CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Inside a small conference room on the second floor of the Hilton Hotel on Monday, Jim Phillips was able to escape, at least temporarily, the hustle and bustle of the first day of the league’s media days.
Seated at the head of the table, ACC commissioner Phillips pointed to four loose pages in front of him that attested to his conference’s best work.
For example, seven ACC schools won the NCAA Team Championship this year, up from 16 in each of the past two years. Their total of 23 wins over the three years is the most of any conference. The ACC also leads all powerhouse conferences in several rankings, including U.S. News & World Report, NCAA Graduation Rate and NCAA Academic Performance.
The list goes on: the league made a record $700 million in total revenue last year and distributed $45 million each to its members, third-most in the country. And finally, the ACC has had two of the three active head football coaches who have won national championships and has won the second-most CFP titles of any conference in the past decade.
To Phillips, anyone wondering whether the ACC is the third-best conference in college sports behind the SEC and Big Ten need only look at the list in front of him.
“We’re not chasing third place. We’re happy that the ACC is in the top three by every metric that matters: CFP appearances, national championships, unique network, revenue generation, academic strength,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Sports on Monday.
Shortly before, the genial and rarely controversial Phillips had opened the four-day event in Charlotte with an impassioned and sometimes brazen hour-long speech about the state of the ACC.
He slammed the “destructive and harmful” attempts by Florida State and Clemson to sue and withdraw from their own conference, insisted the ACC is determined to fight them in court “as long as necessary” and offered an impassioned defense of former commissioner John Swofford, who has been the target of public attacks over a long-term television contract with ESPN that has upset some members amid a proliferation of media deals for other leagues.
He did something else, too: With little subtlety, he clearly delineated the hierarchy of college sports: the SEC, the Big Ten and then… the ACC.
“The ACC is one of the top three conferences in total revenue generated and distributed,” he emphasized, “and we are confident that this trend will continue and grow in the future.”
There are two words that are rarely mentioned here in Charlotte: “Big 12.”
But the public rebuke from Phillips was undoubtedly directed at it. other The announcement comes about 13 days after Commissioner Brett Yormark kicked off his media day in Las Vegas, claiming the league has “solidified its position as one of the top three conferences in the nation.”
Phillips said that while the Big 12 has been more publicly exploring private equity and conference naming rights, the ACC has been considering those issues behind closed doors. “We just haven’t talked about it publicly,” Phillips began, then paused. “Shame on anyone who thinks we’re not working on these and other issues privately and secretly.”
Finding untapped revenue streams is a top priority for the ACC and Big 12, which are lagging financially behind the SEC and Big Ten. The television distribution gap, a key reason FSU and Clemson tried to pull out, could grow to as much as $30 million per school within the next two years.
But Phillips says help is on the way: The league is using its College Football Playoff share and additional ESPN-related money from the expansion ($600 million) to create a “Success Initiative” fund that will pay units to schools based on achieving benchmarks such as qualifying for a bowl game, finishing in the top 25 or participating in and advancing in the CFP.
ACC teams could earn as much as $25 million, Phillips said, a real cash bonanza that he argues will bridge the gap. In fact, the initiative will help “alleviate the disparity,” Miami University athletic director Dan Radakovich said. While more money doesn’t necessarily mean success, there is a correlation between success and resources, University of North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham told Yahoo Sports this spring. And in this new era of college sports, “it’s imperative that you succeed in football,” he added.
But that won’t completely close the gap, Florida State University athletic director Michael Alford said.
The new CFP distribution model will see 58% of the cash go to the SEC and Big Ten, putting ACC teams nearly $40 million behind schools from those two conferences.
“That’s why our commitment to the success of the conference is so important — to invest and close that gap as much as we can,” Alford told Yahoo earlier this year. “But [the CFP] The absence of performance-based incentives makes it nearly impossible for individual programs to close the gap.”
Florida State officials have been more on the sword in publicly criticizing their own conference than any other ACC program, and the Seminoles, who are suing to get out of their entitlement agreement 12 years before it expires, have taken legal steps to expose the ACC contract, which is normally kept secret.
The internal conflict across the league continued during media day. After all, Florida State head coach Mike Norvell and players attended opening day on Monday along with players from SMU, the very school that joined the conference this year despite FSU and other schools (Clemson and North Carolina) voting against expansion last August.
There’s a strange dynamic at work there, a sort of dysfunctional family that Phillips tries to control as best he can.
“We’ve had six months of turmoil, and I think we’ve handled it extremely well,” Phillips said. “I think every day, [Clemson and FSU lawsuits]And I don’t see that changing.”
Would that be possible — would the ACC, for example, allow two programs back into the league if they had nowhere else to go?
“The goal is for them to be part of the league. The goal with this suit is for them to be part of our league,” Phillips said.
Officials at Clemson and Florida State feel that if they are legally freed from ACC entitlements, there will be some takers.
But it’s unlikely any universities in the SEC or Big Ten would accept a cut in television distribution to add schools, especially in the case of the SEC, given its influence: The league already has presence in South Carolina and Florida.
The Big Ten and SEC would likely need more funding from their television partners to expand — significant amounts of money, upwards of $100 million a year — primarily from Fox in the Big Ten’s case and ESPN in the SEC’s case.
Could the ACC appease its two restless members with more funding? Probably.
Another untapped revenue stream is the ESPN contract itself. The contract is generally believed to run through 2036, but that’s not the case; it ends in 2027.
ESPN has until next February to choose an extension for another nine years. The ACC and ESPN are in active negotiations about a contract extension, with Phillips describing the talks as “positive and productive.”
Can networks increase the value of transactions?
“We’re talking about it,” Phillips said.
But the commissioner says enough is enough. Football is almost here, and it’s one of the most pressure-packed seasons in ACC history. Pressure is mounting for the ACC and Big 12 to advance as many teams as possible to the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, beyond the automatic berth that the winner gets.
The two conferences added a combined seven new teams and now span almost the entire East and West Coasts.
The political maneuvering around the CFP’s Atlas Bid began about five weeks before the season opener. On Monday, a banner welcoming media day attendees in the Hilton hotel lobby bore another of Phillips’ hyperbole: “The ACC has the toughest non-conference schedule in the country.”
Is that a normal message from the league? Probably. But these are unusual times.
