College sports: Weak-kneed NCAA won't face reality as controversy over transgender swimmer grows

Florida swimmer Bobby Finke won two gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics. He was recently named Male Breakout Performer of the Year by Swimming World magazine.

His time in the 800-meter freestyle in Tokyo would be about two laps ahead of the best time of this NCAA season. The fastest time by a woman, that is.

If Finke now identified as a woman and underwent hormone treatments, he likely would become the Woman Breakout Performer of the Year in 2023 — by a mile.

Let me be clear, there’s no indication Finke is planning to do that. This hypothetical just illustrates the competitive absurdity that is threatening women’s sports.

“It’s very complicated,” Olympic icon Michael Phelps told CNN.

It is, and it isn’t.

Transgender participation in sports is indeed complicated. But the simple fact is a transgender woman athlete is typically going to be bigger, faster and stronger than a woman.

So how can those truths peacefully coexist?

Finding that answer would stump King Solomon, which meant it was laughable to think the NCAA might come up with anything plausible. But when it had that chance last week, the organization won a gold medal in passing the buck.

More on the issue: Whitley: Great Transgender Sports Debate

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NCAA won't confront controversy

The NCAA said it will defer to the rules of each sport’s national or international governing bodies. Those rules are a maze of confusing and sometimes non-existent rules that won’t solve anything.

The immediate fallout is that Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who is shattering records at Penn, might be able to compete in the upcoming NCAA championship meet.

Or maybe she won’t.

Nobody is quite sure, which shows you what a cop out this is.

The ruling by the NCAA Board of Governors was bigger than just one swimmer, however. It was a chance to stand up for fair competition. A chance to stop the undermining of Title IX.

Basically, it was a chance for America’s most dominant amateur sports organization to say, “Stop the madness.”

The NCAA punted.

Jennifer C. Braceras, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, said "make no mistake by asking female athletes to step aside to make room for" athletes assigned male at birth, "the NCAA discriminates against women."

The NCAA’s calculations are somewhat understandable. Nobody wants to be called a bigot.

No matter how loudly and sincerely you express empathy for the plight of transgender athletes, you’re going to be labeled a hatemonger for suggesting LeBron James would have no business playing in the WNBA no matter how low his testosterone level sank.

But at some point, enough is enough. In that sense, Thomas might go down as sort of a reverse Jackie Robinson of the trans-sports movement.

She swam three years as Will Thomas for Penn’s men’s team and began hormone replacement treatment in 2019. Lia isn’t quite as fast as Will was, but she got everyone’s attention when she won a race by 38 seconds in December.

Thomas soon became a cause célèbre as she destroyed the record books. Parents of competitors said it wasn’t fair their daughters no longer had hope of winning.

Her own teammates said Thomas has an unfair advantage. Some accused her lately of trying to lose in order to lessen the scrutiny over her dominance.

They did so anonymously, of course. But countless people who don’t know a backstroke from a butterfly have become aware of Thomas.

That’s how the pressure grew on the NCAA to take a stand. And that’s how Phelps ended up on CNN trying to thread the sensitivity needle.

“I believe that we should all feel comfortable with who we are in our own skin,” he said. “But I think sports should all be played on an even playing field.”

So how do you have both?

This issue is only going to get bigger. The best solution anyone’s proposed would be for transgender athletes to compete separately. That’s far from perfect, but can you come up with a better one?

It's frustrating that the feckless NCAA didn’t even try. It has washed its hands of the matter, and Thomas may well be on the starting blocks in the national championship meet.

Good luck to her, and good luck to her competitors.

They’re going to need it.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. And follow him on Twitter: @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: NCAA decides not to take a stand on controversy of transgender swimmer