NCAA Caves to NAACP, Keeps Ban on South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The NCAA said Tuesday it will continue its ban on awarding championships to South Carolina because of the Confederate flag flying on Statehouse grounds.

In August 2001, the NCAA executive committee voted for a two-year moratorium on selecting sites in South Carolina for things like basketball championships. NCAA spokesman Jeff Howard says the August 2001 decision called for "significant change" from the state of South Carolina. That has not occurred, he said.

The Colonial Center was built in 2002 for the specific purpose of being able to host NCAA tournament events, and the NAACP promptly forced the NCAA to rewrite rules. The Bi-Lo Center was built in 1998, yet with the NCAA ban, is unable to host any major sporting event, and the upper deck of the 16,000 seat arena is almost never used because of the ban -- its main purpose in being 16,000 seats was to host the NCAA Tournament.

Columbia last hosted an NCAA Men's Tournament event in 1970 at the Frank McGuire Arena, and hosted a Women's Tournament Semifinal in 1996 at the arena, now home ice for the AA affiliate for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks.

Last year the NAACP boycott was successful in forcing South Carolina's highly successful baseball team from hosting the first weekend of the NCAA baseball tournament. Protests endured after the Gamecock baseball team advanced from the Atlanta regional and played lower-seeded North Carolina in Columbia instead of being forced to Chapel Hill.

Why can't the NCAA understand common sense?

Racist groups such as the NAACP should not be able to bully the NCAA into banning South Carolina venues from hosting sporting events based on their one-sided analogy of the Confederate Battle Flag to the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, and the lack of wanting to research the Civil War but to make their view a rubber-stamp to ban discussion is not the ideals of an academic institution. Academic institutions are intended to promote research and discussion, not be rubber stamps of a leftist agenda.

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