Here in these disunited states, there has been great concern in right-wing circles over trans women participating in women’s sports. This concern has often tipped over into moral panic and mass hysteria.
Strangely, this intense interest in the well-being of women athletes and the integrity of women’s sports has not translated into actual financial support for women athletes or attendance at women’s sporting events. Instead, the focus has been a negative one, pinpointed on the targeting of what is portrayed as an overwhelming scourge of trans athletes engaged in a nefarious invasion of women’s junior varsity lacrosse & etc.
Baseball illustration by Strobridge Lithographing Company (c. 1897) [Public Domain]
In this column, I argue that a much more eminent and imminent threat to the treasured sanctity of American sporting life is the shockingly unsportsmanlike conduct of Christian athletes in men’s sports. This is an extremely serious issue, dear reader, and one that deserves a determined response, lest it continue to destroy any remaining semblance of fair play in our fair nation.
But first, by way of introduction, I provide a brief review of the ongoing trans panic.
The Valiant Defense of Women’s Sports: A Case Study
A typical example of the men with an obsessive interest in the supposed tsunami of trans women taking over women’s sports is Warren Kenneth “Ken” Paxton, Jr., a member of the Republican Party who has served as the attorney general of Texas since 2015 and is currently the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat representing the state.
There are so many very serious men who are so fiercely invested in the integrity of women’s sports. You can find them in just about any comment section below just about any post by or about women athletes. Rather than attempt to catalogue the huge numbers of these esteemed and extremely outspoken gentlemen, I have chosen to focus on Mr. Paxton as a prime exemplar of this crusading type.
In 2024, Paxton protected Texas watchers of women’s collegiate sports from being victimized by devious teams who were “deceptively changing women’s competitions into co-ed competitions.” He did this by suing the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), who he insisted was confusing and tricking consumers by secretly sneaking transgender athletes onto women’s teams.
Weirdly, I can find no evidence that Paxton actually attended any women’s college sporting events in 2024, but I did find that NCAA president Charlie Baker said at the time that there were “less than 10” transgender athletes (whether male- or female-identifying) among the more than half-million men and women athletes across participating schools nationwide.
That means that trans athletes are less than .002% of NCAA athletes in the USA. If Texas had approximately 30,000 NCAA athletes in 2024, and given that there are less than half as many women in NCAA sports as there are men, that means that all Texas women’s sports together had approximately one-quarter of one trans athlete shared between them.
Paxton’s dedication to defending Texas sports fans from being confused or tricked by this trans body part is noteworthy, but the attorney general serving the former Republic of Texas didn’t stop there. In 2025, he sued U.S. Masters Swimming, “a nonprofit promoting health and fitness for adults composed of several clubs across the country,” because they allowed two trans women to compete in women’s events.
Shockingly, I could find no evidence that Paxton has ever attended a U.S. Masters swimming competition, but I did do some basic math and figured that trans women make up 0.01% of the organization’s competitors. Paxton must be truly focused on preventing the fans from being confusticated by this pandemic of hoodwinkery.
We know that Paxton is committed to protecting the best interests of athletes, because he publicly used his office to defend Texas Tech University quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s right to play college football, no matter what. Especially no matter that the young man had been ruled ineligible after court documents proved that he had placed over $90,000 in illegal sports bets as a college athlete.
And double especially no matter that Texas Tech Board of Regents chair and Sorsby superfan Cody Campbell had personally donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to Paxton’s Senate campaign the day before Paxton publicly told the Big 12 Conference that sanctioning Texas Tech for welcoming Sorsby back to the team could lead to a $200-million damage lawsuit. Three cheers for integrity!
Given Paxton’s deep affection for athletes, it probably had something to do with sports when he sued the Biden administration in 2024 for “expanding federal sex discrimination protections under Title IX to include LGBTQ+ students.” Because if it didn’t, it would suggest that he really is just using sports as an excuse to gin up a vile culture war against trans people specifically and members of the LGBTQ+ community generally, perhaps in an effort to boost his own national political profile. But it would be unkind to suggest this.
