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Dear Red States: You Don’t Need the NCAA
Townhall.com ^ | April 18, 2021 | Rob Jenkins

Posted on 04/18/2021 5:15:31 AM PDT by Kaslin

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: kristinoem; ncaa
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To: Kaslin

How about fining any organization involved in “political bullying” with 5 years gross income payment due immediately.?


21 posted on 04/18/2021 6:31:36 AM PDT by Vision (Elections are one day. Reject "Chicago" vote harvesting. Election Reform Now. Obama is an evildoer.)
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To: Kaslin
I believe that college football at one time was seperate from the NCAA, under the banner of the CFA (College Football Assiciation). Not too sure if my memory serves me right. Personally, I am finished with watching and attending sporting events until politics are separated. When it comes to college football (I never gave a damn about basketball) I want to see real student-athletes, those that can get into and stay in college based on their own academic mertit. No tutoring centers, hand holding or special services should be needed by student-atheletes. The NFL, NBA, and NHL can make minor leagues just like MLB for non-college material.

Basically, big business needs to be removed from college athletics. It really is not that important in the grand scheme of things.

I should note that I am not anti-athletics or anti-competition. I was a student-athlete in college. I was a swimmer. I learned plenty from practice and competition that has served me throughout life. However, I learned a lot more in the classroom. In the end, sports should be about the student-athlete, not big business or going pro, since so very few make it to the pros. It is about life and there needs to be perspective. That perspective begins and ends with a real college education, not some "studies" major designed for the less academically inclined.

22 posted on 04/18/2021 6:34:56 AM PDT by ConservativeInPA (“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” ― Thomas Jefferson)
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To: Kaslin

Women who don’t want men competing against them should organize and refuse to compete against them.

It’s as simple as that


23 posted on 04/18/2021 6:38:32 AM PDT by South Dakota (Patriotism is the new terrorism)
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To: joma89

ABAA

American Binary Athletic Association


24 posted on 04/18/2021 6:39:30 AM PDT by maddog55 ((the only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!))
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To: Kaslin

Hard to devise a legislative remedy without infringing free speech, but we have just begun to exercise out boycott power and efforts to educate the public.


25 posted on 04/18/2021 6:47:34 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adical Islam, )
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bump


26 posted on 04/18/2021 7:05:00 AM PDT by foreverfree
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To: South Dakota
Women who don’t want men competing against them should organize and refuse to compete against them.

Exactly. Take your position in the blocks, when the starter gun goes off, walk away in mass. Let the guy run the race alone.

27 posted on 04/18/2021 7:06:53 AM PDT by super7man (Madam Defarge, knitting, knitting, always knitting.)
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To: Kaslin

The left’s WAR ON WOMEN and the NCAA is fully on board with it!


28 posted on 04/18/2021 7:29:41 AM PDT by Lopeover (Biden & Harris are illegitimate.)
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To: South Dakota

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.

Women who don’t want men competing against them should organize and refuse to compete against them.

However, I would hope the Governor and the Legislature would not be on the side of the woke attempting to throw reality, reason, logic, and science out the window in pursuit of the mythical diversity and inclusion among other myths.


29 posted on 04/18/2021 7:36:13 AM PDT by wita (Always and forever, under oath in defense of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.)
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To: snoringbear

LOL. Yep, it was an epic fail on her party.


30 posted on 04/18/2021 7:38:02 AM PDT by Starboard
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To: Kaslin

Men competing against women is hardly “fair competition”.


31 posted on 04/18/2021 8:54:34 AM PDT by rxh4n1
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To: super7man
Take your position in the blocks, when the starter gun goes off, walk away in mass. Let the guy run the race alone.

Ding, ding, ding - we have a thread winnah!

32 posted on 04/18/2021 8:56:13 AM PDT by GOPJ (We need a better class of 'elites' - the ones we have now are more like stupid white trash...)
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To: Bernard

Agree !

But where would alumni drive their SUVs to, to party, relive their college years & embarass their spouses during the fall?


33 posted on 04/18/2021 8:58:56 AM PDT by Reily
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To: Kaslin

Men can say they’re women, but saying it won’t make it so. Bank robbers can say they didn’t do the crime, dog owners can say their pet has 5 legs, and Joe Biden can say he won the election, but saying it won’t make it so, and never will.
So, what can we expect when our leaders pretend personal opinions overrule independent reality? Able-bodied men out running ♿ in the Special Olympics? Men showing up for half price drinks on Ladies Night? Or, men claiming they’re pregnant? Too outlandish? Think again. We’ve been warned.
Once you blur the distinction between objective reality and subjective opinion all the sorrows and evils confined within Pandora’s Box are loosed, “...the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...”
(My apologies to the poet.)


34 posted on 04/18/2021 9:16:13 AM PDT by Knocker (SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS)
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To: Kaslin

I don’t need corporate sports, period.


35 posted on 04/18/2021 9:16:42 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: Kaslin

Men can say they’re women, but saying it won’t make it so. Bank robbers can say they didn’t do the crime, dog owners can say their pet has 5 legs, and Joe Biden can say he won the election, but saying it won’t make it so, and never will.
So, what can we expect when our leaders pretend personal opinions overrule independent reality? Able-bodied men out running ♿ in the Special Olympics? Men showing up for half price drinks on Ladies Night? Or, men claiming they’re pregnant? Too outlandish? Think again. We’ve been warned.
Once you blur the distinction between objective reality and subjective opinion all the sorrows and evils confined within Pandora’s Box are loosed, “...the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity...”
(My apologies to the poet.)


36 posted on 04/18/2021 9:17:41 AM PDT by Knocker (SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS)
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To: srmanuel

“remove the SEC, Big 12, major parts of the ACC and Big 10, parts of the PAC 12 you don’t have major college sports.....under the NCAA....”

NCAA depends on the good teams to finance and carry their B$!

Who needs the NCAA? Not the teams you include above!


37 posted on 04/18/2021 9:20:35 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (dStill alive, in spite of being stupid and getting vaccinated twice!! On: 01/31/2021 & 2/21/2021)
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To: Kaslin
Fantastic article! Author Jenkins proposes such a simple and practical fix -- create a new conservative red-state collegiate athletic association. Are there enough red state legislatures and governors to actually tell the NCAA to go to hell?

These few sentences from the article clearly state the problem we face...

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.

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.

"...will [we] embrace reality or be forced not merely to acknowledge but to knowingly participate in other people’s psychoses?" BINGO! The author has gotten to the whole central point of this patently stupid "transgender" issue.
38 posted on 04/18/2021 9:21:18 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (The Weak Never Started, The Cowards fail along the way, Only the Strong Survive)
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Comment #39 Removed by Moderator

To: detch

Thanks for posting this reality re when this farce will end:

The women say, “That is enough. No more.”

Then all this nonsense will stop.

Common sense will prevail, but only if women demand it.


40 posted on 04/18/2021 9:23:42 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (dStill alive, in spite of being stupid and getting vaccinated twice!! On: 01/31/2021 & 2/21/2021)
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