Portside

Why is the United States Olympic Committee protecting USA Gymnastics? Whatever the reason, it’s time for it to stop. Why, amid what is one of the worst sexual-abuse scandals in sports history — one much bigger than the Penn State scandal that took down the longtime football coach Joe Paterno, an athletic director and a university president — hasn’t the Olympic committee fully held the gymnastics federation accountable for its incompetence?

Well before Title IX was taken seriously, well before there were record ratings for women's sports on TV, before there was the dominance of the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team or the sold-out crowds at the NCAA Women's Final Four, there was Pat Summitt. She turned a women's sports team into a national brand in the 1980s and 1990s. And she did it not by playing by the old, demure, ladylike rules of women's sports, but by crashing the boys' sports party.