France
because the previous Olympics I was in the NBC headquarters
in Connecticut while the Olympics are.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
In Why am I not surprised that Foudy made sure
to lift and take along with her, including to France.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Shee's like, next time you're coming with me?

Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah, yeah, And then and then next month I will
be in La supporting the studio show for Fox's covered
of the Women's euro Right. So it's like it's that
thing as we've all seen in many different kinds of jobs,
like once you're known, then everybody is like, oh, well,
we need to use.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
So and so well, especially in a space where there
aren't a ton of people doing it. And that's part
of the issue across women's sports space, and Richard, her
hoopstats is filling a hole in the women's basketball space.
That's very similar. I remember distinctly a piece from Sue
Bird in the Player's Tribune begging for more advanced statistics
for the WNBA so that we could have debates about
who's the best at corner threes and things like that,

(08:34):
and her Hoopstats offers a lot. So can you explain
for those who aren't familiar what the site is and
the work that you do for them.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
Well, the site is sort of an effort to make
advanced stats available about the women's game that weren't really
there until we started up in twenty seventeen. I wasn't
there in twenty seventeen, but when Aaron Buzzilai, our founder
and who still runs the place, started the website because
he used to work it as the director of analytics

(09:01):
for the seventy six ers in Philadelphia and before that
with the Grizzlies, and a friend of his came to
him and said the friend was working with Tennessee with
the Lady Vols and said, I'm used to having all
of these statistics at my fingertips from the men's game.
Is there anywhere that does this for the women? And
Aaron looked around and said, no, there isn't and that

(09:24):
led to him essentially making up her hoopstats. And Yeah,
when I was talking to him in preparation for this recording,
he mentioned that same bird article as something that he
went back to and was surprised no one had done
anything in response to that. Even when she said that,
there was very little reaction to it. So, yeah, her

(09:45):
Hoopstats was sort of to try and create something like
a sports basketball reference for the women's game. And yeah,
it's been a steadily growing effort since then. It sort
of started as a as just a stat site and
a social media presence, and then since then, people like
me you've come along and it's added articles, podcasts, and
a lot of extra stuff, all of our work on

(10:07):
the CBA and the salary cap, information that you can't
get anywhere else except from the people that copy us.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Not exactly people like you, though, because Richard, I want
to know how someone like you gets into the WNBA
from across the pond.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
Yeah, I get that question quite a lot, as you
might imagine, and I don't have a great answer for it.
The tournament I mentioned is this thing we used to
have over here because basketball isn't big in the UK,
but there used to be a tournament called the WYICB
which was held over New Years each each year, and
they played men's basketball, women's basketball, juniors, and wheelchair basketball

(10:46):
all in the same tournament, all on the same court,
one after the other, going from one to the other.
And I think that was part of sort of ingraining
in me that it was all the same that like
one wasn't the proper version of the sport, and one
was this sort of other that you didn't have to
pay attention to. So that meant when the WNBA started
up in the late nineties, I was interested and yeah

(11:09):
started following it. Then there was a gap there because
we were sort of pre streaming, so it was very
difficult to follow given that I wasn't in the US right.
But once that advanced a bit and it was actually
possible to follow the game and get back I got
back into it sort of in the mid two thousands,
and Yeah. From there it just sort of developed from

(11:30):
a fandom into sort of posting on forums and things
like that, and then eventually sort of thinking, I'm posting
these massive comments on forums, I might as well turn
them into articles.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, or get paid for it. Do this for my job.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
Well, getting paid for It's still kind of difficult. A
lot of people trying to cover women's basketball have found
it's hot, still hard to make it your primary job.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
What's the biggest challenge you've encountered, gen when it comes
to trying to stat keep and track in soccer.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Really the biggest challenge is connecting the older stats to
the newer stats. Right, so we have data from twenty
sixteen onwards. That's that's great, right. Once once Sandy Bissel
made the jump with that with A and E coming
in as a twenty five percent investor, of course that's
all changed out, but that that kind of made this
big leap into Okay, we have a real live stat

(12:27):
service and we're going back and analyzing these things like like,
that was a huge step. But to connect to those
first three seasons twenty thirteen to fifteen has been problematic,
partly because those are the games where, especially that first season,
you know, you may only have four cameras some of

(12:47):
those some of those games just didn't.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
It just had issues, Right, there's a whole assist that
just comes from offscreen, like who was it?

