N.C. State chancellor Randy Woodson joined North Carolina chancellor Carol Folt on Wednesday in supporting the ACC’s decision to move neutral-site championship events out of North Carolina in the 2016-17 school year because of opposition to House Bill 2.
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The law canceled the ordinance, prevented other local governments from passing similar laws and directed transgender people to use restroom and locker rooms in schools and government buildings corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate.
On Wednesday, the Atlantic Coast Conference followed suit, stripping North Carolina of eight championship events, most notably this December’s football championship set for Charlotte. The 2017 ACC Women’s Basketball Championship in Greensboro and the 2017 ACC Baseball Championship at Durham Bulls Athletic Park must find new sites.
Championships held on campus sites will remain in place, because “every one of our 15 universities is strongly committed to” the conference’s values, the statement said.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford said after the NCAA’s decision that his league would review its next steps.
Per USA Today’s Nicole Auerbach, the ACC will relocate all of its neutral-site championships from North Carolina during the 2016-17 academic year.
For more than 60 years, ACC headquarters have been located in nearby Greensboro, which is also where early rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament would have been held in March before the decision.
The men’s basketball tournament may not be in jeopardy this season, as it is now scheduled to be played in Brooklyn this upcoming basketball season, but the ACC in Greensboro has been a fixture since the 1970s with a season in another location here and there. In addition to losing the ACC football title game-which had an economic impact of more than $30 million in 2015, according to the city’s tourism board-the National Basketball Association announced that it was pulling the 2017 All-Star Game from the city in favor of New Orleans because of the bill. The NCAA announced it will pull all championship events from the state.
And although the ACC men’s basketball tournament will be played in NY next year, that tournament has only been played outside of North Carolina 12 times since 1954.
Calling the NCAA “a multibillion-dollar, tax-exempt monopoly”, North Carolina Gov. Just tell us where’s the game.”Clemson is the defending ACC champion, having beaten North Carolina, 45-37, in the 2015 title game”.
The ACC is choosing new locations for neutral-site championships because of North Carolina’s controversial law known as HB2.
“We’ll go to Pluto and play, wherever”, Swinney said. ESPN football reporter Andrea Adelson tweeted that the ACCCG Eco impact alone is at $32 million.
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McCrory, who is locked in a tight race for re-election, issued a statement decrying the NCAA decision and saying the legal system will ultimately decide the issue.
