NCAA contacts Kennesaw State about hosting title games moved from N.C.

The fallout from North Carolina House Bill 2 continued on Wednesday with the ACC pulling all of its neutral-site championships from the state for the 2016-17 sports season.

That came two days after the NCAA announced that it was moving seven events during 2016-17 from the state because of the government's actions concering civil rights.

The decision may benefit Georgia.

The Gwinnett Sports Commission said on Wednesday that it was interested in hosting several of the ACC events.

The NCAA has contacted Kennesaw State regarding hosting the soccer and lacrosse title games recently relocated from North Carolina. Kennesaw State athletic department officials are evaluating whether the university will submit a bid.

The Division I women’s soccer championship was scheduled to be held in Cary, N.C. on Dec. 2 and 4. The lacrosse championship was scheduled to be held in Cary from May 26 and 28, 2017.

The other NCAA events that will be relocated are:

The NCAA is requesting bids from any sites that would liked to be considered as hosts. They have put a deadline of Sept. 27 for the bids. The NCAA also announced on Thursday that any sites that haven't completed an anti-discrimination questionnaire will have do so. The questionnaire includes information about any local anti-discrimination laws, provisions for refusal of services and other facility-specific information. The questionnaire was put into place on July 22.

"As representatives of all three divisions, the Board of Governors must advance college sports through policies that resolve core issues affecting student-athletes and administrators," Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson, who is the Board of Governors chair, said in a statement from the NCAA on Monday. "This decision is consistent with the NCAA's long-standing core values of inclusion, student-athlete well-being and creating a culture of fairness."

Kennesaw State hosted the ACC men’s lacrosse tournament earlier this year. Kennesaw State’s Fifth Third Bank Stadium has also hosted Major League Lacrosse title games in 2014 and ‘15.

Atlanta Sports Council President Dan Corso said on Tuesday in an email that the group hasn’t had any discussions with the NCAA or other regional partners about any of the title games.

The ACC, whose headquarters are in North Carolina, said it will move football, women's soccer, men's and women's swimming and diving, women's basketball, men's and women's tennis, women's golf, men's golf and baseball.

The ACC released a statement from its council of presidents:

“As members of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the ACC Council of Presidents reaffirmed our collective commitment to uphold the values of equality, diversity, inclusion and non-discrimination. Every one of our 15 universities is strongly committed to these values and therefore, we will continue to host ACC Championships at campus sites. We believe North Carolina House Bill 2 is inconsistent with these values, and as a result, we will relocate all neutral site championships for the 2016-17 academic year. All locations will be announced in the future from the conference office.”

The ACC's football title game has never been held in Atlanta. It has been held in Jacksonville, Tampa and most recently Charlotte, which has hosted it since 2010. It seems unlikely that Atlanta would be considered because the SEC title game, which will be played in the Georgia Dome, is also scheduled for Dec. 3. The 2015 ACC football title game, held in Charlotte, had an estimated economic impact of more than $32 million.

Gwinnett Sports Commission executive director Stan Hall said that he was “absolutely” interested in putting in a bid to bring the ACC baseball tournament to Coolray Field in Lawrenceville, home of the Gwinnett Braves. The commission, along with the Atlanta Sports Council, has previously bid for it unsuccessfully. The 2017 tournament was to be held in Durham, N.C.

A bid would likely also involve the Braves, the sports council and Georgia Tech as a host institution.

Hall said that when he meets with Braves leadership following the end of the Gwinnett Braves playoff run, “I absolutely intend on bringing that up in a conversation, about, is this something we might want to make a run for. I think it’d be a great event for us.”

Hall said that when the commission had made previous attempts with the ACC to bid for the event, “when we didn’t get it, they’ve always said, ‘Please, please, please try us again next year.’”

The tournament has been held once before in the state of Georgia, in 1985, at Tech’s Russ Chandler Stadium. It has had a total attendance in the neighborhood of 55,000 for the past several years.

“If anybody’s geographically positioned for that event, it’s us,” he said.

One challenge for the bid is that the Gwinnett Braves will be at home during the week of the tournament next May. Hall indicated interest in possibly pursuing other displaced ACC events, such as the championship tournaments for women’s basketball, men’s and women’s golf and men’s and women’s tennis.

Tech hosted the men’s and women’s swimming and diving championships in February 2015. The 2017 championships were to be held in Greensboro, N.C., this February. Tech interim athletic director Paul Griffin said Wednesday afternoon that he had not been contacted by the conference about the possibility of serving as host again, “but clearly our natatorium is one of the few on-campus natatoriums that would meet the kind of specifications that they would need. We’d have to look at various other issues in scheduling and hotel availability.”

ESPN reported that the Central Florida Sports Commission is interested in bringing all of the ACC championships to the Orlando area and it is the favorite for football. The logical place for football would be Camping World Stadium, but it's hosting high school state football championship games on Dec. 2 and 3. There's a possibility those games could be moved.

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the Central Florida Sports Commission is also interested in seven of the eight NCAA events.

A spokesman for Georgia said they haven’t been contacted by the NCAA and that it was too early to tell if the athletic association would be interested in submitting a bid to host any of the events. The NCAA’s Division III men’s and women’s tennis championships are two of the sports that are being moved from North Carolina. The Dan Magill Tennis Complex has hosted either the Division I men’s championship, women’s championship, or combined championships more than 30 times. It is scheduled to host both in 2017.