You can read the statement by Athlete Ally founder Hudson Taylor on the organization’s new Web site.

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Check out the video here.

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“I commend the NCAA’s commitment to creating and supporting an inclusive culture that fosters equitable participation for student athletes,” said NCLR Sports Project Director Helen Carroll. “That core value is strengthened as the NCAA unveils this new policy that will not only allow, but encourage transgender student athletes to participate on athletic teams. This is truly historic, and it will give transgender student athletes equal access and opportunities to play college-level sports without any obstacles.”

The policy works around two sticking points for many people: Allowing trans female athletes to compete as women and allowing trans male athletes taking testosterone to compete against other men. According to NCLR the policy offers these guidelines:

• A transgender male student athlete who has a medical exception for testosterone hormone therapy may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing the team status to a mixed team.
• A transgender female student athlete who has taken medication to suppress testosterone for a year may compete on a women’s team.

The full report from the think tank can be viewed here; We had previously listed it on our list of the 100 most important moments in gay-sports history. Also check out the NCAA’s LGBT resource page.

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Various sports, 2003. When the NCAA instituted on-campus diversity education workshops focusing on sexual orientation issues, it made an institutional commitment to ending homophobia in sports. The workshop is free to the school and welcomes athletes, coaches, faculty and others across host campuses to attend. From the NCAA’s Web site:

This workshop focuses on separating behavior from beliefs and understanding how to address what if a player or coach “comes out of the closet?” and becoming a diversity change agent.

The institution of the workshops was a first step for the NCAA, which has strengthened its commitment to educating its members on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. From Helen Carroll:

I also know that the Women’s Sports Foundation/It takes a Team LGBT education kit, including a film, lesson plans and resources, was adopted by the Life Champs skills of the NCAA as their important resource for their members and shown on many campuses.

For  more information:

• Diversity education branch of the NCAA
• NCAA Student-Athlete Affairs programs and grants

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Part of Outsports’ series on our 100 most important moments in gay sports history.

Sports 2007: NCAA President Myles Brand was an advocate for the rights of LGBT people in college sports. And when he died of cancer in 2009, he was remembered fondly by Helen Carroll, head of the sports program at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Said Carroll:

“Under his leadership, education and trainings concerning LGBT coaches, administrators and student-athletes were put into place. NCLR’s first LGBT Sports Think Tank was co-sponsored by the NCAA in 2006 addressing negative recruiting based on actual or perceived sexual orientation generating recommended policy to stop this destructive practice in sports. We will truly miss his leadership in sports and are profoundly grateful to his furthering the acceptance of LGBT student athletes on the national scene.”

When Rene Portland, the anti-lesbian coach at Penn State lost her job in 2007, Brand told this to USA Today: “What the NCAA can do is make sure all people are treated respectfully whatever their sexual orientation.”

Brand’s advocacy for LGBT rights went back to his days as president of the University of Oregon. In 1989, “he appointed a campus task force on lesbian and gay concerns, and asked its members to address the problem of ensuring the rights of all individuals on this campus, regardless of sexual orientation.”

For more information:

• Brand’s Wikipedia page
• USA Today profile of Brand after his death

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As discussions continue and after further review of this topic at the national office, generally speaking a female who wants to be socially identified as a male but has not undergone hormonal treatment may compete on a women’s team, and the team remains a women’s team.

We have a full story here.

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What could the NCAA do instead? Certainly slap USC on the wrist. Take away a few scholarships (not 30). Ban them from bowls next year (not for two years). Send a message, but don’t cut the program at the knees! Instead, they should focus their venom on Carroll. Decree that any program that hires him at the collegiate level will lose 30 scholarships and won’t be bowl eligible for his first two years. When he fails with the Seahawks, make it really difficult for him to return to college. Make him feel the heat.

The NCAA could also figure out how to curtail the acceptance of benefits in the future. For all of the bullshit we hear from the NCAA about the integrity of college athletics, coaches are able to come and go as they please, making millions of dollars a year. The people who run the NCAA are allowed to sit in their ivory tower making good money, sending down decrees at their whim. Yet the college athlete is supposed to toil and struggle, some of them getting a free education while most get nothing.

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I just received a copy of the NCAA’s Advertising and Promotional Standards. It is clear to me that running the Focus on the Family ads is in complete violation of the these standards. A few excerpts from the standards:

The NCAA’s advertising and promotional standards are designed to encourage those advertisements and advertisers that support the NCAA’s ideals and exclude those advertisements and advertisers (and others who wish to associate with NCAA activities) that do not appear to be in the best interests of higher education and student-athletes.

The NCAA strives to be associated with entities and messages that:

• Support diversity, gender equity, nondiscrimination, physical fitness, healthy behaviors, youth development, sportsmanship, ethical conduct, academic standards, student-athlete welfare and amateurism.

Pat has also started a Facebook group to fight the ads during the NCAA basketball tournament on CBS.

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Ok, we endured the Focus on the Family Ted Tebow anti-abortion ad during the Super Bowl (along with a lot of other ads demeaning women). But now, NCAA.com, is also carrying a banner ad for Focus on the Family. I hear that CBS, the network that brought us the Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad, is also covering the Men’s NCAA Tournament, and plan to air these ads throughout the tournament with the complete complicity, consent and support of the NCAA.

You can reach the NCAA via:

Call NCAA Public Relations: 317-917-6762
Call NCAA Main Number: 317-917-6222
Email NCAA Public Relations: pmr@ncaa.org

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Schuster has started a blog called “Athletes Are Athletes” in part to house information discussion attendees can review; And he’s already got a good set of resources there including a couple from Outsports.

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