Speaker 2 (12:56):
God knows?

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Yeah, and so like we need to add all that
data to the main database. But there's going to be
data that we cannot get from those those games, right,
just because you're you're not going to be able to.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
See Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Now, thankfully, almost every one of those games still exists
in their entirety on YouTube. I thought that was one
of the most brilliant decisions the NWSL made early on
was all right, we don't have a TV deal. Games
are all free live on YouTube worldwide. You know that
that that was brilliant. But I think it's that connecting

(13:31):
that final piece to our current data that's the last
thing that that that's going to be a hiccup. Right,
Once we have that, it'll be much easier for any
of the older clubs to be able to do just
a you know, easy query of who has the most
minutes for this club. You're right, because if you if
you have one of the older clubs, they've got a
they've got.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
To two distincts data. Yeah, Richard, what about you?

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Biggest challenge when it comes to stack keeping or keeping
track of things in the W.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
I think the stat keeping has gotten relatively straightforward, possibly
partly because basketball is more geared towards keeping stats in
the first place. That sort of soccer becoming a stat
based sport is something that's fairly new, even in like
major men's leagues, never mind on the women's side. But
sort of the major challenges are more sort of beyond

(14:24):
the stats, sort of getting people who actually talk to
us talk to us about sort of information and sources
about rules and things like that, and getting the league
to tell anyone anything. Basically always been very very secretive
about everything, which is why half of my job, well
not really my job, half of what I end up

(14:46):
doing at the moment is answering questions on social media
when people say is this legal? What's going to happen next?
Because no one at the league bothers to tell anybody anything.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
So well, that brings me to my next question.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Actually, because technically WNBA salaries are private, so whenever a
team signs a player, there's usually a line at the
bottom of the press release that says, per team policy,
terms of the deal, we're not disclosed. But then if
you go log in her hoopstats just a few minutes later,
you can find the.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Details of the deal that were not disclosed.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
They have been disclosed, and they're beautifully laid out charts
detailing how much each player on each team is making
and how long their contract is for.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
And that's really helpful for us.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Can you explain how this technically private information becomes public
on her hoopstats?

Speaker 4 (15:31):
I mean, I would my basic got so that would
be the same way that they become public in the
NFL or the NBA or Major League Baseball or anything
like that. You talk to people, you find sources, and
you try to get the information out there. Fortunately, when
you spend as long around the league as I have

(15:52):
and you try to say intelligent things, this is a
small enough community that eventually people sort of gain some
confidence in you and are willing to talk to you, because, yeah,
this is a small league and a small groups where
everyone kind of talks to each other. Even though it's
obviously growing. I mean, we've seen a massive explosion in

(16:13):
fan interest the last few years, but in terms of
people who are sort of embedded within the league, this
is still quite a tight group of people that know
each other a lot and talk to each other. So, yeah,
we source it and then we try and put it together. Again,
you need to know the rules as well, because different
contracts are different numbers for all sorts of weird CBA reasons.

(16:35):
So yeah, that's part of why it is better than
anyone who's copied us, because we actually know the rules
that are being followed.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean, I think also the idea that the
WNBA is better off being so withholding is very antiquated.
There are so many discussions that fans want to have
about leagues, they want to play GM They want to
know how much each player is making so that they
can argue whether should.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Be traded or kept or moved, or if they're pulling
their weight.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
And I think we're at the point now where the
WNBA has to address and understand that the more information
that's out there, the more conversations and debates and conflicts
can be discussed in a way that's really beneficial to
making the sport feel as valuable as some of the longer,
more storied brands. NWSL player salaries also are not public.
There is an internal database that players have access to

(17:23):
which is meant to help with contract negotiations, but no
one has yet made a move to make that info
public like it is on her hoopstats for the WNBA.
Do you think that NWSL could benefit from more transparency
on player salaries in the same way.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I definitely think it could benefit. But of course, you know,
the obstacle is the end of cell Players Association would
have to agree to make those public. Right, just just
the fact that the players can now see internally what
other players are making that's fairly recent, right, you know,
it's I always feel like there's this push and pull

(17:59):
between we want these sports. I'm sure Richard feels the
same way about Debba. We want these sports that we
love and cover to be considered the same way every
other men's sport is out there, which comes with, well,
you have the eyes looking at your salary and you
have people discussing every day that you had a good
performance or a bad performance, or you should be trade

