Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Fry. But here's a little behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, behind the behind the scenes, behind the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. As we are recording this three part
Speaker 1: episode on Jim Thorpe, we have some unresolved scheduling questions
Speaker 1: about how the episodes are going to fall across two weeks. So, um,
Speaker 1: we are Normally we would be like, ah, this is this,
Speaker 1: this is the ones that happened on Monday and Wednesday,
Speaker 1: but we're not actually sure. It's a mystery at this
Speaker 1: moment in time. Bump bump bum. So I I have
Speaker 1: had Jim Thorpe on my list for an episode for
Speaker 1: a really, really long time. I might have had him
Speaker 1: on my list actually before the two parter that we
Speaker 1: did on The fort Show Indian Schoolgirls basketball Team back
Speaker 1: in I think that was he definitely moved up the
Speaker 1: list as I was doing the research for that episode,
Speaker 1: because that is what I first learned about, um, all
Speaker 1: the all the stuff that Carlisle was doing to win
Speaker 1: football games that would later get written out of being
Speaker 1: within the scope of the rules, because there are just
Speaker 1: really was stuff that they were doing that fell under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of well, it's not against the rules. Specifically,
Speaker 1: nothing in the rule book says we can't shove the
Speaker 1: ball under somebody's jersey, right. I feel like I would
Speaker 1: have been better at sports and stuff like that. We're
Speaker 1: an option for me, yeah, yeah, um, yeah, the the whole.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would have it in me
Speaker 1: to to do this as an actual episode because that,
Speaker 1: as I referenced way back in that that episode on
Speaker 1: the fort shot Indian School girls basketball team, like, I
Speaker 1: don't follow sports. I don't follow any sports. I don't
Speaker 1: understand football. I think I even said in that episode,
Speaker 1: like I don't know what the first down line means.
Speaker 1: And people have tried to explain the first down line
Speaker 1: to me, and it just it's just like it just
Speaker 1: falls directly out of my mind and I'm like, really,
Speaker 1: just told me how it works. I still don't understand
Speaker 1: so um, and that comes from having watched many years
Speaker 1: of football games as a member of the high school
Speaker 1: marching band. So I don't think I could really wrap
Speaker 1: my head around an episode on like the years of
Speaker 1: of evolution of of gridiron football rules, but it did
Speaker 1: go through phases where it was like, wow, these rules
Speaker 1: are injuring players to the point of death. We gotta
Speaker 1: fix that. Like that was a whole thread in part
Speaker 1: of that trajectory. Yeah, I'm not a big football person.
Speaker 1: My my very best friend is big into football all
Speaker 1: and it kind of becomes that thing where I like,
Speaker 1: not in support her, but I don't really know what
Speaker 1: she's talking about. Most of the time. I understand the
Speaker 1: rules of football, but it's just never been my game.
Speaker 1: More of a hockey person. But it is fascinating I
Speaker 1: had not realized until you had mentioned it a while back,
Speaker 1: like how some of these cockamami plays worked in an
Speaker 1: effort to gain an edge. I feel like today because
Speaker 1: we did grow up in such a time when the
Speaker 1: rules were already pretty well established and regulated. Right, there
Speaker 1: haven't been a lot of changes to football rules in
Speaker 1: our in our lifetimes. Like I was so raised in
Speaker 1: that whole like if you cheat, you're just cheating yourself
Speaker 1: and you have to play straight and fair, and like
Speaker 1: I'm like, I wonder if they ever did that. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: we got the advantage out of this, but it feels
Speaker 1: sneaky and not necessarily honorable. Well, and it that's really
Speaker 1: interesting to think about because one of the things that
Speaker 1: really clear about Jim Thorpe as like his father really
Speaker 1: raised his sons. Um I don't I have I know
Speaker 1: nothing about his relationship with his daughters whatsoever, but in
Speaker 1: terms of his sons, like he really raised them with
Speaker 1: a love of sports and a love of play, and
Speaker 1: a love of being fair and a sense that like
Speaker 1: in your games, you your behavior was sporting, you didn't
Speaker 1: do things that were unfair or illegal. And so I
Speaker 1: wonder how that messed with like Carlisle's trick plays while
Speaker 1: he was on that football team. I don't actually know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's worth noting. Right, obviously, the
Speaker 1: stakes of college football today are very different than they
Speaker 1: would have been then. So even though they did take
Speaker 1: it seriously in terms of wanting to be the best,
Speaker 1: it wasn't quite the same. I feel like there was
Speaker 1: more of a sense of play. And that's mentioned in
Speaker 1: in these players wanting to play literally in the sense
Speaker 1: of like playfulness rather than necessarily being like a driven
Speaker 1: like this is how we bring you know, money into
Speaker 1: the school. Even though that was part of it, not
Speaker 1: that the same level we're dealing with today in college sports,
Speaker 1: right right, So it may have felt a little less
Speaker 1: problematic because of that. Yeah. Yeah, so I am very
Speaker 1: excited to be sharing three parts on Jim Thorpe. Um.
Speaker 1: As I said at the top of the episode, that
Speaker 1: is not what I thought was going to happen when
Speaker 1: I sat down to turn my notes into an actual outline. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I think it's like six PM or something,
Speaker 1: I sent you this note that was like, I have
Speaker 1: basically a one long ish but okay length part one,
Speaker 1: and then a part two that was literally twice as long.
