Trans Athletes, Fairness & Why Annika vs the Guys Still Matters | Engel Angle

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Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star Telegram, Engel Angle podcast, Stolen Water Media, Sunset Lounge. A reminder, please join us. Mister Mike Rhyner of Your Dark Companion and the other people of the Sunset Lounge every Tuesday night beginning at 05:30 at three wide.

For three wide, that is at Scout at the Statler Hotel in Downtown Dallas. It is an old hotel. I was there last week, I believe, for my first appearance.

Every Tuesday night, 05:30 at the Statler Hotel, three Wide at Scout. It is absolutely an amazing place. It's got a couple of bowling alleys in there.

It's got foosball. It's got the old bubble hockey game. I love all that stuff.

And more importantly, it has mister Mike Rhyner. That is at the Statler Hotel in Downtown Dallas. Scout, three 3 Wide at Scout, 05:30PM.

I'll be there a couple times between now and the end of the year, and this will go on through the end of football season, which does not conclude until February. One thing that does conclude very soon, and it cannot get here soon enough, and that is the midterm elections. I think I speak on behalf of all Americans.

We are sick and tired of the deluge of commercials that now infiltrate every part of our being seemingly twenty five hours a day. There's a lot of disadvantages to technology that offset all of the advantages. One of them has been the utter invasion of our lives by any number of entities.

This now includes political advertising. It used to be before the widespread use of technology that made it available that we could consume news twenty five hours a day is that we could we could police and regulate virtually anything what we wanted to read or watch. Now it's almost impossible to ignore.

I'm getting dings on my phone right now, and I'm afraid to check it because it's probably some political figure who only needs five minutes of my time, and these are desperate measures, and we're all gonna die. And this election is the most important election of our lives, and blah blah blah. One of the things that the Sunset Lounge wanted to do when it created...

When it launched was not to jump into political waters. And I want to preface this episode by saying this is not a political attack. It's not.

Now, unfortunately, anytime you go into certain subjects, it is not hard to extract right, left, blue, red meaning from it. So if you want to do that, that's fine. This is about sports.

However, I do want to say one thing about political advertising and the whole political culture that exists today. I love American history. I love America.

I love history. I'm the middle aged guy who reads books about submarines, and I am exhausted and frankly insulted by a few things that have happened in the last however many years. Number one, America is not going communist.

You see that a lot. Such and such is a communist. We don't want America to be communism.

That political talking point campaign message has existed in this country since the late eighteen hundreds. The late eighteen hundreds people were using communism as a scare tactic for you to vote in one particular direction. One other item that you'll hear is that the political culture has never been worse than it is today.

It's not true. It's always been ugly. It's been terrible.

It's been savage. It's been mean. It's been dirty.

It's ugly because people will stop at nothing to gain power. And that's just as true here in 2026 as it was when America started this whole madness back in the late seventeen hundreds. I think I speak on behalf of all Americans.

I shouldn't say all Americans. I noticed my appetite for all of this changed dramatically after the whole January 6 debacle, at which point I was embarrassed as an American. I saw those images from the state...

From the... From our capital. And again, I love America, and I love American history.

And to see those images on my phone or television set at our capital, I was humiliated. As an American, I was embarrassed for our country because those are the images that you see in third world chaotic, disorganized countries or developing nations. You don't see those images here in The United States.

And I was nauseated by it. And I was equally sickened by the fact that our political leaders could not be unified to agree on that issue. You can't you can't condemn that, then what are we doing?

Then it is a joke. Which leads me to this particular topic, and that is the subject as it relates to sports of the incredibly widening hot button topic of trans in sports. Transsexuals in sports.

Boys playing girls sports. You see that now everywhere. You see the subject of transsexuals and mutilating our children now everywhere as a scare tactic to get you to go to the polls to vote in one particular direction.

It is utterly insulting that this has become the topic that it is because it affects a fraction point nothing of the population. I do realize that this is a very sensitive subject for that segment of the population. I get it.

And like anybody else, you deserve to have your space. I do. I understand that.

And this is a subject for me that is twofold. One, I don't quite totally understand it. I've talked to some medical professionals about it, and I still, as a middle aged guy, admittedly have a hard time getting my head around some of the specifics about it.

I do. Number two, my view about this subject as it relates to sports has changed. I became aware of this subject somewhat cruelly when I started to do some research way back when.

I came across an athlete who back in the 1940s was probably the best female athlete in America at the time. She was a female golfer named Babe Zaharius, and she was dominant. She smoked everybody.

And the words started to trick around, and I talked to my my parents about this actually. Well, then she must be a guy. That there's no way anybody that good is anything other than a guy.

She she... She's probably the... It's it's a male dressed up as a female, or she's she's gay.

Now remember, for that generation, that was a big deal back then. And, I'm just giving you some historical perspective. But look up Babe Zaharius and look how dominant she was.

And some of it and some of it, the struggle was back then. Women's sports back then did not exist the way they do today. I I look at my daughter who grew up in a world where sports were completely readily available and encouraged for for girls.

And I think it's fantastic. I go to WNBA games occasionally or women's college basketball games or any number of sporting events, and I see just how good these players are. It's remarkable how good they are.

Because I started to to cover and work with women's sports back in the mid nineties, and it's totally different now. The players are so much better. And that started with twenty, thirty, forty years ago, whatever it was when possibilities, opportunities existed for girls to play.

Where if you go back to a competitor like Babe Zaharius, she was the outlier's outlier. So then I want you to go back to the eighties, seventies and eighties when a women's tennis player from Eastern Europe named Martina Navratilova came over to The United States and just started smoking everybody. And she was completely unafraid of who she was.

And that included she was gay. And Martina Novratilova was at a time considered, she might be a man. That's what people said about her back then.

Was she... She must be a man because she smoked everybody. And then it became a thing.

Well, she can probably beat guys. That's how good she is. And that was a thing for a long time.

And then there was a a middle distance runner, a woman from South Africa who ran in the international events, specifically the Olympics for South Africa named Castor Semenya. And if you watched those races that she competed in, I mean, it was remarkable how much better she was. And then it became, she's a man.

She must be a man. There's no way that's fair because she was destroying everybody. And then certainly, locally here in Texas...

And when I say locally, I'm talking about just the state of Texas. The women's basketball player at Baylor who went to the WNBA and had a very high profile, somewhat controversial career, and Brittany Griner. Then the the rap on Brittany Griner was she must be a man.

She's... There's no way. She's a guy.

She must be a guy. It's it's nonsensical, and quite frankly, it's somewhat offensive. But something that has evolved here in the last, really, in this century is the possibility of a person who was born male, transitioned to female, and as a result, they're starting to play in girls and women's sports.

It became an enormous talking point here in this particular administration under the Trump White House to the point where they put in legislation and you had a handful of people who basically made a career campaigning against it. And my view about this has evolved quite a bit. And something that gets me kind of frustrated is that a political leader, any kind of leader or anybody at some point, you can find what they may have said five or ten years ago.

And this includes me on a much smaller level. And that person will say, well, you said such and such then. And you're basically...

What that person is saying is that you're a hypocrite or you're contradicting yourself. And it's true. My view of this subject today has changed from what it was ten or fifteen years ago.

Because back then, my view of it was based on people including Martina Novratilova and a group of prominent retired female athletes whose attitude was, if the athlete is taking the necessary, basically, hormone blockers, then the advantage of a male competing against a female is taken away if they are taking those blockers. And I thought, okay. That makes sense to me.

I can see it. I I have no problem with that. Well, what they found was there was no amount of drugs that you could administer to a person who's born biologically a male and give them enough drugs to where the innate advantage that exists is taken away.

It's different. It's just different. And I have tested this theory with certain female athletes over the years to say, well, could you possibly and somehow make it equal?

I had a chance to interview former LPGA tour great Annika Sorenstam about this subject once. And not as it relates to trans, but as it relates to a way to make the sport, in her case golf, equal. Because I had a theory.

I had a theory was if you took a young girl, and I'm talking four or five, and you introduced the sport of golf to her, and you trained the golfer, the female... The girl... The the female golfer to play from the male tees, the blacks tees, whatever, the back tees.

If you train that player to play and make the necessary club adjustments that they could compete with a male and it would be equal. That was just a theory. And because what I didn't know and what she told me and the reason why I chose her to talk about it is because probably is as famous for this one particular golf tournament as all of her other achievements combined as an LPGA tour player.

And you have to remember, in her prime, she was Tiger Woods. Annika Sorensen was a beast of a golfer. And around the twenties...

I guess around 2002, 2001, I can't remember the year, the PGA Tour event here in Fort Worth, Texas, coincidentally, at Colonial Country Club invited her to play in the event. She was going to be the only female playing against a fee... Male...

A a field of males. And it became an enormous talking point. It was a huge story.

You had the best women's golfer playing against a PGA tour field full of very good golfers. I don't think Tiger Tiger Woods didn't play in that one. I don't think Phil Mickelson played in that one, and they were the two biggest names at the time.

But a lot of the other PGA tour greats were in it. And it was very controversial because a lot of those men, male players were really upset about it. But for the title sponsor, who I think I think was either Bank of America or Mastercard, it was an ungodly amount of publicity that they got in return for their investment as the title sponsor of the event.

So it was going to be fascinating to watch. They sold more tickets than ever. They sold more merchandise forever.

They had international media there. Everybody was there to see how a woman would compete against the men, the best woman. And for the first 18 holes, she held up.

She was in the middle ish. And then the next teen... 18 holes, clearly, the pressure and the stress of that entire week and the lead up to it got to her.

She did not make the cut, and she finished either second to last or third to last in the field tied in for one of those. And even afterwards, she was overwhelmed by it. She said, I'm so glad I did this, but I I know where I I should be.

And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. You hear this sometimes from people who are very pro female sports, which is fine, which is they could beat the guys. They could beat the guys.

Well, there's just a disadvantage. There is just a height and weight disadvantage that exists. The last one he heard this all the time was Serena Williams.

Serena Williams, arguably the greatest women's tennis player of all time, had a run-in there where she was destroying everybody. I mean, everybody. She was a category five hurricane against her opponents, and they could not match her power and athleticism.

And there was a time in there where they thought Serena could beat the guys. John Mac Engel, who was completely unafraid of his opinion, said, no. Couldn't.

And then Serena Williams goes on one of the late night shows, Stephen Colbert, Letterman, I can't remember who it was, and says, it's a different game. And it is a different game. There were analytics people who broke down her game and and and basically would have put her talent at the top of her career that she would have been a very good division one men's college tennis player.

It's just different. And we have to acknowledge that. We can acknowledge...

And this is where the genesis of my issue with this is. If you elect to pursue, if you wanna change female to male, then you can't play in that game because of the obvious disadvantages it creates. There are reasons why boxing has different classifications based on weight.

Heavyweight, light heavyweight, cruiser, middle, fly, ban them, etcetera. You're not gonna put in a fighter who's one hundred and thirty five pounds against a fighter who's two hundred pounds. That's murder.

There is a reason why college football has different classifications. Division one, division two, division three, NAIA, FBS, FCS. It's just different.

Major leagues, minor leagues. You want games and competitions to be fun. You do.

You want them to be competitive. That at any other point is the priority. Make it competitive.

Make it fair. And if somebody emerges to be better by a wide margin, then so be it. But if you put in a male against predominantly female athletes, we've seen what can happen.

It's not fun. It's not fair. It's ridiculous.

We have seen instances where occasionally the trans athlete has competed basically punching down. Famously, there was the instance of the Penn University swimmer. Competed...

Born a male, competed as a female, destroyed everybody, and that instance is what led to all the legislation. It was ridiculous. There was nothing fair about it.

However few people this issue really affects, that was one where you can sit there and say, come on. What are we doing? There was the instance of the San Jose University volleyball player.

Born a male, competed with the female women's volleyball team at San Jose State. Wasn't a very good player. A lot of other teams boycotted and just skipped the games against San Jose State, basically, in protest, and that received some attention.

But I just do think that we need to introduce some level of common sense about this, which is if we're going to look at the prism of sports of a game, whether it's male or female, the biggest priority should be fairness and competition. Does everybody... Is everybody kind of playing on the same playing field?

And I think we know by now, and this is no slight. This is no slight. There are a lot of advantages when it comes to the game that a male has.

Height and weight and dexterity. I was at a charity bowling event couple weeks ago in Euless, Texas. Former NASCAR driver Tony Stewart has a has a fundraiser at a bowling event, and they put...

I was a celebrity. Hold your applause. And they put me with a team who had a professional bowler on.

It's female from Eastern Europe. And I asked her. She was amazing, by the way.

She's just rolling strikes. Bang. Bang.

Bang. Bang. Just a beast.

As I'm sitting there watching her destroy these pins one right after the other, I thought, wait a minute. This could be even. Why why aren't males competing against females?

And you could potentially draw up some interest that way to sell some more tickets. We're talking about bowling here. Bowling doesn't make a ton of money in terms of media rights revenues or ticket sales or anything like that.

You can make money at it and have a job, but I'm just thinking, how can you make a little bit more? So I asked her about this. Could you do it?

And she said, well, there are certain tournaments that do, but there are really not many. And she said, it's a different game. I'm like, bowling?

She said, absolutely. It's different. She said the strength, the speed that they can put on the ball, it's just different.

They have an enormous advantage. I thought, well, okay. Well, if they've got it in bowling, then that's not very fun.

Because like I said, the competitor wants to be on an even field. We've seen any number of examples in any number in in other sports where the governing bodies go out of their way to try to legislate out disadvantages. And usually, it's money.

In Formula One, they've gone through all these different, you know, modifications to try to make the teams more equal. So that means you can't spend as much. You certainly...

We've seen that in the National Football League. That's what a salary cap is. We've certainly seen it in Major League Baseball, and it's gonna get uglier here in about a month when they try to force a salary cap on the players.

And the whole idea is we wanna make sure this is level and everybody has a chance. Well, when it comes to this topic, we do need to acknowledge and respectfully and just say, this is a disadvantage. Would you put a 25 year old man in a high school football game?

No. You just wouldn't. Now there are some instances, I will say this, there are some instances, and we've seen it where you can put a female in a in a game against a male, and they will win.

I've said this before. I've played pickup basketball for a long, long time. And every now and then, a division one women's college basketball player will come play with us, And they're good.

The dirtiest player by far, and I've played twenty years. The dirtiest player I have played with by far was a member of the TC Women's basketball team. She's from Africa.

She had played at Arkansas State. Man, she was tough, strong as hell, and she was dirty, but really, really nice person. On the floor, oh my god, So dirty.

There was another one. She eventually transferred to USC. She had some nasty post moves.

Got me. Got a couple of us. There was another one from France.

She could really, really shoot it. Now she didn't see a shot. She couldn't miss, but she was completely unafraid and she would shoot it.

And you will see instances like that. But you know what you don't see? Tonight from Knoxville, it's the University of Tennessee women's basketball team taking on the men's team from Mississippi State.

K. You're not gonna see that. What you will see are men...

Male basketball players practicing against women's basketball players because that way the woman's player is basically playing up, punching up. And if you find me instances like Annika trying to punch up, play up her weight class in a PGA tour event, I have no problem with that. But what we're seeing now in very, very isolated incidences instances are people who were born male playing against females and that's punching down.

That's not sports. That's ridiculous. Let's put on our heads.

Let's introduce some common sense. Let's get the political jargon out. Let's get the bullshit stuff that comes in your mail that says, we're protecting our little girls.

There's no bigger rhetorical device that's any more effective than we're trying to protect our babies. We're trying to protect our little girls. It is so hollow.

So get all of that out. Remove all of that and make this about competition. Make this about what are we doing here?

And if that competitor who is female and is good enough, yeah, give her a try. Let her put her on the field with the guys. See what happens.

Every now and then it works. It does. And I think as we see women's sports continue to evolve, we're probably gonna see some more instances of that where we're gonna see a female player who is so good, they can compete with the guys, which is great.

I think that's fantastic. But I think those are going to remain very unique and isolated. The norm is and what it should be is it's gonna be a competitive game, then all the competitors should be same sex.

Now, again, there are rules. There are exceptions to every rule. We've seen that in beach volleyball sometimes.

And I do think sometimes one thing that has been a very effective... Tennis has done it. I think they can do it in some other instances.

Mix and match. Blend the teams. It's great.

I think they had to do it with basketball, like three on three basketball. Put two girls and one guy, two guys and one girl, whatever. I think you could do...

That's how good the players are now. You can do that, and you can sell it. But you can sell it and market it and really get into it if it's fair.

I'm exhausted by all of this political junk. I am. And I hate it for our country.

I hate it for my friends. I hate it for family members because it has been just absolutely poison for all of us. And we're drinking it even when we're not even drinking it.

And while I do everything in my power to look the other way, some might even say bury my head in the sand about some of this. The one thing I'm not going to ignore is what I see on the field. Make it fair.

Trans in sports is a divisive subject even though it affects a tiny number of people. What doesn't affect a tiny number of people is that when we watch these games, we wanna see something that's equal. So use your head.

Use your own common sense. It's not that hard. See you next time.

This is a Stolen Water Media production.