From financial scandals to transgender rights, DEI, and Bad Bunny performing in this weekend’s Super Bowl, there’s no shortage of sports stories to tell. However, investigative sports journalism is a shell of its former self. That’s where Pablo Torre comes in. A longtime sports journalist and now host of the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, Torre prides himself on digging into the important stories that affect not only sports, but American culture and politics. And that often means investigating the intersection of money and sports. “In sports, unlike in business, you can even argue, there is something resembling a meritocracy that is enforced and cared about by fans, let alone the officials that are meant to tend the store of what it is to have integrity in professional sports,” he says. Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Torre’s reporting has shined a light on many stories that have gone unnoticed or  underreported, like his investigation into LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer potentially violating the NBA salary cap. He also recently collaborated with Mother Jones reporter Madison Pauly on a story about former college swimmer Riley Gaines’ rise to MAGA prominence through anti-trans activism. Gaines, Torre says, turned her grievance against one trans athlete into a career and political platform, “such that she is in real intimate connection with not just the White House, but the superstructure of political organizations that crop up to turn her cause as this supposed victim into a way to truly victimize trans people in America.”  On this week’s More To The Story, Torre sits down with host Al Letson to discuss what it’s like investigating the complicated world of sports. Find More To The Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or your favorite podcast app, and don’t forget to subscribe.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. With an icy white sheet still blanketing much of the Eastern United States after an intense storm this week, it’s hard to imagine a future with less snow at this time of year.  But over time, climate change has decreased snowpack by as much as 20 percent per decade in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. This trend is already causing trouble for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, global events reliant on snow to succeed. In a landmark 2024 study, researchers found that potential host locations are dwindling as temperatures warm.  Just weeks before this year’s Olympics-Paralympics events kick off in Italy, scientists published a follow-up study analyzing how the games can adapt. The most effective option: shifting when they are held.  Disappearing snow isn’t just affecting Olympians. Around the world, the warming climate is shortening recreational ski and snowboarding seasons, which could have cascading impacts for the towns that have long relied on this winter economy.  For more than a century, the Winter Olympics have been held almost every four years in snowy cities across the globe, from the first games in Chamonix, France, to the most recent in Beijing. The Paralympic Games take place in the same location shortly afterward.  Olympic competitions such as alpine skiing and snowboarding are dependent on consistent snowpack. Rapid levels of warming across the Northern Hemisphere disrupt that. In 2010, Vancouver saw a record-warm January, partially due to the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, and had to drive and fly in enough snow to fill 20 Big Bens for snowboarding and freestyle skiing events, the Christian Science Monitor reports.  Warm weather also threatens the quality of the snow already on the ground, as shown at Russia’s Sochi Olympics and Paralympics in 2014, which saw an uptick in injury rates compared with the previous games as athletes struggled in the slush.  With this in mind, the International Olympic Committee, which governs the games, recently commissioned a study to determine future climate impacts. Researchers analyzed 93 regions around the world that have previously hosted the Olympic Winter and Paralympic Games to determine whether they’d be “climate-reliable” by the 2050s. Under the most likely emissions scenario, only 52 locations met the criteria for the Olympics and just 22 for the Paralympics, given that it is slightly later in the season, according to their 2024 study. But there are ways to adapt, according to co-author Daniel Scott, a climate expert at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In a follow-up study published last week, Scott and his colleagues found that shifting both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to earlier dates could increase the number of climate-suitable host countries, particularly for the Paralympics.  As I reported last year, experts have called for a similar timing change for the Summer Olympics to reduce the risk of extreme heat, which has harmed both competitors’ and fans’ health in recent years.  It’s a seemingly simple shift but comes with its own set of complexities. Moving the Winter Olympics up a few weeks would mean the games are happening right after the holiday season. Cities may struggle to secure pre-games housing, ensure there’s sufficient infrastructure, or find volunteers shortly after Christmas.  Another added nuisance, according to Scott: Television rights. Broadcasters and advertisers pay billions and plan years ahead for the rights to air the Olympics, which provides the financial foundation for the games. Changing the time of the games could disrupt this model, at least in the short term.  Other experts have pointed out that organizers must reckon with the Olympic Games’ own rampant emissions to secure a future less threatened by climate change. Cities often raze ecosystems to build new facilities, companies use copious amounts of energy to broadcast the competitions, and people travel from around the world in carbon-emitting planes to spectate.  