(18:19):
or stuff like that. But you know, I've also seen,
you know, a lot of discussion from fans. It's like, well,
I don't you know, I don't think we need to
do that, you know, and also the players like I
don't want that, right. So it's like I I want
the information, right, I want this to be in our
daily breath of Yeah they had a great game, No,

(18:42):
that was horrible because of the you know, these data
points and oh that player is overpaid or she needs
to be paid more, she needs to be traded.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
That's how sports.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Gets into you day in day out. That's how that's
why there's so many talking head shows for men's football, basketball,
stuff like that. The more information you have, the more discussion,
the more discussion there is, period.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, yeah, you know, a lot of your work is
accessible and free on your site, and then your stat
almanacs are available for purchase. But because it's your work
and not the league's work, most historical NWSL stats are
not able to be googled. For example, if I were
to google most NWSL career goals, something the folks who
work on this podcast have done on more than one occasion.

(19:28):
Looking for that, we discovered that the top result is
an NWSL news entry from twenty seventeen, so not exactly
the up to date info that we're looking for. There,
have you ever had conversations with the league about selling
your work to them and making it a part of
the official NWSL website, therefore a part of more coveraging
conversation about the league therefore more likely to pop up

(19:48):
in SEO, so that when we search that it comes
to the top.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Well, I hadn't thought about it from the SEO angle,
But they have all, you know, all all my data.
They have, you know, everything that I create for them
as a contractors is available to them. And I have
to give their social media department a huge shout out
for the work they don't in the last year and

(20:12):
have to really highlight anytime something big happens. Right, Oh
my god, that was lynn Lynn Biendelo's you know, seventy ago. Yeah,
you know, it's like this was you know, this is
the first time this has happened, this is the youngest.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Well, if they're going to post it on social, why
not have a part of their website that makes it
all easy to find.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
I think that's the next step.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Right.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
We've seen a lot of hiring over the last year,
and this league is growing so fast. I feel like
sometimes it can't keep up with it keep up with itself, right,
But that's that's what I would love to see, is
that for any media outlet that they can find the
answers they need, you know, and anything the league wants

(20:58):
in that I'm you know, happy to help with. But
you know, when we think of all the challenges they've
been dealing with, you know, with var and all kinds
of other issues, Like I understand, you know, it's frustrating
for me, but I understand how this always gets moved
down in pity.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
It's true, Right, they've got a lot on their plate
from trying to professionalize an update based on all the
new resources, we.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Got to take a quick Break more with Jen and
Richard right after this.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
You know, Richard, we've been talking on our show about
the different WNBA contracts, and one of the reasons it's
hard to sometimes have discussions is because we don't really
understand them. Right, there's a guaranteed contract, there's a hardship contract,
there's a rest of season hardship. There's a rest of
season contract that's not a hardship contract. Can you just
give us briefly a summation of the different ways that

(21:55):
a player can be signed and is there a limit
on how many have to be or can be guaranteed?
Why is there a rest of season and then a
rest of season hardship?

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Like, how does that work?

Speaker 4 (22:05):
Right? Rosters have to be eleven or twelve players base
rosters only a maximum of six of those per team
can be protected.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Contracts that means guaranteed.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
Which means guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yes, no matter what injury wave cut decides to fly
after Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
For a nooner with someone, they're still going.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
To get paid, barring anything in their contract about behavior.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
And unless they get hurt overseas, which is obviously a
thing in WNBA because people sometimes play in other leagues
in the WNBA off season. The rest of season contract
confuses people because they then they hear that and they think, well,
the player is going to be there the rest of
the season. Then understandably given the terminology, but especially with
a hardship all that means practically is that the contract

(22:52):
is until the end of the season, but when a
player returns, because hardship's are signed when players get hurt,
so you get those when players are out. When the
main roster player returns, the hardship player has to be released,
so it's only a rest of season contract if that
injured player were to stay injured all season.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
And is there a difference between a regular hardship contract
and a rest of season hardship contract.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
Every hardship contract signed in the first half of the
season will be a rest of season contract. Every hardship
contract signed in the second half of the season will
be a seven day contract until because there are two
rules that come into conflict, you signed three consecutive seven
day contracts with the same team, then you can sign

