Former official William Bock on NCAA's transgender athlete policies: 'What is happening to women is unethical'

William Bock III wrote a resignation letter to NCAA President Charlie Baker last week, claiming he was stepping down from his position on the Division I Committee on Infractions due to the organization’s current policy on transgender athletes. 

Bock said in the letter that the current policies harm women and deprive them of "competitive opportunities" in their respective sports. 

Bock spoke with OutKick’s Riley Gaines on her "Gaines for Girls" podcast, where he went more in-depth about why he believed he needed to resign.  

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"Since the Lia Thomas situation had arisen, tried to take my time on the committee to have a lot of conversations with people to learn more about the NCAA's policies and also to watch closely its leadership, which transferred from Mark Emmert to Charlie Baker about a year or so ago," Bock told Gaines. 

"I was very hopeful when Mr. Baker, the former governor of Massachusetts, had assumed the office because he has a reputation for fairness. And understand, he has a daughter that played high school sports. So, I was hoping there would be a fresh look at this issue, but it became apparent, and is apparent because the rules have only been cosmetically changed, that no change was going to happen."

Bock knows all about competitive fairness, having served as the general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for almost 14 years. He noted in the letter that he joined the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions in 2016 to make sure protecting and promoting "a level playing field in college sports" was happening. 

NCAA OFFICIAL HANDS IN RESIGNATION LETTER OVER ‘REGRESSIVE POLICIES’ ON TRANSGENDER ATHLETES

"Although I may not have agreed with the wisdom of every rule in the NCAA rulebook, I believed the intent behind the NCAA’s rules was competitive fairness and protection of equal opportunities for student-athletes," Bock’s letter read. 

The NCAA adopted a sport-by-sport policy, some of which included participation metrics based on testosterone levels – something Bock does not approve of. 

"So, the committee I was on was supposed to be about ethical sport," Bock told Gaines. "What is happening to women is unethical. It's discriminatory. It's, I believe, a violation of Title IX protections for women. But it violates the fundamental tenet of sport, which is competitive fairness. If you don't have competitive fairness, you don't have true sport. 

"At that point, I had realized that I needed to just make it very clear I couldn't continue in that role given their unwillingness to change those polices."

The NCAA states that the sport-by-sport policy "preserves opportunity for transgender student-athletes while balancing fairness, inclusion and safety for all who compete."

By Aug. 1, 2024, all sports in the NCAA will require transgender student-athletes to "provide documentation no less than twice annually (and at least once within four weeks of competition in NCAA championships) that meets the sport-specific standard (which may include testosterone levels, mitigation timelines and other aspects of sport-governing body policies) as reviewed and approved by CSMAS."

"The NCAA cannot succeed in achieving ethical sport so long as it endorses a policy of discrimination against female student-athletes," Bock wrote in his letter to Baker. "Because of the NCAA’s track record of persistent disregard for competitive fairness for female student-athletes, I have decided that continued service on the Division I Committee on Infractions is not an effective way for me to contribute to a level playing field in college sport."