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EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode, we get into the "rise and fall" of the National Women's Football League with authors of a recently released book - Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League.
HAIL MARY is the story of the girl gridders who took America by storm. The women who thousands of people came to watch—perhaps to gawk at first but then, in the end, to cheer. Readers will meet Marcella Sanborn, the thirty-nine-year-old Clevelander who, in between raising her sixteen-year-old daughter and the hours she put in as a supply supervisor at the Ohio Bell Company, saw an announcement in the paper for a try out for a new women’s football team and thought—as so many women had before her—Why not? There was Linda Jefferson, the best halfback to ever play the game, who had five straight seasons with the Toledo Troopers where she rushed for over 1,000 yards and averaged 14.4 yards per carry. She would go on to become the first Black woman inducted into the Semi-Pro Football Hall of Fame and one of only four women in the American Football Association Hall of Fame. Rose Low of the Los Angeles Dandelions, a first-generation Chinese American and multisport athlete, legitimized the game during TV appearances alongside Billie
Jean King. Then there is the highlight of the NWFL’s most successful team—the Troopers, the winningest team in pro football history, men’s or women’s, and Trooper Mitchi Collette, a legend in the sport who has kept a women’s football team going in Toledo for over fifty years.
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AUTHOR BIOS
Britni de la Cretaz is a freelance writer who focuses on the intersection of sports and gender. They are the former sports columnist for Longreads and for Bitch Media. Their work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, espnW, Vogue, The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, The Ringer, Bleacher Report, The Atlantic, and more. Their work on racism in Boston sports media received the 2017 Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Journalism from the Transformative Culture Project, and that story was also a Notable Story in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing. Their writing on the queer history of women’s baseball for Narratively was nominated for a prestigious baseball writing award, the 2019 SABR Analytics Research Award. They live in the Boston area.
Lyndsey D’Arcangelo writes about women’s college basketball and the WNBA for The Athletic. Her articles, columns and profiles on female/LGBTQ+ athletes have previously appeared in The Ringer, Deadspin, espnW/ESPN, Teen Vogue, The Buffalo News, The Huffington Post, NBC OUT and more. She received a Notable Mention in the 2018 Best American Sports Writing anthology for her story, “My Father, Trump and The Buffalo Bills.” Lyndsey lives in Buffalo, NY.
THE FOOTBALL HISTORY DUDE BACKGROUND
The Football History Dude is a show dedicated to teaching NFL fans about the rich history of the game we all know and love. I’m your host, Arnie Chapman, and I’m just a regular dude that loves football and is a nerd when it comes to learning about history. I created this show to share the gridiron knowledge nuggets I gain from researching various topics about the history of the National Football League. Each episode I welcome you to climb aboard my DeLorean to travel back in time to explore the yesteryear of the gridiron, and yes, that’s a reference to the Back to the Future Movies.
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