(23:39):
a rest of season hardship contract after that. Yeah, you
can see why the fans get confused and why teams
don't bother to explain this stuff themselves.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
I was going to say, because sometimes it feels like
maybe we're looking at the same thing. It's just some
team rights has signed a rest of season contract and
some team just sigence has signed a hardship contract.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
And sometimes they're right, completely nonsense in their press releases
as well. In Indiana recently had to release a player
and wrote that she'd been waived in their press release,
wrote twice that she had been And you don't waive
hardship contracts. You release the player because they don't go
through waivers, so it's different terminology. So again, the teams
don't always understand this stuff either, or certainly their PR

(24:21):
departments don't. So yeah, that creates confusion.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Well, this is why we need you, Richard. I'm not
going to remember and memorize any of that. I'm just
going to call you next time I need to know
what again out.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
Oh, I don't expect anyone to.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, Jenna, I loved learning that you actually helped correct
the number of caps for none other than world record
holder for number of caps US women's national team legend,
Christine Lilly. Can you tell us about that? How do
you find mysterious uncapped caps.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Well, first you have to be a really big nerd.
Then you have to have collected many many US Soccer
media guides, all right, And so I was gonna do
some trivia. I love to do trivia, you know, through
social media. And the US women were playing in Arizona.

(25:15):
So I was like, okay, I know they've played there
three times. Maybe I'll do something about that. But I've
learned working in TV. It's like, but let's always check
the media guide. Don't just sure it's in here, but
let's check the media guide. So I look at the
media guide and they have it all separated by state,
and I was like, wait, there's these games in nineteen
ninety five. I don't have these in my huge, ridiculously

(25:37):
nerdy spreadsheet. So then I start flipping through the whole thing.
I can't find those nineteen ninety five Arizona games anywhere
else in the book, right, So then I start checking
against Christine's game by game thing, and I'm like, wait,
this is off, Like what if she played in those games?
And so I reached out to US Soccer and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah,

(25:59):
we have we have, you know, the game reports for
those games and so when the next media guide came out,
her numbers had adjusted, and I was like, oh my god,
like I had just kind of talked to it and
forgotten about it, and then when it the next one
came out, I was like, ooh, I was.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Like, it changed. It changed. You know, that's wild. That's
not just any cap number.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
That is a record that may never be broken, or
at the very least should be broken correctly if it is,
which now will it?

Speaker 3 (26:29):
And it took it took like a couple of years
for it to cycle through the internet for everything to
get threety four. And I was so thrilled that when
when I met Christine Lilly for the first time, the
person who introduced me, I said, will you please tell
her that I changed her cap record?

Speaker 1 (26:45):
I love.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
That's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
By the way, Jenna have to ask, have you and
my producer Alex ever been in the same room at
the same time, Because the more you talk about your
spreadsheets and your trivia nights and your nerdiness, the more
I think that you and Alex may be separated at
birth or potentially the same person.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
We have not been in the same room at the
same time, but we have texted a lot about very
nerdy stat things.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Okay, okay, good. You guys should have a spreadsheet off sometime, Richard.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I recently discovered your blue Sky content, and I love
it in particular because your eye for coverage differs from
a lot of other folks, not just fans, but media
as well, including calling out coverage that doesn't feel up
to the professional standards that it should, for instance, just a.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Few days as I used to. So I like it.
Go ahead, I'm familiar for it. No, you were watching
a sky Sun game and you blue skiede. Quote.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
You put the details of the Maybrey trade on the
screen and don't even mention how vastly important the pick
swap at the bottom of the list could be. If
an NBA broadcasted that didn't mention it might move a
team from number fifteen to number one in the upcoming draft,
they'd be laughed at end quote.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, So I wonder if you could.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Talk about the ways that you think coverage isn't up
to snuff for the most sophisticated viewers and what we
lose in that, Because, to be honest with you, this
is my job, and that's one of my teams and
I hadn't really processed that part of that pick swap
because it isn't talked about and it isn't written about
the same way it might be in immen's league.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
Yeah, I do think there are gaps in the coverage.
I mean, obviously we do, or we probably wouldn't exist.
But the broadcasting of the WNBA has absolutely improved. I
give all of the various channels involved and the people
involved credit for that, but we do still have people
who don't necessarily watch that many games apart from the

