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.”
And the federal government, quite naturally, took the opposite view point. And so the war came. And your side lost. Why complain about it?
"Actually the NCAA dropped that. Chief Illiniwek and the Flordia State Seminole get to stay."
McMurry University in Abilene is still fighting them to keep their Indians mascott.
during BOTH the "flag rally at the statehouse" & at the "civil rights" rally that followed it, there were NUMEROUS "person of color" who carried & waved the battle flag & other CSA banners.
btw, i was invited to BOTH rallies & participated in BOTH. at the "civil rights" rally i marched with a AME pastor & his wife from Spartenburg. i carried a 5x8 S&B,with NOT a single problem.
fwiw, a "gay guy" showed up with a PINK "gay pride" flag & was quietly/politely but FIRMLY "asked to leave". (he WISELY did.)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
The Confederate battle flag [CBF] was first politicized, then bastardized by Southern segregationists and their minions in the Invisible Empire starting in the 1940s. It was represented for decades as a symbol of segregation, racism, and defiance toward civil rights for black Americans. With nary a peep from the so-called heritage preservation groups of that era.
Placed in that context it doesn't seem too difficult to understand why black political groups in the South have a problem with the CBF being displayed in public places. One is tempted to say " ya'll made yer own bed, now sleep in it".
don't you get tired of being the BUTT of jokes from BOTH blue & gray sides on this forum???
i'd think you'd be embarrassed. certainly the "unionist forces" are.
free dixie,sw
when you are DISHONEST, there are frequently "consequences" for LYING.
free dixie,sw
don't you get tired of being the BUTT of jokes from BOTH blue & gray forces???
all you have to do to end RIDICULE of you is to leave FR, never to return. you'll fit in NICELY on DU, with all the other EX-FReepers who are over there RANTING about NOTHING & "acting a fool".
free dixie,sw
Who, in this discussion has complained or denied that the South lost the war? For that matter, has anyone stated any regret that all states are united today? Go back and read post 158, I think azhenfud summed up pretty well, the reason for the war and what is still believed and felt by Southerners today.
Most Southerners are proud of their heritage, not because they, or their ancestors, supported slavery, but because they were willing to stand up for what they believed in. We still do not want outsiders telling us what to do, whether it's the Federal government with too many regulations, or the NCAA or NAACP. But we apply these same principals to the country as well. We don't want the UN or EU having any undue influence on our country.
These same Southerners, who are proud of their Southern heritage, are also fiercely supportive of the United States today. Go anywhere in the South and I'm sure you will find far more US flags flying than Confederate flags. I may be wrong in this, but I would venture to say you will find more US flags flying in the South than you will up North.
fwiw, i despise "bounceball" & would like the NFL to play 12 months a year.
GO COWBOYS!
free dixie,sw
I hope they get to keep him. The NCAA will give Division I schools a pass, and fight Division II and III schools to the death I guess.
Actually no he did not.
we AIs wish they would just "SHUT UP".
the ONLY "sports mascot" name that offends Indians is "redskins". that is "a term of abuse", not unlike calling the team "the Washington Darkies". (wonder how long that "nickname" would last, even with Coach Gibbs saying that the team HONORS "the many contributions of Blacks???)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
Please show me where I have complained. It's a liberal tactic to put words into people's mouths as you just did. Please don't do it again.
lincoln LIED & a MILLION citizens needLESSly DIED for his DISHONESTY & FOLLY!
free dixie,sw
Date and recipient, please. I can look the letter up online myself.
It was a huge land and the CSA didn't have to invade and subdue the North, all they had to do was to sustain the resistance. Had the Southern people had a cause they deeply believed in they would have persevered a lot longer. When the going got tough, the South got going back home and out of the rebellion. Many thousands of Confederate soldiers deserted the army, many avoided conscription in the first place and many from the mountains even joined the Union army. Of all the myths of the Confederacy, the idea of a Solid South supporting the slaveowners' rebellion is one of the most far fetched.
Seminole Nation in Florida endorsed FSU, that's why Chief gets to stay I guess.
It will be a happy day when more people realize that there is nothing really conservative about a regime set up to keep half its people in bondage nor in its successors, the Democratic state governments that enforced an apartheid that kept half the population as an underclass.
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