N.A.S.
by Sean Begin
The P&G Gymnastics Championships. The Big Ten football championship game. The NCAA Women’s Final Four. The NFL scouting combine. The U.S. Diving Olympic team trials.
Besides being major moments in their respective sports, these five events have one other thing in common: they’re all set to take place in Indiana within the next 18 months.
You know, Indiana, the same state that just recently passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill so vaguely written that it would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT citizens without penalty.
Proponents of the bill claim it’s being “mischaracterized” in the media, meant to be a bill about inclusion, not exclusion. But a bill that already has anonymous business owners boasting of not serving people simply because he thought they looked gay, is not one that exudes any sense of inclusion.
It’s why several prominent people, like Apple CEO Tim Cook, actress Susan Sarandon, and even Connecticut’s own governor, Dannel Malloy, top speak out against Indiana’s new bill.
“Because of Indiana’s new law, later today I will sign an Executive Order regarding state-funded travel,” Malloy tweeted on Monday.
“The bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear,” said Tim Cook in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
But this is where the business of sports can have an impact like no other force. Consider the five events above, and a sixth occurring this weekend: the men’s basketball Final Four.
When major championships come to a city, they bring with it an influx of money, boosting the local economy for a brief time. Hotels are booked to capacity; restaurants see more business.
How does this allow sports to make an impact statement against Indiana’s law? By taking away these events, you potentially damage the local economy. And while that’d be unfortunate for people working in Indiana, it’s also unfortunate Indiana feels the need to discriminate.
The NCAA, which is headquartered in Indianapolis, and its president, Mark Emmert, have already released a statement saying they would “closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.”
But what the NCAA should be considering is what Charles Barkley and other athletes and writers have suggested: move this weekend’s Final Four games somewhere else. Move them to Cincinnati, as The Nation’s Dave Zirin suggests, just 100 miles from the current planned location.
Sadly, this will unlikely occur. If money is the only thing that will get Indiana governor Mike Pence and the state’s Congress to repeal the bill, money is also the reason the Final Four will stay put. The NCAA would lose millions of dollars with the switch.
But if the NCAA really views itself as an inclusive organization dedicated to the student-athlete, it would leave Indiana for a different location this weekend. Such a move would show the NCAA’s willingness to push an inclusive agenda, while also showing those watching that money is less important to the NCAA than the people who comprise it.
Other sports have already expressed concerns over the bill, including the president of USA gymnastics, Steve Penny, whose sport will have its P&G Championships in Indiana this August.
The NBA and the WNBA, along with their teams from Indiana, also released an inclusive statement, although nowhere did it denounce the actual law. Meanwhile, the NFL and Colts owner Jim Irsay haven’t publicly said anything, as of this writing.
The sports world and sports culture is often a fantastic reflection of the culture as a whole, and as more athletes like Michael Sam or Jason Collins come out as gay, as more sports push a culture of inclusion, the sports business has the opportunity to make a direct impact.
There is a danger in allowing religious freedom bills that thinly veil the ability to discriminate against other humans. It’d be a nice, ideal thing for the sports world, and specifically the NCAA with its Final Four this weekend, to, for once, stand up against those practices.