(28:30):
ones that they're working, and don't necessarily aren't as embedded
within thinking about the league and watching the league and
covering the league as you kind of expect an NBA
or an NFL broadcaster to be. You sort of think
if you hear, you know, Richard Jefferson or Doris Burke
doing the NBA, you kind of expect that if someone

(28:50):
asked them about a game that was on the previous night,
they'd have watched it, they'd have been at home watching it,
or they at the very least watch highlights of this game.
You don't always get that feeling with some of the
people who work on WNBA games. It's more that they've
done their research, they've invariably talked to the coaches and
things like that. They know they're prepared. They're all prepared,

(29:11):
but they're not as obsessive about the league as you
sort of expect the men's league broadcasters to.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Be or potentially have multiple other jobs. Absolutely are the
rules in order to kind of.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
Yeah, it's not a dedicated job because like lots of
the writers, Yeah, it's hard to make them make money
and make this your sole career covering a WNBA, which
you know, we all hope the leagues, these women's leagues
are going to get bigger and bigger, and then people
that will be their only coverage, that will be their focus.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Well, and I think also it's the way you watch
and what matters to you, which is why it's so
necessary to have folks like you two, because it's not
the way my brain works and watches, but it makes
the experience more interesting for me when folks like you
offer things up because of the way you watch. And Jen,
I wonder if you can still ever watch a game
for fun or do you always find that your critical

(30:03):
eye for content and stats is tracking things.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
I think I gave up watching games for fun maybe
twenty years ago. No, no, no, no, but well, okay,
let me put it this way. Gave up watching for
from a fan's eye twenty years ago because for me,
what I'm doing it the way I consume these games,
it is fun for me. It is fun for me
to have my laptop with me anytime I'm watching a game.

(30:30):
A lot of the times I am, you know, running
a live Slack channel with the talent and producers and
graphics at the time. Sometimes I'm not. It depends, you know,
on the game, So my engagement level varies. But there's
no way I can just watch a game and not
have some critical thoughts. Even watching the US Women's game,
I'm like, why are they choosing those colors for the score?

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Bug?

Speaker 3 (30:52):
What are they thinking?

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Right?

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Like, it's down to every detail.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
I was just going to say that I watched some
of the games Gens covering as a fan. This is
a weird crossover. I'm going to be in Switzerland for
the Women's Euros that you're going to be covering from
the Studio's a little dot in the in the crowd
at the end. So yeah, I still get to watch
the soccer as a fan. But yeah, I know the

(31:17):
feeling in terms of yeah, I don't. I don't have
a WNBA team and haven't for a long time, which yeah,
does mean I can be neutral about it all.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, until they expand to Europe, it's going to make
for some tough travel.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
I've been calling for a London team for a long
time now. I'm not not expecting it anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
I will say that, Richard, I have to ask you
just did or her Hoop Stats podcast about EuroBasket, which
is something that is huge where you are and mostly
just a nuisance to us because players leave our w
teams to go play in it. Can you give us
the top two reasons we should listen to that podcast
episode and we should be excited about watching EuroBasket.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
I mean the top two reasons are the people that
did it with me, which are Alfred Currier and Robert Mummery,
who both know these teams and players inside out and
gave great coverage of what to expect and what to
see in those games. It's a major tournament, a major
international tournament that these players care about a lot, and
that will be high level basketball with potential upsets because

(32:18):
Eurobusque involves a lot of teams that are relatively close
to each other in terms of talent level. In that France, Spain,
Belgium will go in as favorites, but the other teams
are capable of beating them. It's close enough that you
know it's it's not an America up where if the
US sent a full squad they would win most games

(32:39):
by thirty forty points. We're talking about.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Correct me if I'm wrong, But France is actually missing
a lot of players who decided to stay in the
w and not travel over, so they won't have quite
the advantage we expected even a month or so ago.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Absolutely, Marine Johannes, Gabby Williams, Carla Lake, Dominique Malongo, who's
obviously gotten.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
A lot of pretty big names.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yeah, and France of probably still the favorites, which shows
you how much talent is coming out of France in
the basketball.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Well, they sure gave the US run for their money
at the Olympics, so I think we finally woke up
to that. All right, last question for both of you,
I'm putting you on the spot, but is there a
specific statistic in your sport that you have your eye
on that you think someone is about to break, or
a team is likely to up end, or a long
standing stat that is finally ready and ripe to be broken.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Well, for NWSL, we have now, as of after the
other night's Kansas City game, we now have four players
tied for thirty one career assists, and assists don't happen
as much as goals, right, you know, So it's like, please,
will somebody just take this record and run?