Speaker 1: I got to figure out how to do this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the second part of our three part episode on
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe talked about the twelve Summer Olympic Games, at
Speaker 1: which he was amazing. Uh, and then about how the
Speaker 1: A a U and the IOC took his medals away,
Speaker 1: which made me so angry. Yes, it was a piece
Speaker 1: of the story I knew was going to happen. It
Speaker 1: was like, it was not something that I was surprised
Speaker 1: to learn or anything like that. What did surprise me though,
Speaker 1: was I had taken all these notes for these episodes,
Speaker 1: and then I started working them into the actual outline
Speaker 1: to use for the episodes instead of just like half
Speaker 1: sentences that don't connect to each other. And when I
Speaker 1: got to this part, I got so angry and I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I already knew this was coming. I
Speaker 1: took notes about it, I read all the things I
Speaker 1: knew about it before, but wow, I'm just livid at
Speaker 1: this moment. And then when we were recording the episode
Speaker 1: just now, we got to the part when we were
Speaker 1: just about to go into the sponsor break leading into
Speaker 1: the discussion of taking away his Olympic medals um, and
Speaker 1: I just I got really visc early angry, and I
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, this is apparently the thing that I
Speaker 1: am furious about today. There's a lot in these episodes
Speaker 1: to be furious about. To be clear, this early grabbed
Speaker 1: me today. Uh tempering that that visceral anger for me
Speaker 1: is a memory that this jogged of my mother, who was,
Speaker 1: I want to be charitable, a bit of a panicky
Speaker 1: person who would kind of like take a bit of
Speaker 1: information and gallop away with it thinking she had grasped
Speaker 1: the full thing and may or may not have, but
Speaker 1: I remember her invoking Jim Thorpe a lot when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, or when anyone else, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when I did something or anyone else did something. Here's
Speaker 1: where it came up once and I just remember being like,
Speaker 1: huh um, I uh did a lot of stuff with
Speaker 1: drama in high school. I'm majored in theater and film
Speaker 1: study in college as well as English. But there was
Speaker 1: a point where another high school had hired me, I think,
Speaker 1: to do stage makeup for them for one of their plays,
Speaker 1: and my mom flipped out, and I mean, like we're
Speaker 1: talking like twenty bucks. It was next to nothing even then,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those things where she's like,
Speaker 1: you will never get a college scholarship for theater if
Speaker 1: you do this because Jim Thorpe and like she just
Speaker 1: like piled some things together that made her very panicky
Speaker 1: that I should never do any side hustle growing up,
Speaker 1: which you know I was doing all the time, because
Speaker 1: it would somehow come back to bite me in this way.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if this was a story that
Speaker 1: got told in her family a lot growing up or what,
Speaker 1: but she would literally invoke this. It's like a reason
Speaker 1: to never accept money for doing anything if you thought
Speaker 1: you ever wanted a scholarship. I remember being like you know,
Speaker 1: in in uh classroom assignments to like debate or to
Speaker 1: write a paper on a subject like I remember this
Speaker 1: subject of what counts as an amateur athlete being like
Speaker 1: thrown out as a topic a lot. Yes, um, And
Speaker 1: it was a lot of these same questions of like,
Speaker 1: if you get a full ride to go to college,
Speaker 1: does that are you a professional athlete? You know? Then
Speaker 1: that folds into all kinds of other things about how
Speaker 1: much money colleges make off of their athletes and whether
Speaker 1: those athletes are being appropriately compensated for any of that,
Speaker 1: like the whole huge thing. Um. But yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it was part of just a whole big discussion of
Speaker 1: being like, you know, if you say this, if you
Speaker 1: say you can't, you can't be paid fifteen dollars of
Speaker 1: meal muddy a week in a totally different sport three
Speaker 1: years before, like you're putting big emits on who can
Speaker 1: compete in the Olympics, Like right, Well, and it becomes
Speaker 1: that thing of in my head, is this just the
Speaker 1: semantics issue? Like if they had just said this is
Speaker 1: your per diem, would all of that have not been
Speaker 1: a problem. Well, and there's also the idea of like
Speaker 1: amateur is that that's made up. It's made up, made
Speaker 1: up definitions and made up idea. Uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I get the fact that it's so connected to the
Speaker 1: International Olympic movement, but it's like also a term that
Speaker 1: people created to you know, apply to a specific thing
Speaker 1: that then was just enforced so differently for different players,
Speaker 1: especially in this story. Um, the the IOC and the
Speaker 1: a AU did not buy this argument of there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other people doing it who were doing
Speaker 1: it under pseudonyms, which which Thorpe was using his own name,
Speaker 1: so he was he was not disguising his identity. Um,
Speaker 1: like a lot of other people were getting away with it.
Speaker 1: And I totally see the argument of like just because
Speaker 1: everybody else is doing it doesn't make it okay. But
Speaker 1: then it's like, but everybody else is not being held
Speaker 1: accountable for it, only Jim Thorpe. So yeah, there's more
Speaker 1: on this in Part three. Stuff You Missed in History
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