CIAA Advisory Board member speaks frankly about tournament's move to Baltimore

James Anderson is President of Fayetteville State University. He also chairs the CIAA Advisory Board made up of the 13 member schools' presidents.

The board made the decision to end the tournament’s contract with Charlotte next year and move the event to Baltimore in 2021.

Anderson didn’t mince words when asked about the reasons for the change.

”To say it simply, we felt we didn’t feel the love from Charlotte anymore; and it was a business decision”, Anderson said.

Under the new contract with Baltimore, Anderson says, there’s an increase in scholarship money.

“Charlotte had been giving us about 1.1 million in scholarship dollars. Baltimore is going to give us $1.5 million in the first year, $1.7 million in the second year, $1.9 million in the third year”, Anderson said.

The Fayetteville State chancellor says, in addition, when he first came to Charlotte 11 years ago, the CIAA had six days at the Spectrum Center. The early round games now are played at the Bojangles Coliseum and only the semi-finals and championship games are played at the Spectrum Center.

“We’re down to two days now. We’ve been replaced. For example, this week alone, the Charlotte Hornets played home games, they always played away, and then the World Wide Wrestling, that fake wrestling, bumped us. How could fake wrestling bump us”, Anderson said.

The CIAA tournament, in the 13 years it’s been in Charlotte, has had an economic impact of about 50-million dollars.

“That means hotels, restaurants, vendors, minority vendors, benefit from our being here. Nobody benefits from just the Spectrum making money just off of wrestling and the Hornets” Anderson said.

He also lamented what he believes is price gouging fans have experienced over the years in Charlotte, as well as what he called a CIAA tax.

“I didn’t believe it but I went to one of the restaurants where somebody told me it happened. And literally on your bill, there was something called a CIAA tax. I went over to another table where some locals were also having dinner. They didn’t have that on their bill” Anderson said.

The CIAA board chair said he felt that was unethical. Beyond that, he says, he can’t get over why Spectrum Management doesn’t want the tournament in Charlotte.