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (33:47):
So it's Lynn, it's Sophia Huerta, it's the retired Jess McDonald,
and now Vanessa di Bernardo is tied. And I've had
this queued up, you know, in our you know, milestones
to watch for months.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Now it's like it's going to take it.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Somebody take it and run with it.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Everyone stops scoring solo goals using this tricks.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yes, just take an assist.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
And bury it from one of those four peoples, please, Richard,
how about you?

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Well, I'm going to twist your question a little bit
and say that welcome to We're probably less than a
year away of somebody shattering the highest salary that we've
recorded since we've been doing this. Because we have a
collective bargaining agreement negotiation going on at the moment because
the leap, the players Association opted out of the current one,
which means the current CBA expires after the season that

(34:37):
is being played at the moment, so they need to
get a new one done before next season. We're all
crossing our fingers that that happens without a strike, without
a lockout, because that's not going to be good for anyone.
And yeah, once it does, players could be earning maybe
a million dollars a year. The people have certainly thrown
that out as sort of, yeah, add a zero one

(34:57):
to what we're seeing at the moment, So it'd be.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Very different, very different, I would imagine, And I don't
know if there's a record of this that this season
has the highest number and percentage of players with contracts
ending in the exact same year.

Speaker 4 (35:12):
Oh yes, we have about because.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Almost every roster, everybody's contract is done this season, so
they could take advantage of that CBA yep.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
Apart from the players that are on rookie scale contracts,
which are three years plus one, virtually everyone else has
said I'm not signing beyond twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Right, So unless the league started with everybody on a
one year deal or a three year deal or something
like that. Unless the very beginning of the w involved
everyone signing the same length of contract, I would guess
that this would be a statistical anomaly in that category.

Speaker 4 (35:41):
It's going to create a ridiculous free agency next year,
assuming we actually get a CBA to allow us to
have it. Yeah, because anyone can sign anyone.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
And we here at this show are very excited about that. Richard, Jen,
this was so fun. I learned a ton. Thanks so
much for the time, Thank you, Thanks, thanks again to
Jen and Richard for taking the time. We got to
take another break when we come back. What makes a
record untouchable? Welcome back, Slay says, you heard Jen's story

(36:16):
about getting Christine Lily's cap world record changed from three
point fifty two to three fifty four international appearances after
Jen stumbled upon two previously unrecorded games from nineteen ninety five.
Well that got us thinking, will any other soccer player
of any gender ever come close to Lily's record? The
current men's record holder isn't even close. Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo

(36:38):
is the only man ever to reach two hundred international appearances,
and he's currently at two hundred and twenty one. Total
caps worth noting at forty years old, his biological footy
clock is ticking, so perhaps another woman well. Canadian star
Christine Sinclair, who retired last year, has the second most
caps ever at three hundred thirty one. As for the

(36:59):
most capped active player, that honor belongs to thirty five
year old Dutch player Sharita Spitza, who has logged two
hundred and forty three appearances for the Netherlands since two
thousand and six. Meantime, on the US national team, thirty
one year old Lindsay Heaps formerly Iran, has the most
caps of any US active player, one sixty seven, meaning
she's still less than halfway to Lily's record of three

(37:21):
point fifty four, and there's reason to believe that Lily's
record may never be broken. First, and foremost, her longevity
is legendary. She played for the US women's national team
for twenty three years, starting at the age of sixteen,
but also the world of women's soccer has fundamentally changed
in Lily's playing days. The national team was essentially the
only stable postgrad opportunity. In fact, a few years after

(37:44):
graduating from unc Lily played for the Washington Wart Hogs
of the now defunct Continental Indoor Soccer League, a men's league.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
She was the only woman at the time.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Lily went on to play in the semi pro USLW League,
then the professional WUSA and w the two women's pro
leagues that preceded the NWSL. Lilly also spent some time
playing at clubs in Europe. Altogether, from ninety four to
twenty eleven, seventeen years of club ball, she played in
just one hundred eight games. For comparison, mel Swanson reached

