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Sports Should Unify, Not Divide Us
I love sports. One of the main reasons I love it is that it celebrates and rewards achievement, not failure. Sports is the ultimate meritocracy. The best man or woman or team wins—at least until recently.
imprimis.hillsdale.edu
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on April 17, 2024, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Bellevue, Washington.
On April 6 this year, as the University of South Carolina and University of Iowa women’s basketball teams were preparing to play in the NCAA National Championship game, two press conferences were held featuring the two head coaches: South Carolina’s Dawn Staley and Iowa’s Lisa Bluder.
An OutKick reporter asked Coach Staley a question regarding an issue that needs to be answered honestly and realistically if women’s sports is going to survive—he asked if she supported the idea that biological men can legitimately compete in women’s athletics. And Staley failed the test.
To be fair, it was clear from Staley’s reaction that she didn’t appreciate the question and would rather not have answered it. “Damn, you got deep on me,” she said. But after some uncomfortable hesitation, she came around to admitting that she was “under the opinion [that] if you’re a woman, you should play. If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Asked again to clarify whether she thought transgender women should be able to play women’s sports, she said simply, “Yes.”
It is rare that a women’s college coach is asked to address this issue, because the people in sports media tend to be woke and would rather let transgender ideology impose itself on sports without becoming a public controversy. It is not surprising, then, that the sports media’s reaction to this exchange was not to press Staley about the implications of her statement but to condemn OutKick’s reporter for having the audacity to put Staley on the spot.
There was good reason to press Staley. She has made a point of saying, after all, that one reason her women’s team is so good is because it practices against an intramural men’s team that is better. Indeed, she has thanked the men’s team for helping her women win a national championship. She is fully aware, then, that men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. So why would she say, on her sport’s biggest stage and at the apex of her career, that men should be able to play women’s basketball?
Staley of course is by no means alone in this. To one degree or another, almost the entire sports world has surrendered to woke madness. Consider the story of collegiate women’s swimming standout Riley Gaines. Now on the staff of OutKick, she has been one of the few to speak out. Gaines was a swimmer at the University of Kentucky and a Southeastern Conference champion. But when she went to the NCAA Championships, she was placed in the position of swimming against a man going by the name of Lia Thomas. For three years, Thomas had competed unremarkably as a member of the University of Pennsylvania men’s swimming team. He then “identified” as a woman, was allowed to swim for the University of Pennsylvania women’s team, and became a women’s national champion. As a result, ESPN absurdly honored him during its Women’s History Month special as one of the top female athletes of the year.
How did we get to this point?
8.1 | Documentary
