Wednesday of last week was "national girls and women in sports day." It was first celebrated in 1987 as a tribute to late Olympic volleyball star Flo Hyman.
It also overlapped with a letter sent by 16 University of Pennsylvania female swimmers to their school and the Ivy League voicing opposition to transgender teammate Lia Thomas competing in the NCAA swim championships in March.
Two paragraphs from the letter (the 16 signers remained anonymous) may be the most succinct and clear about this issue, in my mind:
"We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman," the letter reads. "Lia has every right to live her life authentically. However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone's gender identity.
"Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women's category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy and NCAA women's swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete."
Speaking of sports
These Winter Olympics will have to move along without me.
Sorry, I prefer my Olympics like I prefer by bourbon - no ice, thank you very much.
Still, with the growing number of Olympic events, which include the addition of break dancing in coming years and the possibility of flag football (seriously), the mind wonders what the events could be in the Summer and Winter Games two decades from now.
Snowman building could be added, which would bring the common-man feel that curling brings in that everyone thinks "How hard can that be?" compared to ice dancing or the half-pipe. Maybe incorporate some snowball fighting.
The summer games have a wider range of options, from school-yard games like capture the flag or red rover - hey, they've added break dancing - or even paintball.
One I will bet money happens sooner rather than later: Olympic video games.
Two weeks' notice
Whoop-si Goldberg stepped in it on "The View" earlier this week.
Granted, I had to read about it because the next episode of "The View" I see will be the first. And that's OK.
Whoopi's verbal misstep was saying that the Holocaust was "not about race," rather it was about man's inhumanity to man. (Whoopi's comments came from the panel discussion on the McMinn County school board decision to remove "Maus" from its curriculum).
She apologized. Quickly. And that apology was much better than any of the films she's done since "Sister Act."
Whoopi was suspended for two weeks by ABC.
In some ways, this is progress, because a suspension is punishment rather than a complete canceling, which is the familiar fallback in situations akin to this.
Just ask Roseanne.
Obit observation
Jack McCarter died last Monday, less than two months shy of his 94th birthday.
One of the first references to his life in his obituary was that Jack was an avid storyteller, and considering his nephew is longtime Southern sports-writing great Mark McCarter, who spent many a year and crafted many a column for the old News-Free Press, well, that makes sense.
Jack was a veteran in the U.S Navy in World War II, and I hope his family remembers those stories well or recorded them for our future generations.
Those first-hand accounts are forever growing more scarce with each passing year, month and day.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.
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Jay Greeson