After recent allegations of sexual abuse against several USA Gymnastics coaches, an INDIANAPOLIS STAR editorial ran under the header, "USA Gymnastics Must Send Strong Message." USA Gymnastics has a "chance to be true leaders on the problem of sexual abuse in sports." The editorial: "Not just to say you are. But to show you are." Doing that "requires enacting meaningful changes and demanding a zero-tolerance approach to failures to report suspected abuses in gyms that look to you for leadership." USA Gymnastics' "actions and words leave the impression you worry more about image than doing everything you can, within reason, for gymnasts who deserve to know that you are first in line when it comes to protecting them" (INDIANAPOLIS STAR, 12/18).
IN WITH THE NEW: CBS golf analyst Dottie Pepper in a special to ESPN.com wrote outgoing PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem "did an incredible job in more than two decades as commissioner," but she is "excited to see the influence and direction" under incoming Commissioner Jay Monahan. New ideas "already seem to be flowing and coming to fruition with a big change at the New Orleans PGA Tour stop, talk of schedule changes that would see the season end closer to Labor Day and before football really gets cranking, as well as rumblings of a possible LPGA/PGA Tour mixed event" (ESPN.com, 12/16).
MOVING ON: In Phoenix, Paola Boivin wrote MLB's new anti-hazing and anti-bullying policy "isn’t about sensitivity, it’s about decency." Boivin: "In nobody’s world should the threat of humiliation be equated with dressing as a female. In nobody’s world should doing something 'like a girl' be a sign of weakness. It’s the language of misogyny. We’re better than that" (ARIZONA REPUBLIC, 12/18).
