In recent months and years, the conversation regarding transgender athletes in sports has become one of the most heated points of controversy in American politics, and veteran broadcaster Bob Costas is now entering that debate.
During a recent appearance on a panel discussion on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, Costas spoke out against transgender athletes participating in women’s sports, calling it “crazy” to allow transgender women to compete in sports like women’s boxing.
Bill Maher asks Bob Costas what is the best answer regarding trans competing in sports. Maher asks Costas a simple question: Should trans compete in a separate division?
Bob Costas: "I don't think you want trans athletes competing against other trans athletes"
Caitlin Flanagan:… pic.twitter.com/tBJkgcL3fH— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) February 10, 2024
“People may not realize this, the individual federations that govern these sports make up their own rules. So World Aquatics may have different rules than FIFA or the Track and Field Association,” Costas said according to Fox News. “So I understand that when it comes to Olympic boxing, that federation will allow trans women to compete against biological women, at birth biological women. That seems crazy.”
Costas then pushed back against the notion that it is transphobic to disagree with transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
“It’s not transphobic to say ‘Let’s inject some common sense here,'” Costas said. “A lot of this is murky. We know that some people who use this as an issue actually are hostile towards trans people, or people who after carefully considered decisions at a certain point in life, decide that they’ll be happier and closer to their true selves- I think any sensitive person is aligned with that.”
Costas compared the separation between men’s and women’s sports to different weight classes in boxing.
“But Sugar Ray Leonard didn’t fight Mike Tyson. There were contemporaries. Sugar Ray was a welterweight, Mike was a heavyweight, alright? If someday the best player in the WNBA can play in the NBA, everybody would applaud. But if the worst guy at the end of the bench on the worst team in the NBA went to the WNBA and averaged 40 points a game, everybody knows that’s [unfair],” Costas said.
This was not the only controversial opinion Costas shared on American politics during the discussion as he also called on United States President Joe Biden to renounce his presidential candidacy for the 2024 election, saying that he should either drop out of the race “or be shown the door.”
[Fox News]
