Clemson’s role as baseball host unfurls flag flap (More Confederate Flag)

Charlotte Observer ^ | July, 23, 2006 | Joseph Person

[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.”

[stainlessbanner]

Seems to me that the consequences mostly fell on y'all.

Deo Vindice.

[usmcobra]

and if yOU wereN't sO iGNoRANt oF techNOloGy, you could post pictures of the lines of tombstones. each one says: MURDERED BY YANKEES.

until then we'll all chalk in up as one of your small tales.

Hey STAND, who stands in Lee circle?

[stainlessbanner]

At Florida State, it's Chief Osceola. My family was friends with Bill Durham years ago.

I don't know if the Seminoles in FL are getting payback, but I do know they have savvy businessmen that deal in RE and casinos. If anything FSU's mascot is a great reminder of Florida history and the great Chief Osceola who fought for his people, not unlike Southerners.

If you really want some history read about the Sem Indian Wars and how they kicked the Union's hiney up and down the state. Read about how Capt Jessup roped in the warrior by tricking him. Real brave.

[Heyworth]

Deo Vindice

Found something interesting about that phrase...

Classics professors are asked to translate Latin words or phrases all the time. Most people assume that we'll do it for free, since we'll be delighted that anyone has showed some interest in what we do. And they're right.

For example, I happen to know that most of the Latin that appears in the movie Gladiator is the result of harried phone calls from movie production assistants to the Latin teaching assistants at UCLA. The producers got what they paid for: most of the Latin in that movie is just goofy -- nothing that an ancient Roman would have written or said. (Maybe the Latin T.A.s were having a bit of fun with the Hollywood types.)

Anyway, I got one of those requests a couple of days ago. How to translate the phrase deo vindice? It came through a student, whose brother-in-law was having it engraved on a reproduction of the Confederate Seal. The student said that her relative, who is a "Southern Heritage" aficionado, told her he thought it meant "God will vindicate."

Most of these people do think it means God will vindicate, according to Google. But it actually means something a little different.

Vindex (vindice is a form of this word) often means "protector" or "champion," and I'm sure that's what the Confederate Seal maker was thinking; the intended meaning was "with God as our champion."

But there are plenty instances in classical Latin when vindex means "punisher." And that put me in mind of my favorite southern writer, Walker Percy. His love of the South was closely bound up with his hatred of racism; the race issue bothered him his whole life.

In Percy's novel Love in the Ruins, the main character, Dr. Thomas More, offers this musing about God's judgment on Americans:

"God [was] saying, here it is, the new Eden, and it is yours because you're the apple of my eye; because you the lordly Westerners, the fierce Caucasian-Gentile-Visigoths, believed in me . . . . so I gave it all to you, gave you Israel and Greece and science and art and the lordship of the earth, and finally even gave you the new world that I blessed for you. And all you had to do was pass one little test, which was surely child's play for you .... One little test: here's a helpless man in Africa, all you have to do is not violate him. That's all. One little test: you flunk!"

In this light, deo vindice becomes tragically ironic: "with God as our punisher" seems a good epigram for our national failure of that "little test."

So let the sons of the Confederacy engrave deo vindice on their seal, and let the Latin mean what it will. source

[M. Espinola]

Slavery Incorporated's top political crowd instigated the insurrection utilizing sneak attack methods against U.S. forts, which are symptomatic of a typical underhanded bully.

It seems nothing has changed in that respect when the masters of deliberate neo-confederate disinformation pull their tag team tactics on American Civil War related threads.

A Famous General
William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the most famous generals in the Civil War, served as commander of the Union forces in many southern states. He led the capture of the important southern cities of Atlanta, Savannah, and Charleston, South Carolina. After Atlanta surrendered, Sherman tried to further break the morale of the southern people. "I can make Georgia howl," he stated. He sent more than 60,000 troops in a "march to the sea," with orders to destroy anything and everything that might help the Confederate forces.

[M. Espinola]

"i've offered numerous times to take you to see the lines of tombstones. each one says: MURDERED BY YANKEES."

Those "Yankees" were Americans defending America.

[Livin_large]

Vindex (vindice is a form of this word) often means "protector" or "champion," and I'm sure that's what the Confederate Seal maker was thinking; the intended meaning was "with God as our champion." But there are plenty instances in classical Latin when vindex means "punisher."

What is he trying to say here? It seems he is contradicting himself, by confirming that Vindice, which is a form of Vindex, means "champion", then implying that in the context of the Confederate seal it means punisher.

[Heyworth]

No, he's saying that the word had multiple meanings in the original Latin, and that the alternate meaning, "punisher," is, at the very least, ironic.

[mac_truck]

the ONLY "sports mascot" name that offends Indians is "redskins".

Sounds like YOU and the NAACP have more in common than you think chief...

[stand watie]

hey "cobra", who CARES what you say/think/believe????

NOT me! (frankly, a SCALAWAG is the lowest of the lowly, imVho.)

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

MORE stupid BILGE from FR's chief LAUGHINGSTOCK & BIGOT!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YEP. and they were REALLY "heroic" in that they were BEST at rape/robbery/arson/theft/torture/MURDER, especially of UNarmed, civilian women ,children & babies!

i'm NOT surprised that you find them to be worthy of praise.

free dixie,sw

[usmcobra]

Who's standing in Lee circle, STAND?

[stand watie]

NOPE. and you're still a DUNCE.

BIGOTS always have excuses for their racial/ethnic PREJUDICE. this means YOU, mac.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

not you, as you're a TURNCOAT. frankly, i do NOT believe you EVER worked at the N.O. Museum either (southron organizations don't accept TURNCOATS.).

frankly, i think you are in 2 words:a LIAR!

free dixie,sw

[ladyjane]

the underlying cause of the rebellion was the material selfishness of a relatively small group of slaveowners

You realize, of course, that it was the northern textile factory owners who really stood to gain.

You also realize, of course, that there were both black and white slave owners.

[mac_truck]

Yup, and you're still an ugly RUNT.

Face it Stand. You're just as hyper-sensitive about the use native Indian images as blacks are about the CBF.

That makes YOU and the NAACP, two PC peas in the pod...

[usmcobra]

And I proved you knew absolutely nothing about the Confederate Museum....


Imagine a self described "confederate history buff" that didn't even know that only the tallest monument to General Lee was located right outside the Confederate Museum, or that the Confederate Museum was even located on Lee Circle.

[M. Espinola]

Enough with the soap opera.

[M. Espinola]

"MORE stupid BILGE from FR's chief LAUGHINGSTOCK & BIGOT!free dixie,sw"

More typical raging Standisms. As previously stated the only visible 'bigot' around this joint is you, hating everyone expect those in your own minuscule click of crackpot, reb-wannabe-platation-owners.

Please grow up and at least try to exist in 2006.