The National College Athletic Association (NCAA) headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana was in the path of totality during last Monday’s eclipse. The moment was ironic because on that day the NCAA was eclipsed by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) as the leading promoter of women’s rights, safety, and competitive fairness for female athletes in U.S. college sports.
On April 8, 2024, the NAIA, which regulates college athletics for 250 schools and 83,000 athletes in 21 conferences, announced its new eligibility policy which protects women from male competitors regardless of gender identity. This sensible policy received the support of all 21 college presidents on the NAIA’s governing council. Tens of thousands of female athletes competing at NAIA colleges and universities can breathe a sign of relief, and there may now be a rush of female student-athletes wanting to play at NAIA schools. Meanwhile, female athletes in NCAA sports continue to be harmed by the NCAA’s neanderthal-like policy that discriminates against women, allowing male bodied competitors to beat up on women in college sports.
While the NCAA chooses to remain in a self-created dark age where the rights of women are not protected, the NAIA’s action shines a light on the obfuscation being practiced by the NCAA and its President Charlie Baker. The NCAA claims that allowing men who identify as transgender to compete in female sports is required by Title IX. This is false as sixteen courageous female student-athletes assert in a lawsuit against the NCAA filed last month in federal court in Atlanta, Georgia. As the NAIA’s policy reflects, it is the NCAA which is violating Title IX by reinterpreting the 1972 federal statute meant to create equal opportunities for women to instead impose radical gender ideology on college sports.
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The NCAA has long acted as the all-powerful Emperor of college sport, setting rules for the athletic programs of 1100 U.S. colleges and universities, and being paid a king’s ransom to do so. The crown jewel in the NCAA’s diadem is, of course, nearly two billion dollars in annual revenues from the commercial rights to the NCAA basketball tournament. Monday night after the eclipse also happened to be the end of the three-week parade of basketball games and commercializing of college sports that the NCAA calls “March Madness.” Fitting then that on the last day of the NCAA’s parade, Emperor Baker and his courtiers, otherwise known as the NCAA Board of Governors, were exposed by the NAIA.
One reason Charlie Baker was supposedly brought in to run the show in Indianapolis was to fix the NCAA’s longstanding failure to treat women fairly. Baker’s predecessor, former NCAA President Mark Emmert, had famously admitted in 2021, “When you lay the men’s and women’s [Division I basketball] championships side by side, as has been made clear over the past weeks, it is pretty self-evident that we dropped the ball in supporting our women’s athletes, and we can’t do that.”
The NCAA got a new President in late 2022, but the stream of bad news for women flowing out of NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis continues. There is no issue on which Baker has more clearly fumbled than on the NCAA’s policies allowing men to take women’s places on women’s teams. Baker was recently asked by Utah Senator Mike Lee: “Has the NCAA assessed the physical, emotional, psychological harm of its transgender inclusion policy on female athletes? If so, what are the findings? If not, why not?” Baker’s nonchalant response was, “The NCAA has not conducted any research related to the current transgender policy.” How embarrassing and how telling. The NCAA has performed no research whatsoever to evaluate the harms caused by men competing on women’s teams. That is not the response of an organizations dedicated to women’s rights and equal opportunities for women.
The NCAA being eclipsed by the NAIA on women’s rights for student-athletes is yet another embarrassment for the Baker-led organization. Time and again the NCAA has shown itself to be the college sports equivalent of a dark hole, a place where fairness and integrity are sucked into an opaque vortex of greed, gender ideology, and campus politics, rather than a source of light for college sport.
As college conference realignment has shown, those with the power to break through the NCAA’s corrupt stranglehold on college sports are conference commissioners. Big Ten Conference Commissioner Tony Petitti, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey and their counterparts in other conferences should pick up the phone today and call NAIA Commissioner, Jim Carr. It’s time the conference commissioners deposed the corrupt old Emperor of college sports allowing the sunlight of competitive fairness and equality for women to shine once again in college sports.
Mr. Bock, a sports, lawyer was general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, during 2007-20.
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