The ACC is sort of in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation with regard to North Carolina and HB2.
The heart of the ACC is North Carolina, with four schools among its members based there, as well as its league offices, and its nickname, Tobacco Road.
So when the state legislature passed HB2, stripping equal protection of the law from the LGBT community, hate politics at its worst, earlier this year, it was inevitable that at some point the conference was going to face a key decision, or set of key decisions.
The move announced today to move the ACC’s neutral-site championship games from North Carolina was just as inevitable.
Because the ACC isn’t North Carolina anymore.
The conference used to have eight members, the four in Carolina, the furthest north Maryland, the furthest south in South Carolina, then Georgia.
Then it started growing, and now has 15 members, out toward Chicago with Notre Dame, up to Syracuse and Boston, down to Miami,
It’s a geographic monstrosity, as all power conferences are, and it’s a different beast politically as well.
And that’s before accounting for the business of sports. All the money that flows into college sports comes from somewhere, and it ain’t just the alums and power brokers in the gaudy blazers sitting in the expensive seats on Saturdays anymore.
In fact, the lifeblood of college athletics from a money perspective is TV and corporate money.
Which is to say, the sanitized money. Because the TV and corporate interests have a bigger constituency to answer to than the guys in the gaudy blazers in the expensive seats on Saturdays down South.
The only surprise here is that it took the ACC as long as it did to make the move that had been foreordained even before the ink was dry on HB2 becoming the law of the Tar Heel State.
A corporate entity the size and scope of the ACC, and yes, it’s a player, economically and otherwise, could have played a key role in the shaping of HB2 during the legislative debates.
So could the NBA and NCAA, sure, but those are organizations based somewhere else.
The ACC could have said months ago, pass this HB2 the way it’s written now, and we’re walking, and there’s a good chance HB2 doesn’t read the way it does now, if there’s an HB 2 signed into law at all.
So here we are, in September, months after the bill passed and became law, and now the ACC says, Eh, we’re kinda, sorta protesting here, hours after we let the NCAA show us up, weeks after the NBA took its All-Star Game ball and went home.
That’s weak, to say the least, the very definition of a day late and a dollar short.
The games will be played somewhere else, the ACC will continue to make its millions, and the LGBT community in North Carolina soldiers on as second-class citizens.
For shame,
Column by Chris Graham
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