#NerdlandForever and Hall Of Famers Willie Lanier & Ken Houston

Edge of Sports

Dave Zirin / The Nation

News, Sports News, Sports, History, Politics

4.8 • 616 Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2016

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We have a show this week that fills me with pride and anger. The pride comes from the fact that we interview two NFL Hall of Fame players who grew up in the Jim Crow south, went to Historically Black Colleges, and played in the 1960s: Willie Lanier and Ken Houston. We hear their stories and it is – to put it mildly - powerful stuff. The anger comes with our opening topic: my thoughts on the cancelling of MSNBC’s The Melissa Harris Perry Show, a place where I was regularly accorded a platform to discuss the politics of sports. After giving my own thoughts, I speak to original Melissa Harris Perry Show producer - and current MTV News journalist - Jamil Smith about the abrupt cancellation of the show. I also give the Just Stand Up Award to a college football team trying to end sexual assault.#NerdlandForever—This episode of Edge of Sports is brought to you by FreshBooks. For the best way to make tax season easy, especially for freelancers like me, get FreshBooks, a cloud accounting software designed exclusively for small business owners and freelancers. Go to http://FreshBooks.com/Edge and enter Edge in the “How You Heard About Us” section for a 30-day free trial.—“Melissa Harris-Perry’s Email to Her #nerdland Staff”https://medium.com/@JamilSmith/melissa-harris-perry-s-email-to-her-nerdland-staff-11292bdc27cb#.nbmyqf9tjcolumn: “Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry” http://www.thenation.com/article/thank-you-melissa-harris-perry-tears-for-nerdland/Special thanks: Willie Lanier, Ken Houston, George Atallah, Carl Francis, Jamil Smith (http://twitter.com/JamilSmith)—http://twitter.com/edgeofsports | http://edgeofsportspodcast.com | http://fb.com/edgeofsportspod | [email protected] by The Funky Meters http://funkymeters.com and a.bee https://soundcloud.com/abe-e Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of Edge of Sports is brought to you by FreshBooks. It's smart mobile accounting
0:04.4	designed specifically for freelancers and small business owners. You can try FreshBooks for 30 days
0:09.3	on us with no credit card required. Go to freshbooks.com slash edge and enter Edge in the
0:14.5	how you heard about us section. Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziren. We have an unbelievable show this week.
0:24.3	We are talking to not one but two NFL Hall of Famers who played in the 1960s and 1970s, amidst the Black Freedom Struggle, amidst the formation of the NFL Players Association.
0:35.9	They are Willie Lanier, Hall of Famer, Kansas City
0:39.3	Chiefs, and Ken Houston, Hall of Famer, who played for the Houston Oilers and the Washington
0:44.8	football team and is considered the greatest player to ever come out of the state of Texas.
1:01.5	I'm actually going to start by speaking a little bit about the cancellation of a show in which I was a regular guest, the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC. Her show was canceled by
1:07.6	the Comcast-owned MSNBC network, and I'm going to share my thoughts with you
1:13.4	about this, and then I'm going to speak to one of the longtime producers of the show, who's now a
1:17.7	writer for MTV News, Jemiel Smith.
1:20.6	And then after that, we're going to speak to our Hall of Fame guests.
1:24.6	So let me get started.
1:33.9	This week. of Fame guests. So let me get started. This weekend, a new show was canceled, and I'm frankly really upset about it. The show is the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, and the Comcast-owned
1:40.3	network decided that Melissa Harris-Perry's brand of distinctive talk, penetrating discussion,
1:47.8	and taking on issues that definitely were not being covered by other Sunday and Saturday
1:52.1	weekend news shows was just not going to be for them. Ties were severed, as an MSNBC executive
1:58.2	put it, after Melissa, who I'm proud to count as a colleague,
2:02.1	sent an email to her staff explaining why she would not be hosting her show this past weekend
2:07.0	after several weeks of having the program preempted for election coverage.
2:11.1	The quote-unquote scorching email, that's how it was described by CNN, which is now public,
	...

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