South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) is taking heat from her fellow conservatives for appearing to be unwilling to stand up to the NCAA. Gov. Noem was expected to sign a bill protecting girl's and women's sports that was backed by the Republican controlled legislature, but she sent it back to the lawmakers instead.

Gov. Noem basically said she wants to sign a bill that will protect girl's sports through high school, but was advised that signing a bill protecting women's sports at the collegiate level would risk a costly legal battle with the NCAA.

She added this according to Fox News:

Her strategy, she explained, involves the creation of a coalition to keep the NCAA  from "bullying the state of South Dakota."

"Listen, I'm sick and tired of the NCAA threatening states, challenging us and bullying us, so we are going to build a coalition of leaders, athletes and people who want to protect women's sports," she said.

Here's how Frank Miele with the Heartland Diary USA blog based in Kalispell, Montana summed it up:

The argument she laid out was that the NCAA, which controls much of college sports, would sue South Dakota if the state tried to prevent boys from playing in girls collegiate athletic events. The “legal scholars” told Noem she would lose such a lawsuit, so she decided the best way to protect girls from being second-class citizens was to surrender to the very idiots who want to make them second-class citizens.

I found it interesting that some lawmakers might be afraid to take on a fight with the NCAA. Here in Montana, there appears to be a bipartisan effort in the works as we speak to pick a fight with the NCAA and allow college athletes to profit off of endorsement deals and other financial incentives.

We were talking about this on the radio Tuesday morning, and got a great phone call from a farmer in Scobey, Montana. He said he was chatting with his daughter the other day about the NCAA March Madness tournament. His daughter said the NCAA apparently gave the men's basketball teams an incredible workout facility to use with all of the best equipment, and the women's basketball teams basically got yoga mats and dumbbells. Oh, but they're so much more woke than the rest of us.

Wait a minute, I said to him. Do you mean to tell me that the NCAA gave the men the best equipment they could find, and they basically told the women's teams to go play with Barbies?

(By the way- the NCAA has since apologized for the ordeal)

 

Listen to the call from the Scobey farmer:

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