One day after the NCAA made the decision to remove all championship or tournament events from the state of North Carolina due to a controversial bathroom law regarding the transgender community, the ball was in the ACC’s court Tuesday – and the league chose to follow along.
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A second Republican state senator is calling for changes to House Bill 2, possibly a repeal, following this week’s cascade of collegiate sports championships being pulled out of North Carolina over protests that the law is discriminatory to gay and transgender people.
New locations for the championships will be announced later, the conference says.
The ACC football championship had been held in Charlotte in recent years and the ACC Baseball Tournament had been held in Durham and Greensboro.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford said that “opposition to any form of discrimination is paramount” but acknowledged the impact the decision will have.
The chairman of the organization’s board of governors, Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson, said, “This decision is consistent with the NCAA’s longstanding core values of inclusion, student-athlete well-being and creating a culture of fairness”. The new sites have yet to be announced.
Outside of events hosted on campus sites, there will be no Division-I postseason in North Carolina this academic year.
Calling the NCAA “a multibillion-dollar, tax-exempt monopoly”, North Carolina Gov.
The boycott of North Carolina by a conference with three schools, including to public institutions, in the state follows a similar move earlier this week by the NCAA.
Mayor Jennifer Roberts says it’s frustrating that the ACC included Charlotte in its decision since the city passed LGBT protections that lawmakers overturned with the passage of HB 2, which limits protections for LGBT people.
The ACC decision came the same day the NCAA reopened the bidding process for those championships it pulled from the state. “It’s giving the world, it’s giving the rest of the country, the wrong idea about North Carolina”.
In a joint statement, the Chancellors of North Carolina State and University of North Carolina, Randy Woodson and Carol Folt respectively, said that they “regret today’s decision will negatively affect many North Carolinians, especially in the affected host communities”.
The Human Rights Campaign and state-affiliate Equality North Carolina announced Thursday endorsements in 15 General Assembly races – none of them Republican incumbents or challengers.
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Scott Dupree, executive director of the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance, said the recent announcements by the NCAA and ACC were “unprecedented and historically bad” for the state’s sports event industry.