Way back in 2020, Paxton issued a statement that “Women’s Sports Must Ensure Fairness and Equal Opportunity for Women.” In it, he insisted that “Men and women are inherently equal under the law.” It’s not quite clear why he also used the phrase “biologically female athletes” and felt it necessary to insist that “biological and physiological difference between [men and women] are real.” Surely, he truly supports women athletes and isn’t just using them in some quixotic crusade against trans people.
Perplexingly, given his strong support for the equality of men and women and his dedication to ensuring fairness and equal opportunity for women in sports, I can find no evidence of him using his office to support equal funding for women’s athletics, equal compensation for women athletes, or the improvement of facilities for women’s teams.
I also can’t find any evidence that he has ever attended a WNBA game, despite one of the three homes he has claimed on mortgage documents are his primary residence being awfully close to the Dallas Wings.
I actually can’t find any evidence that he’s attended any women’s sporting event whatsoever while attorney general. I hate AI with the same passion as any other full-brained citizen, but in order to satisfy you, the discriminating reader, I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok the same question: “What women’s sporting events has Ken Paxton attended as attorney general?”
In a heartwarming example of beneficent agreement across competing platforms, they all stated that there is no evidence for Paxton ever attending any women’s sporting event. They all also volunteered that his relationship with women’s sports has been wholly through suing them.
Yet I must believe that Paxton’s bravehearted defense of women athletes must be in good faith, since he is a man of unimpeachable character. To be clear, I mean that he is literally unimpeachable.
When the Texas House of Representatives filed 20 articles of impeachment against him – including using his office to protect and benefit a friend and donor, to retaliate against whistleblowers, to issue false statements in his own defense, to accept bribes that benefited his mistress and himself, to abuse the judicial process to prevent facing consequences for securities fraud, and many others that I’m now too tired to type – members of his own party in the Texas Senate successfully voted to acquit him on every single charge. Why would these noble Republican officials vote that way, unless he were truly innocent?
He has shown his noble patriotic spirit by suing states where Biden beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election, speaking at the January 6 rally that led to the famous visit to the U.S. Capitol by politically minded tourists, and suing the Biden administration 106 times for doing harmful things to the American people. Trump himself has called Paxton “a very talented guy.” Would the president ever endorse someone who wasn’t of the highest character?
By the way, a “systematic review with meta-analysis” published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine this year concluded that current evidence “does not support theories of inherent athletic advantages for transgender women over cisgender.” But I’m sure that Paxton and all the other men so concerned with protecting the integrity of women’s sports know this, because they would otherwise be operating wholly in bad faith.
Turning now to faith itself, I present the very serious case of Christian athletes in men’s sports.
“With God, I’m Not Washed Up”: Divine Interference in Men’s Sports
If .002% of the women in collegiate athletics being transgender is enough to cause a nationwide moral panic, the catastrophically higher percentage and concomitantly higher total number of men in professional athletics being Christian must surely cause an equally widespread and proportionally larger emotional meltdown and legal response.
As a first step to understand the gravity of this situation, consider the 2016 Chicago Cubs. I know that we Cubs fans in Chicago continue to consider them on a daily basis. They had a .639 record (103-58-1) and were champions of the National League Central and the National League before winning their first World Series after a painful 108-year drought.
How did they manage all of this winning? They had help from God.
2016 World Series MVP Ben Zobrist identifies himself on Twitter/X as a “follower of Jesus Christ.” Immediately after the final Cubs win, he tweeted “Thank you Lord for this special blessing.” Not only did he declare that God had put him on the winning team, but he also regularly crossed himself and pointed to Heaven to thank God for getting him safely on first base.
Cubs center fielder Dexter Fowler stated that God chose him to win the World Series. The mother of pitcher Carl Edwards, Jr. said that he was a miracle baby and that God continues to work miracles in his life. Catcher David Ross insists that the light of God shines directly through him.
By publicly admitting their use of performance-enhancing divinity, the players themselves make clear that Chicago’s own lovable losers unfairly benefited from the determined interference of an all-powerful deity during the 2016 season. They are not alone in this shocking breach of sportsmanlike conduct, and they are not alone in receiving no punishment whatsoever for such egregious and obvious cheating.
