Posted on 07/25/2006 10:19:23 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Unless lawmakers remove the Confederate flag from the State House grounds, the road to the College World Series could become longer for Clemson, South Carolina and the state’s other schools.
An NCAA subcommittee is re-examining the flag issue after the head of the Black Coaches Association questioned why Clemson hosted regional and super regional games before advancing to Omaha this past season.
In 2002 the NCAA implemented a two-year moratorium prohibiting schools in South Carolina from hosting any pre-assigned championships. A year later the NCAA extended the ban indefinitely.
Now BCA executive director Floyd Keith wants college athletics’ chief governing body to consider broadening the ban to keep all postseason contests out of the state.
“At least from our viewpoint, there should not be any postseason events awarded,” Keith said Friday during a telephone interview.
Robert Vowels, commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference and chair of the NCAA’s Minority Opportunities and Interests Committee, said an eight-person subcommittee plans a teleconference in the coming months to discuss the issue. The group wants to review the original moratorium and the selection process for championship sites in sports such as baseball and tennis, in which the highest-seeded schools often are chosen as hosts.
“The main thing is understanding the selection process and just seeing what’s what,” Vowels said. “Once we can understand processes, then we can go from there.”
The NCAA maintains the same postseason ban in Mississippi, which incorporates the Confederate flag into its state flag.
Greenville’s Bi-Lo Center hosted first- and second-round games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2002 because the bid had been awarded before the ban took effect.
Since then, however, South Carolina has lost out on several NCAA-sanctioned events.
• A cross-country regional that Furman had hosted for 21 years was moved.
• The ACC pulled its baseball tournament out of Fort Mill in 2003.
• Officials with USC and the Bi-Lo Center were turned down after submitting bids to serve as first- and second-round sites for the NCAA men’s basketball tourney.
“March Madness is March Sadness in South Carolina because there will be no March Madness here. And the NAACP is in lockstep with it,” said Lonnie Randolph, the NAACP state president.
Lawmakers have not addressed the flag issue since 2000, when a legislative compromise moved the flag from atop the Capitol dome to a Confederate monument on the north side of the State House grounds. Beginning in 1999, the NAACP asked African-Americans to boycott South Carolina’s tourism industry, an effort Randolph said would continue until the flag comes down.
In the meantime, the only postseason games that have been staged in the state have been at the conference level. While aware of the NCAA’s moratorium, the SEC allows its schools from South Carolina and Mississippi to submit proposals to host the conference’s neutral-site championships.
The SEC held its 2005 women’s basketball tournament in Greenville after a scheduling conflict at Atlanta’s Philips Arena forced organizers to look for an alternative site. This past fall the SEC cross country championships were run at Fort Jackson.
However, despite attractive arenas in Greenville and Columbia, event organizers across the state have had their hands tied when it comes to trying to host games in the lucrative NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
Said Randolph: “(Basketball fans) don’t drop pennies in your community. They drop millions of dollars in your community.”
Vowels said his subcommittee would study the issue of extending the NCAA’s ban to include all postseason events and would make a recommendation to the NCAA’s executive committee by the end of the year.
Even if no changes are made, Keith, the BCA director, believes the ban has been effective in drawing attention to the flag.
“It’s certainly an issue of awareness that has been supported and embraced by the NCAA. That in itself is a positive step from our platform,” Keith said. “Is it completely eradicated or something we can say it’s done? No. The issue is still there.”
It would be nice if we had fewer liberals on the beaches. The reality is that the only groups that seem to be engaged in the boycott are the NCAA and NAACP. The boycott has had generally no economic effect.
Ooooh, boy. Here it comes.
Most Rebels went to war to end the Yankee trade imbalances that the Yankee banks imposed upon them, and they tried to stop the financial bleeding from higher freight rates to ship goods
So the song really goes, "Oh I wish I were in the land of equitable trade practices and low tariff rates...Old times there are not forgotten...Look away,look away, look away NAFTAland"?
Study your history before making your outrageous insults, you might learn something actually worth knowing.
I have, which is one of the reasons why I find posts like your's so amusing.
I'm not so sure I that I totally agree with this statement as it applies to the Civil War, but I would contend that the problems with the flag today are due to a relatively small group of individuals who want to manipulate events.
