Daily Archives: 19 December 2024

Time to Walk Away from the NCAA

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The NCAA president, Charlie Baker, has issued his ultimatum. When Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO), in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over legalized sports gambling, asked Baker about the NCAA’s policy that transgender student athletes should be able to use the locker room, shower, and toilet facilities in accordance with their gender identity, Baker’s response was blunt and appalling [emphasis added]:

Everybody else should have an opportunity to use other facilities if they wish to do so[.]

No. Men do not belong in women’s facilities, nor should they be competing against women in women’s sports. Title IX provides for substantially equal facilities for male and female sports; it does not provide for substantially equal facilities for male and coed sports.

So much for the organization’s obligation to protect women.

It’s time for women athletes, and male athletes with any sense of morals, to answer Baker’s disgusting ultimatum and use other facilities. Those other facilities would be competition facilities that don’t have men horning in.

Walk away from the NCAA en masse and form their own amateur athletic association, use those other facilities for their competitions. It would be good if the NCAA member semi-pro athletic education institutions did the same, even led the way, but I’m not holding my breath on that.

Sulk on the Sidelines

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Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) has decided to take her marbles and go home in a snit. Not literally, she’ll remain, formally, a Republican, but

she won’t sit on committees or caucus with the House Republican Conference for the time being and will instead focus on working with the new “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency” caucus on cutting spending.

She says, in so many words,

I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing[.]
I do not need to be involved in circuses.

She’s not far wrong about the circus aspect, especially with the ego-driven Chaos Caucus continuing its knee-jerk obstructionism. Quitting the game, though, instead of staying in it, doing her best to reduce, if not eliminate, the circus aspect, is the move of a coward.

Pushing the DOGE spending cuts—whatever they are; so far, all we have is news outlet claims—all by her august self is a move borne of self-important arrogance. Demanding things be done her way or she’ll go sulk in her room is not the definition of leadership governing; it’s just more personal aggrandizement.

She doesn’t want to be just one voice in the cacophony. However, with her ducking out, she’s left the serious caucus with one less voice for functional governance.

Spartz is betraying her constituents.

She’s also contributing to Progressive-Democratic Party continued control of the House, given the Republican Party’s miniscule majority, and the Chaos Caucus’ preference for that over compromise with their fellow Republicans. That’s another betrayals of her constituents.