An odd thing occurred in the world of sports recently: The Southern Conference (SoCon), an intercollegiate athletics league, decided to honor its commitments to North Carolina, refusing to pull four upcoming tournaments from the state. This, as other associations, both professional and amateur, have abandoned the Tarheel State in protest of the recently passed House Bill 2 (HB2), a law lambasted by the LGBT community and commonly referred to as “the bathroom bill.”
Since Republican governor Pat McCrory signed HB2 into law, it has been vogue in the entertainment and sports industries to boycott the state. Musicians were the first to dissent, as acts including Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Ringo Starr nixed scheduled shows. But while those cancellations yielded some losses in revenue, the financial impact of a few scrapped concerts doesn’t come close to that of cancelled sporting events.
First the NBA announced that it would move its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte to New Orleans. That game alone was estimated to bring a $100 million economic windfall to North Carolina. Then the NCAA decided to pull seven events from the state, each being awarded last week to non-North Carolina towns from Massachusetts to California.
Following suit, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), an elite NCAA league composed of powerhouse programs such as the Duke Blue Devils, Florida State Seminoles, and Clemson Tigers, said it would relocate multiple championship games and tournaments to other East Coast settings.
Shortly after the ACC made its announcement, SoCon commissioner John Iamarino publicly hinted that his league might explore its own venue diaspora for pending soccer, golf, and basketball tournaments. It was a surprising development for two main reasons. First, there had been no notable public outcry for the SoCon to pull its events. And second, the league is an afterthought in the athletics world—even the most avid sports watchers are barely aware of its existence. That means it isn’t a massive revenue generator and that its boycotting power is miniscule compared to larger organizations.
Anonymity hasn’t always been the case for the SoCon. The Universities of Virginia, Alabama, Maryland, and many other big-name schools have at various times been SoCon members. Its roster of athletic alumni include Arnold Palmer, Terrell Owens, and Stephen Curry. And though teams from the league don the “mid-major” tag, they often pull upsets against premier programs, as did Mercer when it shocked Duke in the 2014 men’s NCAA basketball tournament.
Today the conference’s member institutions are the Citadel, Chattanooga, East Tennessee State, Furman, Mercer, UNC Greensboro, Samford, the Virginia Military Institute, Western Carolina, and Wofford. Despite all being proud schools, many coaches, athletic directors, and conference administrators see the SoCon as a resume-builder to land more prestigious appointments. Which is likely why Commissioner Iamarino initially felt compelled to mimic the bigger leagues: “See, I can lockstep!”
Though no loud calls had been made for the SoCon to abandon North Carolina, as soon as Iamarino floated that possibility, progressives from across the region called for the association to follow the example set by the NBA, NCAA, and ACC. Over the course of the following weeks, administrators from league schools took part in a series of hastily organized conference calls to figure out how exactly they should navigate the commissioner’s self-made public relations whirlwind.
But a funny thing happened as SoCon leaders deliberated: Members of Asheville, North Carolina’s LGBT community asked why they should be punished. You see, Asheville, easily the South’s most bohemian town, hosts the men’s and women’s SoCon basketball tournaments, the league’s biggest economic stimulators. As it turns out, if the league chose to relocate its tournaments, that verdict would have taken some $4 million per year from local businesses in a town well-known for its liberal leanings. Considering that earlier in 2016, the SoCon signed a contract extension for the city to host the basketball tournaments through 2021, Asheville was staring at a total $20 million loss.
Yvonne Cook-Riley, executive director of Blue Ridge Pride, argued publicly that if the SoCon decided to grandstand in solidarity with the LGBT community by walking out on North Carolina, they would end up hurting actual flesh and blood LGBT people economically.
Thanks to that common sense argument, just before the calendar flipped to October, the Southern Conference announced it would leave its tournaments in North Carolina. “We don’t want to punish the local host communities by pulling the championships out of the state this year,” said Commissioner Iamarino. Many SoCon fans have noted the “this year” part of that statement, possibly suggesting that the book is not yet closed on the matter.
That’s a fight for another day, though. For now, the SoCon stands alone as the only sports league to flirt with the thought of boycotting the Tarheel State for HB2 before realizing they would only be hurting the people they claim to help.
David Allen Martin is a weekly contributor to Rare Politics and the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
