The NCAA announced on Friday morning that the tournament games scheduled to be played in North Carolina this season will be moved to Greenville, South Carolina.
Last month, the NCAA officially decided to remove all postseason games from North Carolina due to the controversial HB2 law on the books. The law eliminates protections for the LGBT community and, inside government buildings, makes it unlawful for transgendered people to use a bathroom that differs from the gender listed on their birth certificate.
The decision to move the games to South Carolina is significant.
The NCAA imposed a ban in 2001 on South Carolina and Mississippi, barring them from hosting tournament sites, because they flew the confederate flag at their Statehouse in the capital of Columbia and Jackson, respectively. South Carolina opted to remove the confederate flag from the Statehouse in 2015, so the NCAA lifted the ban on their ability to host tournaments.
And then, in the first opportunity they get to give South Carolina an NCAA tournament game, they do.
The NCAA is, quite literally, showing North Carolina that if they remove HB2, a discriminatory and prejudicial law, from their books they will get their tournament games back.
North Carolina is college basketball. UNC, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest. The sports fans in that state care about their college hoops more than they care about basically anything else. The NCAA has created a reward for the people of that state if they get this law overturned or if they vote the politicians that instituted this law out of office.