NC state senators challenge NCAA president to game of H-O-R-S-E or “W-A-I-V-E-R” over Hurricane charity game

NCAA President Mark Emmert wrote in a letter to two North Carolina state senators Friday to say that a waiver for the North Carolina-South Carolina charity basketball game would likely be approved if both teams canceled one of its two preseason games.

The two state senators were not happy.

In a response to Emmert on Monday, the two senators wrote that they were disappointed with his letter.

“Indeed, the letter was filled with so much sanitized corporate double-speak that we probably would have received the same response even if we’d simply challenged you to a game of H-O- R-S-E (or perhaps “W-A-I-V-E-R”) in a Kansas City parking lot,” the two senators wrote Monday.

Emmert’s letter came in response to a joint letter Senators Rick Gunn and John Alexander wrote last week, urging the NCAA to waive its rules and allow UNC and USC to play the extra game.

The game was intended to raise money for victims of Hurricane Florence, which flooded towns and displaced families.

But the NCAA’s Committee on Basketball ruled in June that it would not accept waivers for a third preseason game. The schools hoping to play the charity game would have to swap it for one its two exhibition games.

Emmert wrote that his office has received eight waiver requests to convert exhibition games to charity games, and all have been accepted.

“The committees and I are dedicated to adapting to schools’ charitable efforts in the community, while balancing the total number of games student-athletes play and their commitment,” Emmert wrote.

Converting one of its preseason games at this point appears to be difficult. The Tar Heels played one of its two preseason games against Villanova last weekend. UNC usually plays one preseason game against an in-state opponent each year to help that program financially. That preseason game against Mt. Olive will be on Nov. 2.

USC coach Frank Martin told NCAA.com that canceling one of the two games this late would be unfair to its opponents.

“It boggles our minds why the NCAA — plagued by accusations that it is simply a billion-dollar corporation masquerading with the charitable bona fides of a churchyard bake sale — would not jump at the chance to serve this country for once. It sure feels like a missed opportunity,” they wrote to Emmert.

In a phone interview early Monday afternoon, Alexander said Hurricanes Florence and Michael did “horrible, horrible,” things to the two states.

“We need an exception here, and if we set a precedent, so be it,” Alexander, an N.C. State grad, said. “I’d be proud to be part of it when it’d help so many people that have been devastated.”

Read Emmert’s letter here:

Read Gunn and Alexander’s response here:

This story was originally published October 22, 2018 at 5:48 PM.