For the Winter Games specifically, environmentalists are concerned about the growing amount of artificial snow cities must pump out to supplement dwindling natural supplies. In 2022, Beijing made Olympics history as the first host to use artificial snow almost exclusively to support the games.  It was a mammoth task. China pulled water from key reservoirs to help create a wintry snowscape in a historically dry city. But critics said the effort strained water supplies for local communities, disrupted soil and plant growth, and used large amounts of energy.  The 2026 Olympics is in a snowier region, the Italian Alps. But still, the International Olympic Committee told the Associated Press it has produced more than 2 million cubic yards of artificial snow for the upcoming games.  Since the last time Italy’s Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted in 1956, February temperatures have warmed in the area by 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a recent analysis by the nonprofit Climate Central.  Environmentalists have pointed to the climate feedback loop this can create: As places pump out more artificial snow, the emissions from this process—if fossil fuels are used—feed the climate change that will reduce future natural snowpack.  Artificial snow is becoming similarly important for recreational winter sports as temperatures rise. Some resorts have taken to stockpiling snow under giant insulating blankets to keep it from melting during warmer seasons, WIRED reports. But these efforts are costly, and it may soon become untenable for certain regions in the Northern Hemisphere, including some parts of the Northeastern US such as New York and Pennsylvania, to save or make enough snow for a lucrative ski operation.  Scott told me there will be “winners and losers” as winter resort towns face global warming. “As some of those businesses go out of business, the others are there to pick up market share, if demand stays the same,” he said.  Though Scott recognizes the energy and water required to produce machine-made snow, he believes the sustainability of snowmaking gets a bit of a bad rep. He noted that up to 90 percent of the water is returned to the same watershed once the snow melts, and the process likely has a lower emissions footprint than traveling farther to ski elsewhere or flying to watch the Olympics.  Nonetheless, winter sport enthusiasts—professional and amateur—will have to adapt to changing conditions. A survey of Olympic winter athletes and coaches from 20 countries found 90 percent had concerns about how climate change will affect the future of their sport. “When it comes to the Olympics, you hope you deliver [athletes] the best conditions possible,” Scott said. “These people have trained their whole damn lives for these things.”

During an NCAA women’s swimming championship in March 2022, two seniors tied for fifth place. The race was unremarkable except for one fact: One of the swimmers, Lia Thomas, was a transgender woman. The swimmer she tied with, Riley Gaines, believed the NCAA never should have allowed her to participate. The matchup, and Gaines’ subsequent transformation into a leading anti-trans activist, has fueled a growing movement to “save women’s sports” from trans women—and a conservative crusade against trans rights more broadly.  Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. This week on Reveal, we examine Gaines’ rise and radicalization, as her rhetoric shifts from calling out NCAA policy to calling trans women sexual predators. Over the last year, the anti-trans movement has reached a tipping point. Trans girls are banned from girls’ school sports in the majority of states. The NCAA and US Olympic and Paralympic committees have banned trans women from women’s competitions. The Supreme Court is currently considering the issue, too. Then we dive into the science to understand how gender-affirming hormone therapy affects trans women’s performance—and what questions science still has not answered around fairness in women’s sports. Finally, we return to the swimming pool, as reporter Imogen Sayers speaks with Meghan Cortez-Fields, one of the last transgender swimmers to compete as a woman in the NCAA.

FOR SEVERAL SEASONS, THE CLUB HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE FIGHT FOR EQUAL PRIZE MONEY FOR MEN’S AND WOMEN’S COMPETITIONS ~ from Dialectik Football ~ The Football Association has frozen prize money for the 2025/26 Women’s FA Cup while increasing the total prize money for the men’s competition. This represents a setback for the small steps taken in recent seasons towards equal prize money. Why has the Football Association (FA) chosen to exacerbate the inequalities in its flagship competition? Lewes FC took advantage of the Women’s FA Cup third round to raise this issue again and request a meeting with the FA’s Professional Game Board (PGB) to get an explanation for this reversal. Ahead of their match against Crystal Palace at the Dripping Pan on 14 December, the East Sussex club called on its supporters to use the game as a platform to protest once more against the freeze on prize money for the Women’s Cup. Rooks fans symbolically displayed banners bearing the equals sign in the stands. “Equality is not a cost, it’s a commitment to the future of football,” proclaims the campaign slogan. This demand is not new for Lewes, who launched the “Equal FA Cup” campaign in 2019. Since then, while the FA has indeed doubled the prize money for women’s competitions, the gap with that of men remains enormous. THE FIGURES AND THE STARK REALITY To give an idea, the winning teams in the third round of the Women’s FA Cup received £35,000 in prize money, while the runners-up received only £9,000. Meanwhile, at the same stage of the competition, men’s teams will receive £121,500 for the winners and £26,500 for the eliminated team. The freeze on the overall prize money for the women’s FA Cup (144,000 pounds was added to cover a new preliminary round) is all the more unfair given that the men’s prize money has increased by 1.5 million pounds compared to the 2024/25 season. The