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.”
They don't care what you think. The civil rights memorial is there and Jesse's face is on it, the Confederate soldiers' memorial is there and the battle flag flies above it.
I don't usually like the NAACP's rhetoric on the flag issue. They often broadly depict every Confederate soldier of the 1860s as being a sleveowning racist and every current display of the reb flag (even in private Confederate memorials) as being the work of a slavery lover. But that doesn't change the fact that people have legitimate problems with the rebel flag on public property.
Maybe not his, but Jesse Jackson is. And in some corners of the state, his legacy is nearly as bad as Sherman's - at least Sherman ended a war....
In a way, it is. There are plaques on the State House showing the marks where Sherman's artillery struck the walls.
Heck, in a way, the entire city of Columbia is a monument to Sherman. You'll find VERY few cities continuously inhabited since 1778 that have virtually no buildings standing from before 1865. And most of the historical markers in Columbia contain the words "burned by Union troops on February 17, 1865" somewhere in the text.
This whole flap is much ado about nothing. It's a soldiers' battle flag, flying at a monument commemorating the deaths of thousands of Confederate soldiers in the war. The only difference between that monument and hundreds of others across the South is that South Carolina flew a flag from the pole on their Statehouse dome for 37 years before taking it down and running a similar one up at the monument. That's it.
By the way, this "compromise" to pull the flag off the dome and put one up at the Confederate Soldiers' Memorial was the original compromise that the NAACP proposed. As soon as Governor David Weaseley--er, Beasley--flip-flopped and agreed to the "compromise," the NAACP immediately screamed that it wasn't good enough, that no Confederate flags could fly on the Statehouse grounds, and voted their ineffective and laughable "tourism boycott." (The flip-flop cost Weaseley his job the next election and handed the job to a Rat for four years.) Well, there were 400,000+ black bikers in Myrtle Beach on Memorial Day weekend, just like every year...some boycott! }:-)4
And he's got no business up there. That's what is so hateful about PC. It says that I can offend you, but don't dare offend me. But I still don't think that that negates the need for public politeness and consideration. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Clemson got to host the regionals because Clemson has a great baseball program. How hard is that to figure out?
When will Leftist (like YOU) ever tire of politicizing every last bleeding corner of American culture for the sake of imposing your pink-laced sanctimony on everyone else? Nobody is forcing baseballplayers or you to march around the SC capitol grounds until you find the confederate monument and salute. If you don't like it, don't go there. Problem sovled.
And as for the NCAA being a private organization, it's funded, in part, with dues from taxpayer supported state schools, including those of South Carolina. I suppose if they wanted to, the bureaucrats who run it could exclude Clemson from the tournament, but it would be a far less interesting tournament without one of the consistantly best programs in the country.
There is no bottom to the NCAA's insanity. Basically, 12-15 nerdy college professors are on a committee which arbitrarily dishes out sanctions against schools and/or states which are deemed to be practicing political incorrectness.
Illinois and North Dakota can't have Indian mascots because it shows insensitivity, yet these pompous proclamations are handed down from the hallowed halls of the NCAA home office, conveniently located in......drum roll please......INDIANapolis, INDIANa !!!
The hypocrisy is mind boggling. The raw abuse of power is absurd. But, most troubling of all is that suuposedly grown men are willing to grab their ankles whenever the NCAA says bend over, because failure to do so will be punished by the loss of intercollegiate athletic events at dear old State U.
I don't know how some "sports fans" can bear to look in the mirror.
I believe that there were a lot of honest-hearted ordinary Southern men who died for that. But I think that the underlying cause of the rebellion was the material selfishness of a relatively small group of slaveowners who manipulated events. And when events got hard for the Confederacy, the relatively quick collapse of the CSA showed that the rebellion never really had that much public support anyhow.
The only appropriate reply I can come up with for this contrived PC crap is to put my own "rebel" flag on display.
I bought it a while ago, after the PC Nazi's managed to get Confederate flags removed from many Confederate grave site's.
I despise those who seek to rewrite history, and the entire Confederate Flag "issue" is based on twisting history.
I have legitimate problems with the NAACP on Public Property.
That's MY flag, MY heritage, MY ancestors. IF they can spew their filth on public land (which they frequently do), then MY flag can be flown on that same public land.
But then, we're all about diversity ONLY when it's black, hispanic or some other race/culture. Not when it's historically American.
I guess we should boycot cotton, since slaves picked cotton,correct? We must all wear Polyester and Rayon if we live in the South.
If the NAACP is boycotting SC tourist areas, especially the beaches, will that be an overall plus or minus for the atmosphere at those areas?
Why do you appear to lump English speaking blacks who have been here since the 1600s with the Spanish-speaking Mexicans who are just arriving here. Historically, the slaves and descendants of slaves are as much American as any of us.
You're out for an argument and I'm not going to bite.
Read what I said. Diversity doesn't include most anything that is American. That's why there's now a move on to get rid of Old Glory, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and a sundry other American Icons.
Starting with the Confederate Battle Standard was just the easiest way to set a precendence.
You might be right. :)
Don't I wish!
I take second place to nobody in my opposition to the Southern rebellion, but Jesus, people, lighten up already! It's their damned state, let them fly whatever flag they want to.
With the large size of the Confederate states, they should have held on much longer. Jefferson Davis himself said towards the end that all the South lacked was will. But the South never was really united behind the CSA. Many were reluctant conscripts. many Southerners joined the Union army and many more would have if given the chance. Still more wished to be left alone. As NC's Confederate governor admitted, it was a revolution of the politicians and not the people.
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