The Playbook You Have Been Waiting For!
Caroline Fitzgerald Captures Slaying the Trolls Perfectly!
Slaying the Trolls is not an academic book. It was written for a general audience, not for a university library.
When I tell people this, I get the sense some may not be inclined to believe me. I sometimes get the sense that some might look at the authors and come to a different conclusion. After all, Nefertiti Walker and I are both college professors. And we have presented studies at academic conferences and published papers in academic journals. Given this reality, one might expect our book to be “academic.”
But it’s not!!
Really!!
This week, Nef Walker and Caroline Fitzgerald (founder of the fantastic Goal Sports) had a conversation that explicitly made this point (as you can see, Goal Sports is sponsored by Ally – which I think it cool!).
Ep. #105 Why the Trolls are Very, Very Wrong About Women and Sports, ft. Dr. Nefertiti Walker
In the course of their talk, Fitzgerald offered this perfect one-sentence description of Slaying the Trolls:
"This is the book I have personally been waiting for... it's nice to have a playbook in hand to fight back!"
Exactly!!
Slaying the Trolls is a playbook!!
Fans of women sports are constantly facing attacks from “trolls” and Nef Walker and I are trying to provide a playbook that is a) easy to read and understand and b) allows one to fight back.
My amazing co-author summarized the approach as follows:
One should not let the tone of the book fool you. Because we are actually academics, we back up our “sassy talk” with our academic research. As Nef said:
Exactly! Again!
We use data. We use research. But as Nef points out in the interview, the writing is at a "5th grade level”. So we use academic research. But we do not write like academics. At least, we don’t write like some of the academics we know!
I very much encourage everyone to give this interview a listen. Nef does an amazing job of both previewing the book and giving some real insights into how this book was written and how it finally came to be published (yes, it was a journey!).
And again, it is a very quick read. So if you haven’t already, go get the book. When you are done reading, we promise you will be fully armed to slay some trolls!
I would also encourage you to follow the work of Caroline Fitzgerald and Goal Sports. Women sports are very clearly on the rise. We can see this in the attendance, television ratings, and revenues. We can see this in the dominance of U.S. women at the Olympics. But women’s sports still struggles to find enough investors. Fitzgerald and Goal Sports are working hard to change this and advance the business of women’s sports. So, well worth paying attention to!