The NCAA enters the bathroom wars

I wrote here about the NBA’s decision to participate in the bathroom wars by pulling its all-star game from Charlotte in response to North Carolina legislation on the matter. To no one’s surprise, the NCAA has elected to indulge in similar leftist grandstanding.

Ed Whelan has the details. He reports that the NCAA will require cities seeking to host championship tournaments to answer a questionnaire pertaining to state and local laws governing use of bathrooms and locker rooms. Questions include:

3. Does your city, county/parish and/or state regulate choice of bathrooms or locker rooms that may affect student-athletes, coaches, administrators, or game officials during the Event?

4. Does your city, county-parish and/or state regulate choice of bathrooms that may affect fans attending the Event?

6. If the Event is planned to be held on institutional/campus property, does your institution have provisions that interfere with any person’s choice of bathroom or locker room?

Ed points out that the only way to answer “no” to question 6 would appear to be having a policy that allows any person to use any bathroom or locker room

The NCAA is a bad joke. It should be the one answering questions from cities about its practices. One question might be: Why is Jim Boeheim still coaching in light of the rampant cheating and corruption your organization found in his program? Another might be: Why hasn’t your organization taken meaningful action in response to academic fraud at the University of North Carolina pursuant to which more than 200 basketball players took bogus courses for phony grades?

Here’s another one: What percentage of your $777 million budget in 2012 was earmarked for enforcement of your rules? The answer, apparently, is 1 percent.

The NCAA’s transgender “equality” stance, or whatever the questionnaire is supposed to promote, also raises questions. Ed writes:

The NCAA’s interest in making sure that men who identify as women may use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms at NCAA events would appear to be much stronger that its interest in ensuring that men who identify as women are able to play on women’s sports teams. Under the NCAA’s policies (p. 13):

A male athlete who identifies as female but “who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.”

A male athlete who identifies as female and who is “being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism … may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.”

These NCAA policies, I’ll note, are also inconsistent with the Obama administration’s claim that Title IX requires that schools that receive federal funds allow students who identify as transgender to participate in sex-segregated activities “consistent with their gender identity.”

In other words, the NCAA is requiring its member colleges not to comply with the Obama administration’s reading of Title IX.

The NCAA is under fire from left-leaning opinion writers (mainly) for exploiting college athletes, especially African-Americans. I take no position here on this charge.

I wonder, though, whether the NCAA is grandstanding in the bathroom wars in the hope that the left will be appeased. This sort of magical thinking is hardly unheard of in corporate America.

Indeed, it’s possible that such magical thinking may be driving corporate sponsors of NCAA tournaments to pressure the NCAA to enter the bathroom wars on the side of the left.

In any event, the NCAA should be trying to fix, if possible, its own various messes, rather than trying to influence public policy on who gets to use which bathrooms.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses