March Madness will not come to Boise in 2021 after all — but not for the reasons you might have thought.
The NCAA is pulling the men’s basketball tournament from Boise State University and other campus-aligned venues across the nation. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the NCAA is instead moving the tournament to a single geographic area, most likely in and around Indianapolis.
The NCAA announced the move Monday.
Boise State’s host status had already been in dispute.
In June, hundreds of athletes signed a letter urging the NCAA to pull major sporting events out of Idaho, to protest the state’s first-in-the-nation transgender athletics ban.
House Bill 500, passed by the 2020 Legislature, would ban transgender girls and women from playing in girls’ and women’s sports.
The law is on hold; supporters have taken the dispute to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The NCAA has not acted on the athletes’ request to pull sporting events out of Idaho.