(38:15):
one hundred five games in just seven seasons so far
with the NWSL. These days, with the NWSL, the English
Women's Super League and other international leagues thriving, plus in
season tournaments and interleague cups being added every year, top
players are less reliant on their national team for opportunities
to play, meaning the number of international games scheduled each

(38:36):
year has gradually declined and players have more games to
manage than ever before, and that balance can be seen
in decisions made by the coaching staff. For example, current
US women's national team boss Emma Hayes recently announced that
she's essentially giving all Europe based US national team players
a quote much needed break this summer and she'll rely
on players in the NWSL instead. Now, remember the NWSL

(38:59):
in European leagues follow opposite schedules, with the NWSL breaking
in the winter and the European leagues breaking in the summer.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Well, what does that mean for someone like Lindsay Heaps.
Let's take a look at what she's been up to
since the twenty twenty three World Cup.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Heeps played for the US in the twenty three World
Cup in Australia and New Zealand from mid July to
mid August of twenty twenty three. Then she suited up
for her club side oll Lyon for a friendly in
late August before their Division Ie Feminine season began in September.
Heeps played that season while her club Can currently competed
in Coope.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
De France and UEFA Champions League matches.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Leon's campaign ended in May twenty twenty four with another
championship trophy, and from there Heaps was called into the
US women's national team training camp in June. She played
Olympic tune up friendly state side in July, then headed
back to France for the Paris Olympics from late July
to mid August.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Then it was back to France for the twenty twenty
four to twenty five Leon season, and back to the
US where the she believes cup, and on and on
and on it goes. That's a lot of mileage to
put on the body. In an interview with ESPN's Jeff Kasoof,
Emma Hayes said the only Europe based player she expects
to call it for the team's pair of friendlies against
Ireland in late June and their match against Canada in
early July is defender Nami Germa, who currently plays for

(40:12):
Chelsea and returned from injury earlier this month. Hayes told
ESPN the decision to arrest players was made using input
from performance and medical staff, and included analysis of the
number of minutes players have logged in recent years. We'll
link to Kasoof's full interview with Hayes in the show notes.
All that to say, Christine Lily's record feels pretty untouchable.
But if modern medicine keeps improving, maybe current US women's

(40:35):
national team teenage phenom Lily Johannes will play into her sixties.
Never say never. We love that you listen in slices
but we want you to get in the game every
day too, so here's our good game play of the day.
Check out the incredible resources that Jen and Richard have
poured their hearts into. We've linked to both keeper notes
and her hoopstats in the show notes. And if you're

(40:55):
not familiar with the history of June teenth, honored today
by doing some reading, put some links in our show
notes to great stories by Henry Lewis Gates Junior and
Derek Bryceon Taylor. We always love to hear from you,
so hit us up on email. Good game at Wondermedia
neetwork dot com. We'll leave us a voicemail at eight
seven two two o four fifty seventy and don't forget
to subscribe, rate and review.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
It's easy.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Watch briefly forgetting You reside in a clown Country, rating
ten out of ten seconds of ignorant bliss review. Here's
my exchange with a Canadian barista Me Starbucks US app
still work here, Barista?

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah? Where are you visiting from?

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Me?

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Chicago? Have you been Barista?

Speaker 4 (41:36):
No?

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Not yet me. Oh, you have to come.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
It's the best actually, often said to be similar to
Toronto Barista.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yeah. Maybe in a few years.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Me, Oh yeah, shit, definitely don't come now and ignorant
bliss bubble burst. Honestly, I'm just grateful I'm still capable
of forgetting even moment harrily about the whrrors of the
current time, and that I don't have to be nervous
when I head back through immigration in the US later tonight.

(42:07):
I know that's a privilege not everyone has. Now it's
your turn, rate and review. Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow.
Good game, Jen, Good game, Richard, you being embarrassed of
where I'm from. Good Game with Sarah Spain is an
iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports
and Entertainment. You could find us on the iHeartRadio app,

(42:28):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Production by
Wonder Media Network, our producers are Alex Azzie and Misha Jones.
Our executive producers are Christina Everett, Jesse Katz, Jenny Kaplan,
and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Emily Rutter, Britney Martinez,
Grace Lynch, and Gianna Palmer. Our associate producer is Lucy
Jones and I'm your host Sarah Spain.

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