Apr 4, 2015 5 min read

Have you noticed sports, politics and political correctness seem to be bumping into each other a lot lately?

NCAA president Mark Emmert, whose office is in Indianapolis, where a basketball tournament of some note will be completed this week, was quick to jump on his high horse and head for high moral ground when the state of Indiana passed a law intended to protect religious freedom.

Emmert, as many others did, interpreted the law as an attempt to give private businesses the right to discriminate against people who are gay.

Charles Barkley, in town working as a CBS-TV analyst, said, “America’s always had a racial problem. Now, we have a homophobic problem. Any form of discrimination, you have to check it.”

Somebody needs to tell Barkley and Emmert about an NCAA school that has been guilty of discrimination for almost 200 years. And it’s happening now – almost right under their noses – an hour away – in Crawfordsville, Ind.

That’s the home of Wabash College, a Division III school playing in the North Coast Athletic Conference. Wabash actually won the first national intercollegiate basketball tournament held in 1922.

So where’s the discrimination?

No women are allowed to attend the school.

That’s right.

Wabash discriminates against women right in front of everybody and has since 1832. It’s one of only three remaining male-only liberal arts colleges in the United States.

Should Emmert insist Wabash stop the discrimination and enroll women immediately or be banished from all NCAA competition?

Better yet, do Barkley and his many friends in the self-righteous, hysterical media believe the federal government should force Wabash to go co-ed? Or do they all only want to use the force of government against private property owners when they believe their oxen are being gored?

This isn’t about comparing discrimination against gay people to discrimination against women. It’s about whether the NCAA, or more importantly, the government, has the right to tell anybody with whom they can associate? If you believe in freedom of association, then you have to tolerate associations that offend you.

Keith Olbermann is a smart and ridiculously talented TV sportscaster but, boy, is he clueless on this subject. Olbermann, of course, jerked his knee so hard he almost blew out an ACL. He jumped on his ESPN high horse with a scathing attack on the NCAA about 90 seconds after the law passed.

He wanted the NCAA, NFL, NBA and the rest of the human race to stop doing business in Indiana because the law was just a sneaky attempt to make it okay to discriminate against gays. And he said that, in the future this law could allow the Pacers, Colts or CAA to refuse gays admission to their games.

Olbermann, as smart as he is, is so much in love with government and the idea it should control every aspect of his life, he no longer understands the difference between public and private property.

He equates a baker not wanting to use his privately owned oven on his private property to bake a cake with two grooms on it to a gay person being denied access to a taxpayer-funded stadium.

Here in Western Pennsylvania, we have some high schools that have been practicing discrimination for decades. Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Erie Cathedral Prep blatantly discriminate against girls.

They only enroll boys.

They also show up in the state playoffs in football and basketball just about every year.

What if, say, Hillary Clinton, who expressed immediate outrage at the Indiana law, were to be elected president and decide it’s unfair for schools like Wabash, Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Erie Cathedral Prep to only admit boys, denying young girls access to those great athletic programs? Should she have the power to force them to admit girls?

I think I’ll send her an email and ask her.

Then again, Clinton graduated from Wellesley College, which discriminates against men.

It’s been women only since 1870.

• I heard a lot of discussion on talk shows this week about the Pirates’ decision to make Jeff Locke their fifth starter. Vance Worley finished sixth, but will start the season in the rotation with Charlie Morton on the disabled list.

That’s a nice topic for a talk show on a slow day, but it’s at or near the bottom of the list of things the Pirates and their fans should be worrying about.

The fifth starter tends to emerge as the season goes along.

A.J. Burnett is a much bigger issue. He’s old and he’s coming off a terrible year, at least statistically. He’s replacing Ednison Volquez in the rotation, and there were times last season when nobody in the National League pitched better than Volquez. He gave the Pirates 192 innings and put up a 3.04 ERA. Somebody has to pick up that slack.

If the Pirates are going to contend for a pennant, they are going to have to pick up the slack for Russell Martin at catcher, and spring training stats don’t count.

And then there’s Gregory Polanco. Witnesses say he’s put on lots of muscle. He probably ate his Wheaties.

The last time we saw Polanco, he was a .200 hitter with warning-track power. He needs to be a lot better for the Pirates to think about sniffing the World Series.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.