Many of the restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and ballrooms in Uptown are rented out for parties while the CIAA Tournament is in town.
“Is that really how we want to go out?” writes former American football running back Barry Saunders on HBCU alumni who give less to their alma mater. Check out his account here at the Buzz.
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In an episode of “Sanford and Son,” Fred’s famously free-spending friend Grip Madlock bursts into the room with a bottle of what he calls “the good stuff: Cold Duck” and proclaims, “Have no fear, Big Money Grip is here.”
I suspect many Charlotte-area hoteliers and restaurateurs, among other businesses, are this week expressing a similarly joyous sentiment with the annual arrival of the CIAA Basketball Tournament.
Downtown hotels that have jacked up their rates just for the occasion and bars serving top-shelf hootch are going to see their bottom lines nudged into the black by the green from thousands of black college alumni.
Yet, at the same time, their perennially underfunded and under-endowed historically black colleges and universities back home are struggling.
Don’t get me wrong, now. I love me some CIAA tournament. It provides great basketball and gives alumni a yearly chance to convene, jump clean and be seen.
Then why do I say this should be the tournament’s last year for a while, and that all of you Eagles, Falcons, Bears, Tigers et al. should stay home next year?
Because your beloved alma maters need that moolah more than Charlotte or the Marriott, Hilton and Grey Goose corporations do. Instead of pumping up their profits, why not pump up your alma maters’ endowments and scholarship funds?
