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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.”
OK. who has the popcorn concession for this one?
They are still at it...
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/
South Carolina ran the Confederate Naval Jack (what everybody calls the "Confederate flag," the rectangular St. Andrews Cross on the red field) up on the Statehouse in 1962. (By the way, y'know who signed the bill? DEMOCRAT Governor Ernest "Fritz" Hollings.)
In 1999, that flag was removed from the top of the South Carolina Statehouse. In its place, a battle standard--not the national flag of the Confederacy, a BATTLE FLAG a mere three and a half feet square--flies on a pole BEHIND A CONFEDERATE SOLDIER'S MONUMENT on the Statehouse grounds. If you didn't know where to look for it, you'd probably miss it. I know this because I worked five blocks from it in downtown Columbia for almost six years.
This is a bunch of crap from the NAACP and the liberal university administrators. I'm glad South Carolina isn't knuckling under to these race pimps.
}:-)4
do they want to erase all of america's past history, I for one become offended when the BLACK NATIONAL ATHEMN is sung; it will never stop and is another ploy for victimhood status
What do you think of the civil rights memorial that also sits on the grounds of the statehouse, near the confederate soldiers memorial over which the battle flag flies? The civil rights memorial contains the likenesses of civil rights leaders, including Greenville native, Jesse Jackson.
"It was Bill Wilhelm not Kaiser."
You want Perdogg, I just have the popcorn concession :)
"This is a bunch of crap from the NAACP and the liberal university administrators. I'm glad South Carolina isn't knuckling under to these race pimps."
There's quite a few of those "race pimps" and NAACP lovers right here on this board too.
You'll know them by the trash they spout.
Sherman is part of South Carolina and America's history too, but his place isn't on the state grounds of SC either.
I for one become offended when the BLACK NATIONAL ATHEMN is sung; it will never stop and is another ploy for victimhood status
The choice is not between the Black National anthem and the reb flag. Both are divisive and have no place on public property, but I'm not aware of any move to have South Carolina play that song on public property. I would be against that also.
That's both hilarious and immature all at the same time! :-)
I wouldn't have a likeness of a living, not to mention controversial, man up there. But I would have no problem with a more noncontroversial civil rights monument up there more reflective of the consensus.
Oh please! Let's cut the "Can't we all just get along" crap. There are people here who would not be satisfied as a taster in a pie factory. The fact that South Carolina was part of the Confederacy is something that cannot be denied and should not be forgotten. 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.
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