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.”
Your bulbs looking a bit dim if you really believe what you posted.
What's wrong with flying a Confederate flag at a Confederate war memorial?
As to the General Sherman statue, there might as well be one. The statehouse still bears scars from Sherman's artillery and from the fire that followed his occupation.
Well,I think the atmosphere at SC beaches would not change at all because of the NAACP boycott.
Most NAACP members are solid middle class professionals,many of whom live in mostly white suburbs.They are hardly the type to"ack a fool"or do a "Negroes gone wild"type of trip.
The thug life crowd could care less about the group.They will hit the beaches wherever the party is at.
Its a wash.
If you think my bulbs are dim, perhaps you should remove your head from where it must be and reposition it to the top of your neck. That should help you in your obvious lack of perception and understanding of the South.
>>>Maybe they could just replace it with the rainbow flag. That would make Jesse, the gays and the enviros happy. They are the only ones who count anyway. /sarc/<<<
Good idea. The Ku Klux Klan carries the American Flag, so to be safe we should not substitute Old Glory for the Confederate Flag for fear of offending a handful of race-baiters.
>>>I think that the NCAA made the right decision.<<<
Personally, I think the NCAA should avoid social engineering. But how do you stop liberals from their natural role of playing Mother Hen?
>>>South Carolina has a proud heritage as being a state that does not bow to outside pressure or buckle to public opinion. This is what the Confederate battle flag stands for and as such should remain on State House grounds as a memorial to that spirit.<<<
The Confederate Flag shall forever remain a symbol to the sacrifices of so many brave men who sacrificed their lives and limbs in resistance to tyranny and aggression.
>>>>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.<<<
When you get tired of thinking, maybe you should consider learning some history.
"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".
LOL! That's one of the most blatantly ignorant things I've ever seen posted on FR and I've seen some doozies.
most of us southerners would just as soon that they ALL stayed home & "tended to their own business".
free dixie,sw
they are called DAMNyankees, REVISIONISTS, LIBs & PC-idiots by 90%of southerners.
free dixie,sw
And we don't care HOW you did it up North, either!
It (their boycott) really hasn't had any kind of noticable impact in SC.
It is not in the character of those living in SC to surrender to outside threats.
i for one, would just as soon that ALL of the DAMNyankees/PC-idiots (and other similar LOSERS!) would stay out of SC & the southland as a whole (with the OBVIOUS exception of the "Winter Texans", who seem uniformly to be NICE, POLITE & DECENT folks, from the upper mid-west).
the WTs should give FREE LESSONS on MANNERS & PROPER DECORUM to the rest of our "visitors"!
i have NO problem whatever with "tourists" as long as they act with at least a minimum of decorum, honesty & manners.
free dixie,sw
Then surely you can present a couple of quotes from southerners saying that that's why they're seceding. Maybe you could look in the declarations of causes that four of the states issued. Oops, they pretty much only talk about protecting slavery.
In that case those Clemson boys can just stay home and play with themselves.
Apparently there were more southerners, black and white, in the Union army than there were in the confederate army.
Where is the White Coaches Association on this?
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