The current dust-up in NCAA athletics happens to be centered around San Jose State Volleyball. A few weeks ago, the Nevada Athletics Department said that said our volleyball team would not be following the leads of the bigots in Idaho and Utah by forfeiting a match against San Jose State.
Well, a few days ago, some shit started coming out that the players on the team had voted to forfeit the match. The school shot back, saying that the match would go on, citing things like the law, sportsmanship, and general decency. The players are vowing not to play anyway.
What is a school supposed to do here? This is a college that has a few athletes who have decided to plunge themselves into the culture wars, and now the school has to deal with it. So far, the school is doing its job by sticking to things like the law, sportsmanship, and general decency and vowing that the match will go on. I appreciate the approach.
Student-athletes are at the center of a loot of debate on college campuses. Departments (or at least the individuals within them that work with athletes) grapple with whether these people should be treated like adults with full autonomy or slightly coddled and protected from the full extent of the real world. I don’t think they do a great job. The athletes are coddled and given a lot of benefits that do not exist for other students.
But they are adults. And adults, despite some pretty high profile exceptions, have to deal with the consequences of their actions. These players were presented with a scenario where they didn’t get much of a choice (relatively speaking—they still have options) on whether they would play. The reason for that is that there was no choice to be had. The rules of the conference and the actual fucking law supersede your bigotry. So you play. If you choose not to play, fine, but you own that. The school won’t be there to take the heat for you. Do not complain that you weren’t consulted. The consultations all happened before the law passed. Now we all live with the law.
The fact that Joe Lombardo is now out there in support of this is embarrassing. He has plenty to be ashamed of. We still, weirdly, have a week and a half before this thing is even supposed to happen. By then it will either have blown over or we may not have a volleyball team to speak of. For its part, the school has said that there would be no consequences for refusing to play. That’s the only part I disagree with. There should be consequences for refusing to abide by your end of the deal—especially when you are going against all established norms and rules in this regard. This woman on San Jose State’s team isn’t even new! She’s been there three years! That completely blows the doors off of this being a genuine problem for these players. It didn’t matter last year, so why now. I think we all know why now.
I wish the players had brains about this. It’s a really ill-advised stance, especially when the team you’re forfeiting against isn’t even very good. This is all about fighting a culture war and not about anything remotely genuine. The players are flat wrong here.