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.”
you, too, serve the southland, by your arrogantly,IGNORANT hatefulness & DUMB-bunny posts.
free dixie,sw
the DYs are & have forever been sanctimonious, IGNORANT "busybodies" & HYPOCRITES.
free dixie,sw
don't you get tired of being RIDICULED as a DUMB-bunny???
free dixie,sw
since you "know NOT & know NOT that you know NOT", you'd be well-served to remain silent & not confirm your ignorance/foolishness, for all to see.
free dixie,sw
Which also proves what giving into or compromising with leftists gets us. Nothing.
the REAL CAUSE of the WBTS, was lincoln's lust for POWER & UNwillingness to have PEACE.
a MILLION people died for his EGOTISM, arrogance,LUST for more POWER & FOLLY!
free dixie,sw
ignorant BIGOTS don't deal in TRUTH.
HATRED, PREJUDICE, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE & BILGE are their forte.
"m.eSPINola" is nothing more or less than a DUMB-bunny & a HATER.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
You have to be joking.
If you recall United States military installations were bombed by organized insurrectionists. Today we call that terrorism and counter the terrorists accordingly, as Lincoln did.
What difference would that make? If the lion's share of the imports were destined for the south then a blockade would not suddenly send those imports to Northern ports where, apparently, there were no customers. According to Stainlesses figures, Northern imports increased by a factor of 20 - $6 million to $110 million. I'm just curious as to what caused the increase is all.
Then why the need to initiate a war by bombarding Sumter to accomplish their goal?
exactly :)
That would be ok with me!
(we need some public urinals in Texas!)
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