It is laughable that some find the flag divisive and offensive yet have no objection to the Confederate Memorial over which it flies.
I was in Virginia Beach during the mid-90's greek weeks. Not a family friendly crowd and plenty of folks expecting a nice vacation were turned-off permanently to the area after what they saw.
If the boycott is any indication of how the NAACP is run, they are worse shape than I thought.
Once we give in and get rid of the flag, the memorial will be the next thing they want removed.
I think that the NCAA made the right decision. While the confederate flag may mean "heritage" and "freedom" to many white folks south of the Mason-Dixon line, it means treason to American nationalists and slavery/segregation for many black Americans.
| CSA | Union | |
| Population | 9 million | 22 million |
| Value of Improved Land | $2B | $5B |
| No. Textile Factories | 150 | 900 |
| No. Persons Manufacturing Clothing | 2000 | 100,000 |
| Import Value | $331M | $31M |
| Source: http://www.americanrevwar.homestead.com/files/civwar/confed.html *Numbers for 1860 |
||
>But that doesn't change the fact that people have legitimate problems with the rebel flag on public property.<
So you would advocate moving them from Gettysburg,Viksburg,Chicamauga,Lookout Mtn,etc?
I noticed that those import values were unsourced on that website, stainless. But assuming for the sake of arguement that it the figures are correct, then if the South accounted for almost 90% of all imports in 1860 and total tariff revenues were roughly $60 million, that would mean that the North accounted for only $6 million in revenue in 1860. So how could that $6 million figure grow to $110 million only 4 years later?
That was 20 odd years ago.
Yeah, ask the folks in North Myrtle and Atlantic Beach how effective the NAACP boycott is come Memorial Day. They're too busy dealing with hundreds of thousands of folks down there for Black Bike Week.
Other than losing NCAA events, the only economic losses I heard that resulted from the "boycott" were to some black-entrepeneur-owned inns and tour operators down in the Lowcountry, primarily the Beaufort/Bluffton/Sea Islands area, that deal primarily with black tour groups down there to learn about the Gullah-Geechee culture. Yeah, way to eat your own, Je$$e, Al, and Queasy.
The flag's not going back up on the Statehouse, I think the vast majority of flag supporters in SC have come to accept that. And likewise, the vast majority of people in the state, regardless of color, don't really see anything wrong with having a battle flag flying at a soldier's memorial. The NAACP leadership, both state and national, are the ones that won't let this go. And the NCAA never met a politically-correct cause that they wouldn't back.
You can have Black History Month, Asian-American History Month, Gay and Lesbian Month, and Women's History Month (all of which are loudly celebrated at the site where I currently am contracted). But God forbid we let one flag fly over one memorial to thousands who fell in defense of their state.
}:-)4
Sonny boy, you wouldn't know a leftist if he hit you in the head with his hackysack...
With all due respect, Colonel, is it really a bad thing to fly the flag under which brave Americans, though Confederates, died fighting for their freedoms over their dedicated monument? The State of South Carolina is merely honoring the sacrifices made by their ancestors, using the Flag under which these same ancestors fought—something which can commonly be found in any Military cemetary! If honoring Confederate soldiers with their Flag is offensive, then who's to say that honoring American soldiers in a similar manner cannot be deemed equally offensive? (After all, there are some people of small wit who insist that all war is murder too, are there not??)
The only people dividing the country are those who continue to spew racist victimhood across our land. Merely my opinion, of course, offered
Most humbly,
~dt~
The State of South Carolina should retaliate and withdraw all schools paid for by public moneys from the NCAA completely. If their funding dries up, perhaps they'll reconsider placing politics above the sports they are supposed to be about!
Or, perhaps it showed that most Southerners are more law-abiding than history books typically let on?
We're the original law-abiding side of the country... remember? While Boston was chucking tea into Boston Harbor, most of us down here wanted everyone to be cautious, and not to break the law too blatantly... (Of course, when the British came back with mortal force in retaliation for commercial crimes, we quickly joined the fight against what was genuinely tyrannical...)
Regards, and sorry for being so late to get to this thread :)
~dt~
N-S, God bless ya! I'm glad to be in total agreement with you for a change!
Regards,
~dt~
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