Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina lawmakers are demanding a formal apology from NCAA President Mark Emmert after North Carolina State University’s baseball team was disqualified from the College World Series due to positive coronavirus tests.
The Wolfpack team had been having a great season, but was disqualified last weekend after eight players tested positive for the “hyper-transmissible” Delta variant of the virus, leaving N.C. State without enough players.
“The eight total makes it a no-contest for us,” said NC State Athletic Director Boo Corrigan in a video interview Monday. “We’re out of the tournament.”
They were one win away from the championship series at the time.
“As much as we hate it, everything about it, those are the rules that we agreed to,” Corrigan said in the video interview with NC State’s Jeff Gravely. “We agreed that the medical experts were going to be the final say.”
The letter from lawmakers, dated June 30, accuses the NCAA of having different standards for the teams playing in the tournament than for the fans watching them from the stands at the Omaha, Neb., event. It also questions the decision to remove the team.
“The decision to disqualify the NC State baseball team came at the recommendation of the Championship Medical Team and the Douglas County Health Department. Their recommendation was not a requirement,” the letter reads “The NCAA, in turn, treated this recommendation as a directive and eliminated the NC State baseball team from further participation.”
The 65 House and Senate signatories, mostly but not all Republicans, also complain that the NCAA had announced that it would test only unvaccinated players.
The first four positive cases on the N.C. State team were among unvaccinated players. The results prompted the NCAA to test everyone else on the team, including those who were vaccinated. Four of those vaccinated players also tested positive for the virus.
Some members of the team had been symptomatic prior to the testing, according to N.C. State officials.
Lawmakers questioned why N.C. State was singled out for breaking COVID-19-related protocols.
“[T]he infected members with COVID-19 were in contact with Vanderbilt’s team. Yet, they were allowed to continue forward in the series. If the NCAA’s goal is to follow the science behind the COVID-19 virus, Vanderbilt’s baseball team should have also been eliminated,” the letter reads.
Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger signed the letter, but House Speaker Tim Moore’s signature is absent.
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