William Bock III, a member of the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, has resigned from that position, citing disagreements over the association's transgender athlete policy.
Bock, who was the former general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, submitted his letter of resignation to NCAA President Charlie Baker on Friday, citing the college sports organization’s policy to allow transgender men to compete in women’s sports as a primary reason for his departure.
William Bock III, a member of the NCAA's Committee on Infractions, has resigned from that position, citing disagreements over the association's transgender athlete policy.
Bock, who was the former general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, submitted his letter of resignation to NCAA President Charlie Baker on Friday, citing the college sports organization’s policy to allow transgender men to compete in women’s sports as a primary reason for his departure.
“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 wrote. “This conviction has changed as I have watched the NCAA double down on regressive policies which discriminate against female student-athletes.”
Bock rejected the NCAA's three-phase participation policy, which the NCAA implemented back in January of 2022. That policy allows transgender student-athletes to play in their desired sports so long as they meet certain requirements, including that testosterone levels are below the maximum allowable levels for any given sport.
According to the Washington Examiner, Bock asserts that biological development that occurs before and around puberty cannot be reversed to even the playing field.
“There’s a lot of biological development that starts at birth that allows you to maximize testosterone, and those changes that you get through development — they don’t go away,” Bock said. “And you’re going to reduce performance by a small amount if you reduce testosterone levels, but you’re never going to bridge the gap between men and women. And so it’s a ruse to say that testosterone suppression, it’s a level playing field, so it’s not true.”
During Bock's time with the Anti-Doping Agency, where he investigated Lance Armstrong's use of performance-enhancing drugs, he specialized in biology and how testosterone-based enhancements could slant competition.
“If I’m there in a sport integrity role when there’s massive, essentially authorized, cheating taking place and dramatically harming women — it’s just a contradiction,” he said. “I just felt like I couldn’t seem to do that any longer and needed to resign with the hope that maybe [it] will cause other people to look at the issue more closely.”
Bock said he has not heard any response from the NCAA on his resignation.
“I’ve gotten no response from anybody,” he said. “Which I think probably says a lot about the fear that’s driving silence at academic institutions on this issue.”
