NCAA President Mark Emmert is notorious for looking terribly tone deaf in interviews. More often than not, Emmert says things that make him and the NCAA look terribly out of touch, and in the court of public opinion, Emmert gets destroyed over and over again whenever he speaks in public.
Not this time though!
Emmert joined Katz Korner on ESPNU, hosted by Andy Katz, to discuss Indiana’s bigoted and discriminatory “Religious Freedom Restoration” law. And although Emmert did mostly speak in BORING meaningless corporate platitudes, he did actually say the right thing a few times.
Yes, you had your usual Emmert corporatespeak cliches and sinister spin, but underneath all that verbal crapola, he seems to get it on this one. He appears to be, for once, on the right side of history. Now I excluded most of the buzzword junk, and posted the quotes that are actually worth taking away.
NCAA President Mark Emmert on Katz Korner:
On his interpretation of the law:
“I was deeply concerned about it, as were our members. The law itself has a lot of uncertainty and lacks clarity. But anything that could potentially allow for discrimination and works in a way that is inconsistent with our values for inclusion is something we are very very concerned about.”
On how much lobbying the NCAA did to prevent the law:
“We had expressed our displeasure with it and frankly I was really surprised it passed, that it was signed into law, especially as quickly as it occurred. There had been an anti-gay marriage law that was being debated last year, we opposed that and made sure everyone again understood that was inconsistent with the values of the NCAA. I thought, everybody thought, this would take a lot more deliberation than occurred. We were all surprised and disappointed that this moved rapidly though the legislature.”
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and writes The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with Fox Sports Digital. You can read Banks’ feature stories and op-eds in the Chicago Tribune RedEye newspaper and hear his regular guest spots on numerous sports talk radio stations all across the country.
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