That Was The Week That Was In Links - March, 28, 2025

Some stuff I’ve consumed this week and items of note…

• Vince Mancini in GQ on the bullies taking over UFC:

It’s depressing to see the martial arts world welcome rapists, racists, and accused human traffickers with open arms. I remember when gyms used to pride themselves on opening our doors to any queer people, women, and marginalized groups who wanted to learn self-defense and self-confidence. My wife practically pushes me out the door any time I say I want to go to a jiu-jitsu training, because she can see that it makes me a calmer, healthier, more patient person. Being a martial artist used to mean losing the inferiority complex and not walking around like you had something to prove. It’s hard to describe how painful it is to see something you love turned into a xenophobic lifestyle brand.

• Per The Athletic:

In February, amidst an onslaught of executive orders from President Donald Trump aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred pledged to keep the league’s values on diversity “unchanged.”

But about a month later, the MLB Careers home page is devoid of any reference to “diversity.” Details regarding the league’s once-lauded Diversity Pipeline Program, which began as a means to combat the lack of diversity within MLB’s front offices, seem to have been entirely wiped from the site, too.

• Frankie de la Cretaz interviewed Andrew Haubner, the editor-in-chief of No Cap Space WBB, who said of women’s college hoops:

The biggest concern I have, especially with this current administration, is how at-risk Title IX is. I don't think that they'll just wholesale bag it and take away women's sports. But attacking the margins is a very clear strategy of theirs and I wonder how it will affect revenue shares for women's sports and women's basketball specifically. If you think back to the original fight for Title IX in the late 1960's and early 1970's, the biggest opponents were college football coaches who felt that it would eat into their budgets. In 1982, when the AIAW (the governing body for collegiate women's sports at the time) and NCAA were locked in a fight over who would control women's athletics, legendary Arkansas football coach Frank Broyles was in favor of women governing themselves. But it wasn't out of altruism. He just pragmatically believed that it would allow them to be on an island and the men's sports could continue to operate as is. So it wouldn't surprise me if we end up hearing some of these talking points again, especially as women's basketball players start to assert their value in the transfer portal and on the NIL market.

• Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl opened a post-victory presser by advocating for the release of Israeli hostages and then went on Fox News to praise POTVS about the hostage situation. Both are certainly his right, but it doesn’t seem like anyone will tell him to stick to sports because, well, that doesn’t apply to certain political opinions.

• Would you watch Stephen A. Smith debate the President of the TV about DEI? I guess we all would, right? 
• Speaking of, Ja’han Jones wrote about Smith (who was recently praised by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes) and his propensity for amplifying MAGA voices.
• Brazilian soccer star Dani Alves was convicted last year of rape but this week won his appeal. A court ruled that there was “insufficient evidence” to rule out his presumption of innocence. 
• Stanford GM Andrew Luck (a series of words that sound really weird for multiple reasons) obviously caved to the woke mob in finally firing a football coach for being a workplace problem for women. 

We’re talkin’ Homer, Ozzie, and the Straw.

Weekend.