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Call the NCAA’s Bluff
It’s time for red states to call the NCAA’s bluff.
The NCAA is a private non-profit organization funded in large part by public institutions, ostensibly for the purpose of promoting intercollegiate athletics. It has morphed into a political organization that has in recent years bullied states by threatening to withhold events due to transgender bathroom legislation, the confederate flag, holding class on Martin Luther King Day to make up for a missed class day, and now because of Georgia’s voting integrity law. It long ago should have been reined in but the threats have been effective because the target was always isolated.
America cannot let the culture war be fought in isolated skirmishes. You only stop a bully by standing together and pushing back… hard! It is time to stop the NCAA, and here is how it can be done without a single Democrat vote.
There are 24 states with Republican control of both the executive and legislative branches. All but three of those (AK, MT, NH) have state-supported colleges or universities that play in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FBS). The legislatures in each of those red states should pass, and those governors should sign, similar laws prohibiting schools that receive state funding from belonging to, paying money to, or in any way participating in any intercollegiate athletic association which:
- Discriminates against women by permitting biological males to compete against biological females in any sport in which there are established different teams for men and women, or
- Attempts in any way to punish, threaten, disqualify, or otherwise harass any school, state, county, or municipality due to any legislation or regulations lawfully enacted in this state.
If then NCAA does not back down, listed below are 62 of the 130 NCAA FBS Schools from free states that would form a new conference. Teams listed in bold represent 12 of the 14 team appearances in the seven FBS national championship games. If you were a top-rated high school player, which league would you be interested in, the one with these teams? Or the league without these teams?
AL – Alabama, Auburn, South Alabama, Troy, UAB
AZ – Arizona, Arizona State
AR – Arkansas, Arkansas State
FL – Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Florida State, UCF, USF
GA – Georgia, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Georgia Tech
ID – Boise State
IN – Ball State, Indiana, Purdue
IA – Iowa, Iowa State
MS – Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Southern Mississippi
MO – Missouri
NE – Nebraska
OH – Akron, Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Kent State, Miami, Ohio State, Ohio U
OK – Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa
SC – Clemson, Coastal Carolina, South Carolina
TN – Memphis, Middle Tennessee, Tennessee
TX – Houston, North Texas, Rice, SMU, TCU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, Texas Tech, UTEP, UTSA
UT – Utah, Utah State
WV – Marshall, WVU
WY – Wyoming
(Apologies if any teams are missing; had to rely on Wikipedia for some of the info.)
Published in General
Penn State had an awful scandal a few years back. A former assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky was convicted of abusing underage boys. That’s horrific, we have laws that rightly put him behind bars. The NCAA also imposed its share of athletic type sanctions by taking away wins and scholarships and the like. The thing I couldn’t understand was a $50M penalty imposed on Penn State, a state school. It was never clear to me why Pennsylvania taxpayers owed the NCAA anything.
No word on what the NCAA did with the $50M. I know it sounds like pocket change in the era of trillions, but that’s a lot of money.
The NCAA is a joke.
Colleges should just walk away.
Would states dare to “deplatform” the NCAA when they are behind so may athletic scholarships?
Yes. When our institutions step out of bounds and become destructive cultural actors, we should do what we can to fix them. Emphatically.
Should, yes.
Will?
I’m not so sure.
This seems like another “concentrated” versus “distributed” situation. The widespread voters would probably be in favor of that, but the people – students and their parents – who stand to lose money (scholarships, etc) would be much louder.
“It long ago should have been reined in…”
That sums up any number of actions taken by the Left that should have received a strong, swift pushback from our elected officials. Cowardice begets cowardice and we see examples all around us. This is just another one.
On athletic scholarships. Maybe, just maybe, we should rethink those. If someone requires an athletic scholarship to attend college, will they give enough effort to the “college” part of it, or just make it about “athletics”? We have all heard of football players who give all their time and effort to football, and little to their studies. We hear about courses designed expressly for athletes, where the level of work required is less than some ordinary courses, so the athletes can concentrate on athletics. Just a thought.
Football is serious business and I doubt anyone has the stones for this kind of fight.
