We’re back with author and professor Ryan Swanson!

What more did we have to talk about? In a nutshell: Soccer, systems, community, and justice.

More specifically, we talk about:

* Shame in college soccer, around different rules and ethics and what Swanson notes is an interesting tension in soccer to win and play it the “right way.”

* Who helped the players navigate their possible futures while Coach Jeremy Fishbein tried to save the team? (Hint: assistant coaches Mike Graczyk and Kelly Altman)

* Title IX and why the University of New Mexico is still out of compliance (even though that was one of the reasons given for cutting the men’s soccer team).

* Why he wrote the book, and how UNM has reacted to it.

* UNM’s struggle within the larger context of college sports, and what radical reform might look like (and did look like at places like the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt University).

* Correlations between New Mexico United and the UNM men’s soccer team. Plus, more on New Mexico United and that team’s future — and the role it could play in the state.

* The bummer of youth soccer … Did you know New Mexico is 50th in terms of youth sports activities?

* The segregation of youth soccer in New Mexico and across the United States — and the growth of the club sport system, which Swanson calls a “net negative for society as a whole.”

Music credits: Get Through it (Instrumental), Neu Song

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