Quay County Sun - Serving the High Plains

No “world-class” city can afford to be without a professional sports franchise.

The franchise of choice appears to be a National Football League team.

If you don’t believe the above statements, just ask the commissioner of the NFL. If you can’t get Paul Tagliabue on the phone, ask former Gov. Bill Richardson, who wanted to bring professional football to Albuquerque.

Among the many things a pro sports operation brings to municipalities is opportunity for residents to vote themselves a tax increase to provide the new team with a world-class stadium. Fortunately for Albuquerque, and for the rest of New Mexico, sanity prevailed and no deal ever made it to fruition.

The NFL for a number of years has strong armed government with the threat that unless they up-graded their facilities there would be no opportunity for that city to host a Super Bowl.

At some point, professional sports organizations, not content with holding up the locals for stadiums, decided to get into the business of behavior modification. They began to threaten the withholding of championship games from some cities if local government did not enact a law or remove an existing law that didn’t meet with their approval.

Whether one agrees with pro sports or not, the concept of an outside entity dictating to government is disturbing. Sooner or later the sports group will sponsor a behavior that you, as an individual, will disagree with.

Due to North Carolina’s Transgendered Bathroom Law, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the Atlantic Coast Conference came together to move athletic events out of North Carolina.

Some of the relocated events include women’s soccer, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, women’s basketball, men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s golf, baseball and the ACC football conference championship.

This caused considerable loss of revenue to the state.

According to the American College of Pediatricians, “A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.”

Does the NCAA and the ACC recognize the American College of Pediatricians as a viable authority in the healthcare of infants, children and adolescents?

Should sports organizations be in the business of lobbying government for currently popular legislation?

What if these organizations decided to be pro-gun?

Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at:

[email protected]