Posted on 02/27/2005 5:32:12 AM PST by aomagrat
The NCAA has not budged on its ban of scheduling championship events in South Carolina because of the Confederate flag controversy, but that won’t stop the Southeastern Conference from bringing its women’s basketball tournament to Greenville this week.
The 12-team, four-day tournament, which begins Thursday at the Bi-Lo Center, will be the first major college event held at a predetermined site in the state in three years. The NCAA ban does not extend to conference championships, but at least one prominent black leader is disappointed in the SEC’s decision to come to South Carolina.
Lonnie Randolph, the NAACP state president, said SEC officials showed “a gross insensitivity to the civil rights of all people.”
SEC commissioner Mike Slive said a scheduling conflict at another venue forced the conference to choose Greenville. This year’s tournament originally was to be held at Philips Arena in Atlanta. But Atlanta organizers backed out in 2003, leaving SEC officials scrambling to find another neutral site; the Bi-Lo Center was available.
Slive said SEC officials are “sensitive” to the NCAA ban, which also includes Mississippi. The Mississippi state flag features the Confederate Stars and Bars.
“I think it’s a little more complicated for a conference. South Carolina is part of our league,” Slive said. “Given the fact that we had to find an alternative site in a hurry, the fact that our student-athletes play in South Carolina regularly year in and year out, the fact that we did not have our own policy in place at that time. ... When you put all that together, that brought us to South Carolina.”
USC athletics director Mike McGee noted that USC is not a host school for the SEC women’s tournament and referred other questions to the conference.
STARRED AND BARRED
A legislative compromise in 2000 moved the flag from atop the Capitol dome to a Confederate monument on the State House grounds. The NAACP, which wants the flag brought down, organized a tourism boycott in 1999 and teamed with the Black Coaches Association in 2001 to convince the NCAA to implement a two-year moratorium, which has since been extended indefinitely.
When the Bi-Lo Center hosted first- and second-round games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2002 — a site the NCAA awarded before announcing its ban — the NAACP staged protests outside the arena. Randolph said no protests were planned this week for the women’s tournament in Greenville, adding that the interest in women’s basketball was not strong enough to make such an effort worthwhile.
Instead, Randolph will write SEC officials a letter “letting them know that they could make better choices, especially as it pertains to civil rights.”
Slive has made ethnic diversity a priority since taking over the SEC in 2002. During his tenure, the SEC has hired its first black football coach, Mississippi State’s Sylvester Croom, and first black athletics director, Georgia’s Damon Evans.
Slive sees no problem with allowing USC and the two Mississippi schools to serve as host sites in sports whose championships are awarded on a rotating basis. But this spring Slive will ask the conference’s athletics directors to consider following the NCAA’s lead and banning South Carolina and Mississippi from hosting the SEC’s neutral-site championships in football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, gymnastics, men’s golf and women’s soccer.
NO END IN SIGHT
The flag flap has hurt South Carolina sports fans and cost the state financially, according to industry leaders. The NCAA pulled a cross-country regional from Furman that the Southern Conference school had hosted for 21 years, and the ACC moved its 2003 baseball tournament from Fort Mill and has not returned.
The ban applies to predetermined championship sites only, which has allowed USC to play host to baseball regionals and Super Regionals.
McGee and Bi-Lo Center developer Carl Scheer were turned down after submitting bids to serve as host sites for the NCAA basketball tournament. Scheer, who owns minor-league hockey teams in Greenville and Charlotte, has tried to lobby Upstate politicians to revisit the flag issue to no avail.
“We’ve been so distraught over it,” Scheer said. “We thought we did a good job for the NCAA, and they told us we did. We wanted to come back as soon as we could with another one. Then we were told we couldn’t.
“I don’t know what’s happening, quite frankly. It certainly has hampered our opportunity to promote college basketball in South Carolina.”
Not much has changed since the NCAA extended the ban in 2003. Gail Dent, an NCAA spokeswoman, said no end date for the moratorium has been mentioned, and the issue is not slated for discussion anytime soon.
The NCAA does not figure to reverse its decision unless S.C. lawmakers vote to remove the flag or the NAACP eases up on the issue, neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon.
The flag has been a nonissue during the past several legislative sessions. And far from backing off, Randolph said the NAACP is looking to “ratchet up” the NCAA sanctions, although he declined to divulge what that might include.
“I’m not going to back down,” Randolph said. “You don’t back down off of justice and matters of what is right.”
Floyd Keith, the executive director of the BCA, said if college basketball fans in South Carolina “want to go to an NCAA Tournament, (they) are going to have to travel to get there.”
They could drive to Charlotte, which will host first- and second-round games on March 18 and 20 at the Charlotte Coliseum. That weekend will generate an economic impact of $10 million to $15 million, according to Steve Luquire, whose public-relations firm managed several NCAA Tournament regionals in Charlotte during the 1990s, including the Final Four in ’94.
While Charlotte hoops junkies revel in March Madness, the Colonial Center will host two nights of professional bull riding that weekend. Luquire said Columbia’s central location, ample hotel rooms and a 3-year-old arena would make it an attractive choice as a first- and second-round NCAA site.
That scenario might take place someday, but McGee will not be around for it: He is retiring June 30.
“This (moratorium) has not changed in quite a long period of time,” McGee said. “If the ban changes, then obviously there will be something to talk about it.”
Thank you.
As I said I am proud to display it.
Luigi
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