(The Center Square) – Keeping men from playing women’s sports in the NCAA is being requested of the association’s president by both North Carolina senators among 23 Republicans.
U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd each affixed their signatures on a Tuesday letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker. The lawmakers in the minority party of the chamber asked Baker and his nearly $1 billion nonprofit representing 1,098 schools to follow the lead of the NAIA, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and more than 20 states in protecting women’s sports.
Stopping short of calling the NCAA hypocritical, the senators say the rules forbidding testosterone as a performance enhancer “is intellectually dishonest.”
NCAA revenues in 2023 were $1.3 billion and net assets totaled $870 million, according to a copy of its audited financial statement. The nearly 20,000 teams include almost half a million college athletes.
The senators wrote, “The science is clear. Males have inherent athletic advantages over females due to their anatomy and biology – including through having larger hearts, higher red blood count, greater lung capacity, longer endurance, larger muscle mass, differences in bone density and geometry, and lower body fat.
“Consistently, when adult males’ athletic performance is contrasted with adult females’ athletic performance in sports relying on endurance, muscle strength, speed, and power, males dominate, outperforming females by 10 to 30%.”
The lawmakers wrote “there is an understanding that male hormones give athletes a material and competitive advantage in sports. To allow biological men to compete in women’s sports, while considering testosterone a performance enhancer, is intellectually dishonest. These facts cannot continue to be ignored by the NCAA.”
The letter was led by Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, the latter a former collegiate football coach. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Idaho also had two signatures on the letter. There were no Democrats, and 26 Republicans did not sign.
In Tillis’ and Budd’s home state, strong opposition to Title IX changes have been led by Payton McNabb, an ambassador with the Independent Women’s Forum, and several on the collegiate level to include national champion women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell. Kylee Alons, twice an NCAA champion and 31-time All-American at N.C. State, is among 16 collegiate athletes suing the NCAA for letting men who say they are women compete against them and use the same locker rooms.
The letter is endorsed by Riley Gaines, 12-time All-American swimmer at Kentucky; Concerned Women for America; Heritage Action; the Independent Council on Women’s Sports; Independent Women’s Forum; the Independent Women’s Law Center; Champion Women; the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; and the Our Bodies, Our Sports Coalition.
Gaines is a plaintiff with Alons in the lawsuit against the NCAA.
Nancy Hogshead, an Olympian and the founder and CEO of Champion Women, said, “I was at the NCAA meeting when Pat Griffin and Helen Carroll presented their transgender inclusion policy for adoption. We were told that one year of cross-sex hormones would remove male-advantage from men who wanted to compete with women. We were assured that the science was conclusive. Years later, we now know that the science that the NCAA relied on was wrong, and that newer research shows that no amount of hormones or surgery can roll back male athletic advantage. The NCAA should recognize the now well-established science and change their policy to protect women’s sports.”