freeze also applies to prize money paid during the preliminary rounds of the men’s FA Cup, impacting dozens of amateur clubs already burdened by the overall increase in costs. Adding insult to injury, the winner of the men’s edition will receive 2.12 million pounds next May, 120,000 pounds more than last season. Considering the revenues of the Premier League clubs to whom the trophy is promised, this increase feels like an insult to the teams in the earlier rounds who could have shared it. “Today, the lion’s share of the £23.5 million prize money for men’s football will go to wealthy Premier League clubs who arguably need it the least and for whom this money will make very little difference,” laments Ben Hall, director of Lewes FC, in an opinion piece published on the BBC website. “Same sport, same rules, same competition, same knockout format, same governing body, but a different value placed on the women’s and men’s players.” In the early rounds, the prize money is so paltry that many women’s teams lose money. The costs incurred by travel, medical coverage, and pitch rentals often exceed the prize money earned from a victory at this stage of the competition. INEQUALITY AT EVERY LEVEL Ironically, the FA knows how to be egalitarian when it comes to national teams, its crown jewels. Since 2020, the FA has been paying women the same match fees and bonuses as men. “The question, therefore, isn’t whether the FA believes in equality, but rather why this conviction stops at the FA Cup,” Hall continues. The governing bodies have no shortage of excuses, citing commercial realities and differences in television revenue. For Ben Hall, it’s primarily a matter of political choice: “The FA decides the prize money for both competitions. They could make them equal tomorrow; they simply would have to.” For many, this situation is merely the result of the setback women’s football has suffered due to its 50-year ban by the English Football Association, perpetuating a view of football primarily as a male preserve. Under the guise of profitability, the FA is simply perpetuating this history of male dominance. A CALL TO OTHER CLUBS This is why Lewes FC wrote to all the teams participating in the Women’s FA Cup, inviting them to carry out protest actions such as a team photo before kickoff, with the players forming an “=” sign with their arms, and a 21-second pause after kickoff, referencing 1921, the year the FA banned women’s football. Lewes FC and Corsham Town did this during the first round. With its “Equality FC” campaign launched in 2017, Lewes has already become the first club – in the English professional and semi-professional landscape – to allocate equal resources to its women’s and men’s teams. It has made this fight for equal treatment in football a central element of its DNA as a “community-based” club. While it is still struggling to bring many other clubs on board, the club is not giving up. However, it is not entirely alone. A few seasons ago, Clapton CFC and Stourbridge FC Ladies also took up the cause. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post Lewes FC, a club in pursuit of equality appeared first on Freedom News.

On Monday night, Christian Pulisic, the star of the US men’s national soccer team, scored in a match against Jamaica and promptly jogged over to the corner flag. After a jumping fist pump, the red, white, and blue bedecked central midfielder did what’s become known as the “Trump Dance,” laughing as he wiggled his arms and hips. > This dance is more than just “fun.” It’s a symbol of shifts in power and > policy. In a post-game interview, Pulisic—a multi-millionaire who is a registered Republican—was questioned about his celebration, and disavowed that it carried any deeper meaning: “It’s not a political dance. It was just for fun.” No matter what Pulisic intended, there’s no denying he’s part of a larger wave of athletes, from the NFL to the collegiate level, who in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win have been imitating the president-elect’s dance, which he is known to perform along to “YMCA.”  In discussing the trend, Fox News liberal commentator Jessica Tarlov identified a hypocrisy in contrast to the national stick-to-sports outrages that followed political statements by stars like Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James: “I guess we’ve gotten to the portion of the Trump era where we have moved past shut up and dribble, and now it is fantastic for athletes to talk about their politics.” There’s no doubt some athletes are doing the dance as a show of support for Trump and his agenda. Take San Francisco 49ers pass-rusher Nick Bosa, who, a week before the election, wore a “Make America Great Again” hat during a post-game appearance. He was eventually docked $11,255 for breaking rules barring displaying written messages on the field, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the NFL delayed the fine until after Election Day in hopes of avoiding controversy or retribution from Trump. The following Sunday, Bosa did Trump’s dance in celebration of a sack; a video went viral after being shared by Sean Hannity on social media. Trump’s election win is visible beyond American athletes. Players from the English football club Barnsley F.C—founded in 1887 and now playing in the third tier of professional British soccer—celebrated a goal with the dance. The display was broadcast to the world by the team’s social media managers, who shared a video backed up by the sounds of YMCA. And this month’s attacks in Amsterdam on Israeli soccer fans were kicked off after at least one supporter of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, the visiting team, was photographed hoisting a Trump banner.  As Trump’s win reverberates in American culture and across the world, his reelection has confirmed his status as a global right-wing figure. In that sense, symbols that are associated with him will always speak to shifts in power and policy. When they crop up in sports, it’s hard to argue they are simply “just for fun.”