The announcement came out in yesterday's papers - the ACC is taking its baseball tournament out of Myrtle Beach, SC and moving it to Durham and Greensboro for the 2011 - 2013 editions. You can read it here or in The State - Columbia, SC newspaper.
The bottom line is that the tournament is being moved because the South Carolina Chapter of the NAACP didn't sign off on the tournament being held in Myrtle Beach. The NCAAP didn't sign off on the ACC baseball tournament - just as they haven't signed off on any pre-determined NCAA, SEC or ACC championship held in South Carolina - because the Confederate Flag is still flown on state capitol grounds.
If you can, try to forget that flying the symbol of a treasonist cause on state capitol grounds is wrong enough, just imagine all the tourist revenue South Carolina is missing out on by losing the ACC Baseball Tournament for three years. There were 39000+ fans that attended the 2009 tournament in Durham, NC. Now that most likely is not 39k different individuals but if you assume a moderate 8,000 middle-class fans with disposable income coming in to your town for five days or so over three years, that is a LOT of economic impact. That isn't counting the eight teams with their players, coaches, administrators, etc. needing hotel rooms, food and such - that's a bunch of moolah too...
Also figure that Durham, NC is not exactly a tourist hotspot and the prospects of higher attendance at tourist-mecca Myrtle Beach surely had the ACC head honchos salivating at the money they too would rake in for the event.
All the SC State Legislature needs to do is just take down the flag... do it quietly without fanfare and most likely, no one - or not many - will really even care or even notice. The fact that they won't do it is somewhere between idiocy and gutlessness. After all, it isn't like South Carolina is one of the more affluent states - they are perpetually at the bottom of nearly all economic and education statistical categories. By keeping the flag flying, what cause is the SC Legislature supporting? The right to do stupid - or thoughtless - things regardless of the consequences?
One definition of idiocy is continuing to do the same thing and expect a different result. Does the SC Legislature think that if they keep flying the flag, conference tournaments and NCAA championships will eventually tire of saying "NO" and come back running, arms extended, to South Carolina to hold their events? Not likely....
Read the articles linked above and better yet, read some of the comments posted at the bottom of each one and then make your own conclusions....
Will promise to write something comic book oriented next time... just had to get this off my chest.
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