Armour: NCAA must hold North Carolina accountable with weak HB2 repeal effort
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Now is not the time for the NCAA to surrender its moral high ground.
The Board of Governors will meet in the next few days to decide if North Carolina has amended its bigoted ways enough to again be allowed to host NCAA tournament games. But it’s a privilege North Carolina still does not deserve.
Thursday’s repeal of HB2, the state’s “bathroom bill” that was little more than a thinly veiled effort to shame transgender people, is a repeal in name only. The legislation that takes its place specifically prohibits local governing bodies from passing laws that would protect the LGBTQ communities from discrimination until 2020.
In other words, small-minded municipalities that want to legalize intolerance, you’re on the clock! You have three years to impose all the hate and ugliness you can before state leaders hopefully find their consciences and their backbones.
“The NCAA does not consider itself — the board, myself, the staff — an entity that has any business telling a state what their laws should be,” NCAA President Mark Emmert said Thursday at his annual state of the union address at the Final Four.
“States’ laws and communities’ laws are the business of their elected leaders and the citizens of those states,” Emmert continued. “We, on the other hand, have a job to determine which states we will take our championships to and making sure that we can do that in environments that support the collegiate model and the 1,100 colleges and universities that are part of the NCAA.”
If that is the measure, then the Board of Governors has little to consider.
North Carolina might not be targeting the transgender community as obviously as it did with the bathroom bill. But by barring communities from enacting non-discrimination laws, North Carolina continues to tell every member of the LGBTQ community in no uncertain terms that they are not equal. That our cherished idea of every American deserving to be treated the same doesn’t apply if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
That’s not the kind of lesson any university should support. And it’s certainly not a mindset that should be rewarded with NCAA tournament games and all other championship events.
Emmert sounded an ominous note when he mentioned that there are other, murkier laws out there that haven’t drawn the ire of the NCAA. The Board’s task will be to decide if North Carolina’s new law now falls into that category.
“The fact that the board only identified one state that it didn't want to go to, while recognizing there were 49 other states with various degrees of support or restrictions around LGBT rights and other civil rights issues, it certainly meant that they saw North Carolina as distinctive,” Emmert said.
“And the question that's going to be before them: Is it now still so distinctive that we don't want to go there? Or is it close enough to where everybody else is in the country that it makes sense to be there?”
But that misses the point. The NCAA has a rare opportunity to create change, both in North Carolina and other states considering similar laws.
North Carolina has become a pariah since the passage of HB2. PayPal canceled plans for a facility that could have brought 400 jobs to the state. Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and Ringo Starr canceled concerts.
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The Associated Press estimated that, because of those boycotts and others, the bathroom bill would cost North Carolina more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.
But it was the threat of losing out on more NCAA events that moved legislators in the basketball-crazed state to act.
The NCAA moved first- and second-round games in the men’s basketball tournament out of Greensboro this year. The ACC followed the NCAA by moving its football championship game to Orlando.
“You've got great professional teams, but the depth of pride that Carolinians have in their college sports is enormous,” Emmert said. “So I'm sure that it is a source of deep frustration for a lot of people that some college events aren't going on there right now.”
I’m sure it is. But I’m sure discriminatory and mean-spirited laws are a source of deep frustration to the LGBTQ community, too — including some of the student-athletes who play in the NCAA’s championship games.
Given the chance to do the right thing, North Carolina lawmakers lost their nerve. The NCAA can do better.
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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
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