ACC Championships Pulled From NC

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The Atlantic Coast Conference, one of the “power five” conferences in the NCAA, has announced it is withdrawing all neutral sited conference championship games from the state. These championships (7 in all), were pulled by the ACC following the upholding of the controversial North Carolina House Bill #2 law. Most notably of these championships is the 2016 ACC Football Championship that was originally intended to be hosted in Charlotte. Officials predict these games alone would have brought the state over 20 million dollars in revenue.

These events follow the NCAA and NBA in pulling national championship related games and the 2016 NBA All Star game. All of these lost sporting events have erased what would have been over 100 million dollars in state revenue. The withdrawals have not been limited to sports either, as companies such as Paypal and Google have withdrawn plans that would have expanded their companies into North Carolina.

The source of the controversy surround the state’s House Bill #2 bathroom law; the law prohibits transgender people from using the public bathroom of the gender they identify themselves with. Some people have labeled the law as discriminatory against the LGBT community. ACC Commissioner John Swofford quoted that “... the opposition to any form of discrimination is paramount.”

This decision is especially news breaking, as the ACC is actually based out of Greensboro, NC. Four schools in North Carolina are part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Now that the ACC has pulled its championships out of the state, people fear that other small conferences such as the Southern Conference might pull its championships away next. Most feared, however, is that these effects will be felt long after HB2 has been repealed.