In 2012, Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow led his football team to its first division title and first playoff win since 2005. How did this young player end the drought? Like the Cubs, he had unsanctioned help from God.
Already in his college football days, Tebow gained an unfair advantage by having God interfere in his team’s games. He has stated that his University of Florida Gators winning the championship in 2009 was caused by him calling down God’s help via biblical messages written in his eye black makeup. God, he said, fought for him, came through for him, and performed miracles for him. The NCAA took no action against him or his team for this open cheating via divinity.
Without any official punishment handed down, God continued to unfairly aid Tebow in his professional NFL career. The Broncos playoff win in 2012 is the most obvious example of divine intervention. Tebow wrote “John 3:16” on his face for the game, invoking God’s gifts to humans. The deity responded by causing the game to be played 316 weeks after Tebow declared he was joining the University of Florida team, helping Tebow accumulate 316 passing yards with an average of 31.6 yards each, holding the rival Pittsburgh Steelers to a possession time of 31 minutes and 6 seconds, causing the Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to throw the game’s only interception on 3rd-and-16, and raising the game’s peak TV rating to 31.6.
There has perhaps never been such an obvious case of divine interference in a men’s sporting event, yet there was no official inquiry into God so brazenly interfering on behalf of a player. How can any team compete fairly when certain teams are given such patently unsportsmanlike assistance?
God’s interference in men’s sports is not limited to team play. For many years, he has directly interfered in boxing matches at the highest levels of the sport, most notably in fights for the heavyweight championship of the world.
In the buildup to the long-awaited 1996 heavyweight title fight between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield, Tyson openly mocked Holyfield’s outspoken Christian faith and asked, “What should I do when I knock him down? Sprinkle him with holy water?”
Holyfield responded to this insult on fight night by having “Philippians 4:13” inscribed on the robe he wore during his ring entrance, referring to the verse that states “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” This bold admission of unfair divine assistance went unpunished by the WBA (World Boxing Association), the organization that sanctioned the contest.
Betting odds favored the terrifying Tyson 5-to-1 against the older Holyfield, who had already retired once due to a heart condition. In the sixth round, Holyfield cut Tyson with a headbutt and knocked him down with a left. A second headbutt buckled Tyson’s knees in the seventh. Tyson was nearly knocked out in the 10th, and the fight was stopped by the referee when Tyson was taking damage on the ropes in the 11th. The upset win was shocking to boxing fans worldwide.
During the post-fight interview in the ring, the victorious Holyfield gave sole credit to God for his win, stating that “My god is the only true god, and everything must bow to God.” After interviewer Ferdie Pacheco replied, “God is here, I hope, for all of us,” Holyfield doubled down on divine assistance for himself and himself alone.
I live by the spirit of God, and like I told everybody, whatever the spirit leads me to do, that’s what I would do. It wasn’t nothing so much what I did, and everybody knew that I was washed up, but with God, I’m not washed up… It was about what the Lord wanted me to do.
Yet again, there was no investigation or sanction from the sporting association overseeing the event, despite this open admission that it was improper divine interference, not sporting (and head-butting) ability, that caused the victory.
God’s interference on behalf of his chosen boxers is not limited to Americans and not limited to born-again Christians like Holyfield. Acting in an international and interdenominational fashion, he has also interfered in fights of Ukrainian Orthodox Christian Oleksandr Usyk and lifted him to the status of undisputed and unified heavyweight world champion.
Before his fights, Usyk regularly enters the ring wearing a t-shirt that says “Orthodoxy or Death” in Greek. In his post-fight interviews, the undefeated Ukrainian follows Holyfield in crediting God for his wins. After his fifth-round knockout of challenger Daniel Dubois in 2025, Usyk revealed that God began loving him more when he became a fighter and now guides his fights and helps him in his career.
