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 are quite wrong in stating that the Confederate Constitution protected slave imports. It actually banned them from all foreign countries except the United States and its territories. See Section 9 of the Confederate Constitution.
And, to paraphrase Jefferson, a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Heaven knows we could use some rebellion against the socialist policies imposed upon us by the representatives and senators elected by the blue states.
Breezed right on by that 'except', didn't you? If it banned slave imports from any country 'except' the United States then that must mean that it protected slave imports from the United States, right? And therefore protected slave imports. And let's face it, anyone who believes that an independent confederacy would have strictly enforced the Anti-Slave Trade treaties is only kidding themselves.
And, to paraphrase Jefferson, a little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Heaven knows we could use some rebellion against the socialist policies imposed upon us by the representatives and senators elected by the blue states.
Knock yourself out. Just make sure you win this time.
Some ban. "We'll only import them from our immediate neighbor."
Heaven knows we could use some rebellion against the socialist policies imposed upon us by the representatives and senators elected by the blue states.
Then go for it. No one denies your natural right of rebellion or that of the south. Just don't claim that it's constitutional or bitch when it doesn't go your way.
Come again?
...but nowhere do I get that the war was over the moral issue of slavery.
It wasn't, for the Union. But there can be no doubt at all that the primary motivator for the southern secession was to protect slavery. As to why they felt a war was necessary to do it, well, that was definitely a mistake on their part.
A lot of tobacco, suger cane, rice, and cotton farmers up North was there?
My great Grandfather wrote in the family bible his reasons for fighting for the South, and nowhere is slavery mentioned other than for his being against "any man owning the body of any other." Gee, sounds like a real slave owner to me, what do you think?
Your great grandfather made have had his reason for fighting, but the Southern leadership had their own reasons for starting the rebellion that sent him off to fight in the first place. And by far the single, most important reason to them was the defense of the institution of slavery.
You are quite correct as to the origin of the quote. My point was that the North was concerned with labor just as the South was but in different ways. Moral objection to slavery wasn't a Northern banner.
Again, I ask, why? Slavery was already protected. My comment about slavery vs. wages is in regard to the obtaining of labor. Industrial North vs. Agricultural South. Wages vs. slavery. How can you comment that the South insisted on war? Lincoln also insisted on war to preserve the union. We can open up a new debate about the first shot on an illegal garrison in a foreign sovereign but we've been down that road.
It's really very simple. The south seceded to protect slavery from the threat to it that they saw in Lincoln's election. The north went to war to preserve the union and to avenge the attack on Sumter. But in the end, you can't deny the obvious--that the war ended slavery.
The 13th A. ended slavery. The war ended freedom and independence from a central government. Slavery wasn't an issue for the North. It was one of many for the South. Why would the South wage such a vast and reaching war over an issue that was already settled in the US Constitution? Just for the expansion? Why would a slave owner risk "life, fortune and honor" for an issue that was already settled for him? Why would hundreds of thousands of non-slave owners risk the same thing? For expansion of slavery to the West?
free dixie,sw
i ran the SCV's fight to save the flag on the statehouse, and i would therefore know if there was any REAL criticism of the flag from SC folks. the ONLY complaints were from "out of stater's", most of whom had NEVER even visited SC.
they should have "tended their own patch" & left the fine people of SC, ALONE!
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
there was nothing necessary about the war. period. end of story.
free dixie,sw
The people of South Carolina removed the flag from their dome, which was a compromise agreed to by all. The only flag is at a Confederate Soldiers Memorial, which is appropriate. The NAACP is trying to change the rules, regardless of the feelings of the electorate in that state.
The NAACP does not deserve or merit such power.
Talk about going off the deep end!
Well, then, let them move North to the land of Lincoln where they BELONG. The People of South Carolina will decide what flags they fly, and where they fly them.
It is nobody else's business.
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