How do transgender athletes fit into college sports? 

The San Jose State University women’s volleyball team has a transgender person on its roster. This has drawn controversy across the political spectrum, including accusations of unfair competitive advantages and safety concerns. Such concerns prompted several teams to forfeit their matches against San Jose State this season, giving them a smoother path to the Mountain West Championship game. 

Despite the attention this situation has drawn, this issue surfaces periodically in college sports, typically involving a transgender athlete participating on a women’s team.  

In 2022, University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the NCAA women's 500 meter freestyle and diving championship. To put this performance into perspective, Thomas's pedestrian performances on the men’s swimming team before switching to the women's team suddenly became top-10 ranking performances among women swimmers. So the numbers and data do not lie. 

If one chooses to ignore the data, there are numerous angles from which to approach this issue, including fairness in competition and a right to participate. But the issue that should be at the top of the list in a team sport like women’s volleyball is the safety risks to women who participate.

As a group, men are physically stronger than women. Their larger muscle mass, due to hormonal changes that begin at puberty, create this difference. Sports that require strength give most men an advantage over most women. That is why numerous college team sports like basketball, ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, track and field, and tennis, to name just a few, separate men and women, or at least create separate leagues for women only.

Although it is rarely stated, men’s leagues are usually open to anyone who wishes to participate. Women’s leagues, in contrast, are protected to ensure that the competition is fair and participants kept safe. 

If a woman wants to play on a men's football team, she is not barred from doing so, provided she has the necessary skills and physique to compete and understands the associated risks. Even punters and kickers may be tackled by much larger players. No amount of protective padding and gear can protect a person who lacks the muscle mass and bone density that most football players possess. 

So no one is preventing women from trying out for a men’s sports team. The challenge is being able to compete for a roster spot. Absent exceptional skills and talent, the likelihood of such an effort being successful is exceedingly low. 

The same points could be made if a men’s college team were to play a boys' high school or middle school team in a wide swath of sports. The potential for injury to the younger and physically less-developed athletes would be significant. Physical development, not gender, is the central issue.

Sports draw a large following, in part because the competition is based on merit. When two teams compete against each other, there are well-defined rules that determine which team wins. Though underdogs may defeat favorites, the better team more frequently prevails. 

There have been only a few dozen transgender college student-athletes over the past 15 years, out of more than half a million student-athletes who participate each year. But the issue nonetheless draws national attention when the player in question is generating new women's records, championships, or NCAA tournament appearances. 

In this case, several women’s volleyball teams in the Mountain West Conference simply refused to play against San Jose State, forfeiting their games. This created a smooth path for San Jose State to win their conference tournament — although they fell one match short in the end — and the associated automatic NCAA Championship bid.

When politics and sports collide in the courts, the result quickly gets ugly.  

A federal judge ruled that San Jose State's transgender athlete, Blaire Fleming, was eligible to play. Caught in the middle is the transgender athlete. And among the innocent bystanders are all the women volleyball players on San Jose State's team who lost playing time because a transgender athlete took their spot; the players on the teams that forfeited; and the safety of the female players playing against the San Jose State team.

The NCAA mostly supports transgender athletes participating in women's sports. In contrast, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) has rightly simplified the issue, classifying women’s sports as protected space for biological women and men’s sports as open to all.

It makes no sense for this issue to be resolved in the courts, effectively spending “10 dollars on a 10 cents problem.” Indeed, it is always easier to avoid problems than solve them. The data support keeping women’s sports as protected space, as the NAIA decided in setting their policy — something that the NCAA would be wise to heed.  

When policies are crafted that are not aligned with the data, the cost in time, resources and emotion will be unnecessarily high. For women’s volleyball, the greatest concern is the risk to and the safety of all the women student-athletes, and that should be implemented on volleyball courts, not in the courts. 

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.