Personally, I believe schools should be surgically separated from the corruption of athletics – but I’m not sure either institution could survive the operation.
The Power Five conferences pretty much hate the NCAA and have been thinking about a way to exit for quite a while now. If the NCAA oversteps itself enough, I think they might figure out a way to go. (There is no legal or other reason for them to be in the NCAA, it’s all “voluntary”. The NCAA is powerful primarily because it has assumed power and nobody pushed back.)
Make ’em honor the scholarships promised.
Of course, by suing them and spending more on that, than the scholarships are worth.
The NCAA’s money comes from the schools, the games, and the TV revenue, and I believe the schools have to raise their own scholarship money. The NCAA just governs how they are allowed to use them. If the schools or more likely the conferences move out and form an alternative league, all of those revenue sources go with them. TV networks will follow the teams that generate the most viewers.
I understand your point. As you might imagine, I take a somewhat different view, since my kids went to great schools on athletic scholarships. My bank account is a fan.
Sports are big business, largely because sports are a big part of American culture. We love competitive sports. Perhaps we shouldn’t. But we do.
Which means there will be big money available. And that big money tends to distort things. Like colleges. Of course, Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and other government money distort colleges as well. But sports certainly do.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of kids that get a chance to go to college, that would not otherwise. Athletic scholarships can change the lives of some kids.
Complex topic. But I like athletic scholarships, despite their downsides.
Absolutely correct.
The schools should just walk away.
There’s nothing the NCAA could do to stop them.
I think you’re right.
Having the state legislatures force the issue takes the pressure off schools unwilling to make tough decisions that could alienate their alumni base. When the powerhouse state schools create a viable alternative, the private schools and competitive programs from other (blue or purple) states will move to the new premiere association. Let the remaining Pac-12 schools and the Ivy League play in their own sandboxes and the rest of the country can play in the big leagues.
But that wasn’t enough. They had to take away a bunch of wins from Joe Paterno, wins that had nothing to do with child abuse.
I’m all for schools forming their own, non-woke sports league. My worry is that the NCAA will get replaced by a government agency . . .
Whatever replaces the NCAA will be just as bad, eventually.
When you give people power over others, that leads down a very predictable path.
Maybe, but I’d still like to see a reset with a bunch of schools forming a non-woke organization to begin with. If it too eventually turns bad, then I suggest a lather, rinse, and repeat . . .
The NCAA controls the bowls and the basketball tourney and all that revenue. Woke college admins control the athletic departments. It would take (a) a hell of an organized pushback or (b) to really reach the deep principles and conscience of the NCAA, colleges, and athletic departments, there needs to be a threat to revenue streams.
Feminists are apparently too weak and stupid to use their numbers and positions to crush this nonsense. Women could kill wokeness across the board but cannot muster the wit and will to do so nor defend the idea that there is such a thing as a woman.
The puzzles the living hell out of me. Even in the very, very feminist department in which I recently worked, there was no appetite to oppose the trans-oppression of women. Deeply puzzling indeed.
Its simple. If a college wants any money they can not use any of their funds by participating in an organization that discriminates against someone. Make the law that no person with a Y chromosome may compete in any athletic event that is defined as a woman sport/event. Make the law about Genetics since its genetics that make Females physically no were close to males.
A school will get zero dollars and students will get zero state aid including all scholarships if the institutions spends resources on an event/sport that allows a genetic males to compete against females females unless the event is marketed as co-ed.
Could it be a “live by the sword, die by the sword?” That’s what they used against men before, so they don’t exactly have standing to use it to defend themselves.
What I don’t understand about all this “Trans-” business is this: Why are all these organizations and governmental bodies allowing such a tiny percentage of the population dictate what everyone else must do and think. Why is everyone so beholden to the opinions of (probably less than) 1% of the population. If the Trans wish to compete, let them form their own leagues or whatever; women did it.
In the photos I’ve seen, none of the athletes look remotely like women, or even appear like they are seriously trying to.
Hypothesis: they’re not good enough to win championships competing with the males, and this gives them a chance to be on top of the lower heap. Apparently the NCAA wishes to reward this behavior.
You nailed it.