A few short months ago, Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota was a rising star in the Republican Party, due largely to her deft handling of the pandemic. Unlike so many elected officials, even on our side, she refused to sanction lockdown orders or mask mandates in her state.
Then she caved to the “transgender” lobby, declining to sign a bill that banned males from participating in women’s sports—legislation she had earlier promised to back. Overnight, she went from being a likely future Vice President of the United States, and possibly even President one day, to being a future former governor of South Dakota.
Memo to the other 26 Republican governors: Don’t be like Kristi Noem.
The reason for Noem’s reversal, she said, was a threat from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to withdraw tournament games and other sporting events from states that do not affirm “transgender rights.” The association has recently made good on that threat, issuing the following statement:
“The NCAA Board of Governors firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports. This commitment is grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition….When determining where championships are held, NCAA policy directs that only locations where hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination should be selected.”
Anyone can see what’s going on here. It’s basically a form of extortion. The Left has never cared about sports, per se, except as an instrument of “social change.” Weenies that they are, Leftists aren’t really into the whole sweaty, physical competition thing. Nor do they believe in “the myth of meritocracy”—and no endeavor in life is more meritocratic than sports, where success depends entirely on ability, skill, and hard work.
Now the Left has co-opted the NCAA in its long, Gramscian march through the institutions. (Remember, the NCAA is run by college administrators, who are almost all leftists.) Essentially, they are threatening to deprive red-state conservatives of something we value—but they themselves do not—if we don’t publicly affirm their anti-scientific, unjust, insane insistence that males who claim to be females are no different from actual females. Their approach differs only in degree, not in type, from a terrorist plot to blow up an American city unless we fork over a billion dollars.
This cannot be allowed. First of all, when did we become governed by our leisure-time passions, allowing them to control us rather than controlling them? Speaking as a sports fan, not to mention a former small college basketball coach, we can’t allow our love of athletics to demagnetize our moral compass.
Some conservatives seem to think “transgenderism” is a minor issue, just another political battle. It is neither. It is THE issue of our time, the fight of our lives. The outcome of this battle will determine whether, moving forward, we intend to confront the world as it actually is or only as some wish it to be; whether we will embrace reality or be forced not merely to acknowledge but to knowingly participate in other people’s psychoses. If we go down that road, we are lost. Once we accept the notion that nothing is objectively true, not even the most basic biological fact, there is no going back to a world governed by reason and logic.
Plus, as I’ve written elsewhere, it’s just plain unfair to allow males to compete in women’s sports. The NCAA couches its hateful harangue in the flowery rhetoric of “fairness” and “inclusion,” but their policy promotes the opposite of both. Since teams are of necessity limited in size, there is literally no way to allow males to join female teams without taking away slots that would otherwise go to deserving females, ultimately reducing their numbers. That is both discriminatory and inequitable, not to mention a clear violation of Title IX. Rather than be party to that kind of injustice, it would be better not to have college sports at all.
But it needn’t come to that. The truth is, the NCAA needs red states (defined as those where Republicans hold the governorship and at least one of the legislative houses) far more than those states need the NCAA. Do you realize that every major college football champion in the last 25 years, save one, has come from a red or mostly-red state? Add to that 13 of the last 20 men’s basketball champions, 3 of the last 5 women’s basketball champions, and 7 of the last 10 baseball champions. Do you really think the NCAA wants to lose all those states, with the prestige and revenue they represent?
So here’s a suggestion for Republican governors and state legislatures: Tell the NCAA to pound sand. And if they insist on carrying out their terroristic threat, refuse to be bullied, unlike the hapless Ms. Noem. Announce your intention to withdraw the public institutions in your state from the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
That doesn’t mean you have to stop playing college sports at a high level. Far from it. You should be having discussions right now with like-minded leaders in other states about creating your own athletic governing body, one that will genuinely promote inclusion and fairness by protecting women’s sports and the women who play them. I predict many private religious institutions will be happy to join, as well. In two or three years, the NCAA will be irrelevant, which is exactly what it ought to be.
So do the right thing, red-state governors, et al. Decline to kowtow to the “woke” left attempting to hold hostage your beloved sports teams—not to mention your state’s athletes, male and female. Stand up for truth, fairness, and equality under the law. Be an ally of the girls and young women in your state. And above all, for gosh sakes—don’t be Kristi Noem.