During their playing careers, Olympic medalists Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe helped propel women’s sports toward mainstream popularity, sparking conversations around equal pay and inclusion. Now, as the two settle into retirement, they’re finding ways to keep those conversations going.
Bird, who retired in 2022 as the only WNBA player to win titles in three different decades, and Rapinoe, who helped lead the U.S. women’s soccer team to two World Cup titles and gold at the 2012 Olympics before retiring in 2023, are relaunching a podcast to delve deeper into women’s sports and its intersection with politics, equality and inclusion.
In an interview with “Meet the Press,” Rapinoe and Bird spoke about their podcast, “A Touch More with Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe,” which had its initial run in 2020 and returned this summer. Featuring guests like soccer star Alex Morgan, a 14-year veteran of the U.S. women’s national team, plus soccer icon and two-time Olympic gold medalist Mia Hamm and basketball legend and three-time Olympic gold medalist Dawn Staley, the podcast will serve as a platform for Bird and Rapinoe to continue the conversations they started on equality in women’s sports.
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Bird and Rapinoe said they hope these conversations will encourage more investment in women’s sports to better “match the quality and the ability of the players.” Rapinoe said she’s starting to see these investments happen in recent years through the work of players who use their platforms to speak out.
When Bird played in the Final Four for UConn in the early 2000s, Rapinoe said, the stadium was sold out. Rapinoe added that the U.S. women’s national team had been “winning gold medals for a long time.”
“You’re seeing the investment match the appetite that the fans have and the demand from the fans. The demand from the fans has been there the whole time,” she said.
Bird and Rapinoe, who have been engaged since 2020, said leaving behind the regimented routines that consumed their lives as professional athletes has allowed them to refocus their energy.
“There is just this constant conversation about what you need to do to be ready,” Bird said. “Maybe it’s for practice. Maybe it’s a game. Maybe it’s a tournament, whatever it is. So, letting go of that has been nice. But replacing it has probably been the biggest challenge.”
The duo said the platforms for advocacy they’ve built outside of their work as athletes have made it possible to look toward their next steps. Both have long been advocates for equal pay for female athletes.
“We were very fortunate to have the careers we had and, to be quite honest, make the money that we made. And that has now allowed us different opportunities in retirement that didn’t exist for a lot of athletes my age when they retired, right?” Bird said.
Bird added that by seeking out media opportunities to speak out, she and Rapinoe hope to pave the way for future female athletes to extend their career beyond their time on the court or field.
“If a retired athlete wanted to get into media, they can now look to us, they can look to me, and see, ‘Oh, this is a pathway,’” Bird said.
“I want to help younger generations continue to be able to quote-unquote, ‘see it and be it,’” she continued.
Bird said sometimes it’s difficult for her to realize that people don’t see how lucrative and important women’s sports are.
“[They] kind of ignored us for a really long time, and we still thrived. We still were able to do it without the investment,” Bird said. “Sometimes I want to look at, again, whether it’s people trying to invest or lawmakers and be like, ‘Don’t you want to look like a genius? Like this is how you can look like — invest now, get on board now, help this grow now, and you could literally look like a genius.’”
Rapinoe said she hopes future generations of female athletes are able to compete and participate in sports as their “full selves.”
“I know how important it is for me and how much I need and want the space to be my full self, and I want to extend that to other people,” Rapinoe said.
“We have these big platforms and this influence. We get to come on things like ‘Meet the Press.’ So, it’s like I want to let people know, being yourself and being your whole self is the goal for everybody,” she continued.
While encouraging young athletes to embrace opportunities to build a platform, Bird and Rapinoe added that it’s important to keep the sport at the center.
“My only advice is usually just to make sure they keep basketball the main thing. Because at the end of the day, that is your vehicle,” Bird said.
“You never see LeBron miss a workout. And that’s something we did at the end of our career, find that balance. And I would just always want to encourage younger people to make sure they find that balance,” she added.
Bird and Rapinoe share new episodes of their podcast every Wednesday. They hope their conversations add to “the ecosystem of coverage that happens in sports” as athletes who “understand the nuance of all the things that happen on the court, on the field and as well as off.”
