Agile Tortoise
Greg Pierce’s blog
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PETA and the NCAA
PETA successfully lobbied the NCAA to stop using real leather basketballs in their tournaments next year. I don’t really have strong feelings about this one way or the other, I’m sure the non-leather balls are just as good…I do think it’s hardly a very important issue.
I really don’t think it’s saving any animals any particular hardship. Frankly, if I was a cow in today’s farm industry I’d be praying for death to come as soon as possible.
May 16th, 2002 at 1:49 pm
Actually this was PETA taking credit for something it had almost nothing to do with (which happens frequently — PETA has a habit of issuing press releases taking credit for things that other animal rights groups actually negotiated).
Anyway, most NCAA colleges already used balls made of composite materials because they offer a superior gripping surface. There’s really no comparison IMO between leather and composite basketballs — the composites are far easier to play with.
According to the NCAA, 58 of the 64 teams in this year’s NCAA tournament used non-leather balls for all of their games, including all of the Final Four teams.
PETA did submit comments about this when the NCAA was considering just abandoning leather division wide, but the decision was made based on the superiority of the non-leather balls as well as a desire to have uniformity (I’m sure a lot of players hated having to spend 95% of their time playing with composite balls and then switch for just a few games to leather balls).
As for the cows, the decision will have no effect at all on the # of cows killed. Almost all leather is produced as byproduct of the meat industry. The cows will be killed for hamburgers regardless — now a few of them will have their hides disposed of instead of converted into leather.