I am greatly offended that politicians and pundits dragged sports into the trash pile of the 2016 presidential campaign. 

The vulgar, victimizing language we heard from a presidential candidate in a ten-year-old recording is NOT “locker room talk.” It is far worse than anything I ever heard in any locker room I was a part of as either player or coach.  

In fact, the expectation I had of school sports was that such talk would have caused coaches to disqualify the players involved or, if not, such talk would have caused administrators to dismiss the coaches in charge.

School sports locker rooms – like the fields, courts, pools, mats and other venues of play – are classrooms. While the volume may be turned up, in educational athletics, the content and vocabulary of the locker room must match the classroom. Anything less is unacceptable in the locker rooms of school-sponsored sports, and it ought to be unacceptable to the fans in the stands, people on the street and candidates for public office.