From helping Cubs get base hits to manipulating Broncos stats to reflect Bible verses to guiding the fists of pugilists as they beat their opponents into bloody unconsciousness, God takes an intense interest in the minutiae of men’s sporting events and continually interferes to guarantee that his chosen followers will emerge victorious.
We know this much is true, because we have the public testimony of not only the athletes discussed above, but because we also have countless similar statements from innumerable athletes across the depth and breadth of men’s sports. These winners are not at all reticent regarding God’s willful intervention on their behalf. They will tell whoever has ears to listen that their victories are due to the hand of God fudging the outcome in their favor.
What can be done to address this outrageous violation of the principles of fair play and sportsmanship?
A Modest Proposal
It has been shown above that the intense and ongoing reaction to functionally 0% of athletes in women’s sports being transgender has led to multiple court cases and much furious emotion over protecting the sanctity of the game.
It has also been shown that open admission of one-sided and unfair divine aid by victorious athletes at the highest levels of men’s sports has gone unstudied and unpunished.
How can any athlete – no matter their level of talent, training, and experience – hope to compete with a rival who is being openly helped by an omniscient and omnipotent divinity?
The Bible repeatedly tells us that God knows everything before it happens and that nothing is impossible for him to accomplish. He clearly knows what pitch is coming next and can guide the bat to hit it. He knows what plays the opposing team will attempt and can guide his chosen to mount a successful response. He knows exactly what punch is about to be thrown and can guide his boxer to dodge and counterpunch without error.
This is an insurmountable and absolutely unfair advantage.
We know that these winning athletes are telling the truth about their divine aid, because God would surely strike them down, cause them to lose, and otherwise punish them for falsely testifying of his glorious deeds. It is worth noting that the winners do not credit their personal faith as inspiration and motivation but instead consistently state that God himself directly intervenes to determine the outcomes of their contests.
They must be telling the truth, because otherwise they would just be athletes who win through ordinary means without God’s actions. To accuse them of lying would be to insist that God is actually not all-knowing and all-powerful, that he is incapable of determining the outcome of an at-bat. To say that the Cubs won the World Series on their own would be the deepest sacrilege. We know that his eye is on the sparrow, so it would be shocking blasphemy to even suggest that he isn’t deeply invested in the outcome of a slow ground ball to third base in the 10th inning of game 7.
Those who own and control men’s sports surely want everything to be fair and on the level. Look how gobsmacked baseball owners were to find out that their biggest home-run hitters – the players driving massive owner profits from attendance, viewing, listening, and swag-consumption – were using steroids. The fact that Major League Baseball banned steroids in 1991 but didn’t begin testing until 2003 must surely be a clerical error, and we can rest assured that no player today would even think about using performance-enhancing drugs.
In order to protect the integrity of men’s sports, I propose that all Christian athletes are banned pending the results of long-term, in-depth, double-blind scientific studies to determine the exact extent of divine intervention by God. Following the policy of Border Patrol and ICE to “stop people first, and sort it out later,” the best path forward is to ban all Christian athletes until it can be determined exactly which of them God is directly intervening to help and what steps can be taken by sports organizations to block his all-seeing eye and limit the effects of his functionally unstoppable might.
If the studies conclude that God is indeed interfering with sporting results, the ban on Christian athletes can then be made permanent. This would be rough news for these athletes and their families, but – as Ken Paxton has made clear – we can’t allow fans to be confused and tricked by cheaters who destroy the sanctity of sports.
If the studies conclude that God is not actually determining the outcome of contests, counseling will have to be provided for Christian athletes. It would be an undeniably shattering blow for them to be forced to face a reality in which their chosen divinity does not actually know the outcome of a football play ahead of time or is unable to directly affect where a punch lands. Finding out that sports are simply sports may be a realization from which they cannot recover, so they must be supported and cared for.
I am sure that Ken Paxton and all the other men who have stood so valiantly for the integrity of women’s sports that they don’t watch will join me in this righteous call to clear the cheaters out of men’s sports that they actually do watch.
Together, we can win.
“If God is with me, then who can be against me? Nobody.”
-Tyson Fury, former boxing world heavyweight champion
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