Before the ACC came calling, Jim Phillips had been running the Northwestern athletic department since 2008. Phillips came up under Duke athletic director Kevin White, working for him at both Notre Dame and Arizona State, before becoming the athletic director at Northern Illinois for four years. In being named Commissioner of the ACC it was the first time in its seven decade history that an outsider was put in charge and it was probably time.

This past February Commissioner Phillips hit his three year mark on the job. His short tenure has been quite successful despite poor media coverage. Unfortunately nothing stirs college football fans in the offseason like realignment and as usual the ACC has always been in the realignment news since 2012. Despite surviving when everyone else watched the death of the BigEast, PAC12, and the recent rebuild of the XII. The ACC is still disrespected daily by mainstream sports media. Partly because of a long media deal that the previous commissioner had signed and partly because the ACC programs have moved too slow in investing into their football facilities and programs. I do  realize the media is in the business of selling stories, and stories of demise within constant realignment always sells. 

So let’s take an honest look at the many challenges that the ACC commissioner has faced to date,  and discuss what may have gone smoothly and what  has gone wrong.

First let’s discuss the glaring bad decision: Commissioner Phillips joined the alliance as a response to Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC. He also initially led the charge to resist efforts to expand the college football playoff participants, from the ridiculously few four teams to a fairer and more interesting 12 teams —  while a part of the Alliance. To be fair the Alliance was a knee jerk reaction by the ACC, BIG, and PAC-12 to Texas & Oklahoma joining the SEC. In hindsight this was a very bad idea, because then BIG commish Kevin Warren was talking to USC & UCLA behind both of the Pac12 and ACC commish’s knowledge.  Some may say that Jim Phillips should have looked far enough down the road to avoid the Alliance, however I think the decision was made based on his relationships with the BIG AD and Presidents he had established with his previous job at Northwestern. 

 However, the most important relationship that must be repaired is with the SEC. Previous commissioner John Swoffard was able to maintain a decent relationship with the SEC during his time and ESPN owns both the SEC and ACC media rights into the 2030’s. With Jim Phillips involvement in the Alliance and his efforts to stall the College Football Playoffs there is no question he has damaged the ACC relationship with the SEC. The question is can Jim Phillips repair the relationship? 

There is no question that the ACC has undergone massive changes during Phillips’ 36 months on the job. It moved from its historic home in Greensboro to a more corporate-inclined location in Charlotte. The league is set to add Cal, SMU and Stanford this Summer. Most importantly Commissioner Phillips led efforts to quell some of the noise regarding the major revenue gaps with the SEC & BIG — most notably through a new revenue distribution stream. The final details of the ACC’s Success Initiative are nearing completion (Phillips said the league’s board has approved the plan and final details are being ironed out), which will ultimately give those universities whose teams perform best on the field an opportunity to cash in on a fund that’s reportedly in the $55 million range.

Throughout the expansion evaluation process, the ACC was deliberate in prioritizing the best possible athletic and academic experience for the ACC student-athletes while ensuring that the three universities would strengthen the league in all possible ways. Adding members from Texas and California really strengthens the ACC financially while increasing the reach as the ACC Network. The ACC will be in seven of the top ten media markets going forward. Of course it also doesn’t hurt that Notre Dame supported all three coming into the ACC and the additions only strengthened the ND/ACC relationship which will last through 2037 as a minimum. The one thing that Commissioner Phillips has going for him is his strong relationship with Notre Dame. 

The league announced that in 2023 there would be a new football scheduling model and that their would be no divisions. The top two teams based on conference winning percentage will compete in the ACC Championship on the first Saturday in December in Charlotte. The league ensured each team would play each other at least twice over a seven-season stretch through 2030. The new model also protects 16 annual matchups:  Miami-Virginia Tech,  NC State-Wake Forest, Boston College-Syracuse, Boston College-Pitt, Syracuse-Pitt, North Carolina-Virginia, North Carolina-Duke, North Carolina-NC State, NC State-Wake Forest, NC State-Duke, Duke-Wake Forest, Virginia Tech-Virginia, Florida State-Clemson, Miami-Florida State, Miami-Virginia Tech, Stanford-Cal, Stanford-SMU, and Cal-SMU.

Commissioner Phillips has ensured an increased of ACC football television exposure on ABC and ESPN platforms. During the first three weeks in 2023, the ACC was scheduled for a pair of games on ABC’s Saturday Night Football as well as 11 appearances on ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2. In total, seven ACC contests were scheduled for national ABC broadcasts and the ACC Network featured 13 games. In fact, of the ten full national ABC telecasts, seven of them featured seven different institutions. On July 13, 2023, it was announced that The CW had acquired the exclusive Tier 3 broadcast rights to 50 ACC  college football and basketball games each season through 2026–27. Allowing the ACC to have those 50 games to be broadcasted in 100 million homes is a huge win for the ACC.  Commissioner Phillips isn’t solely focused on football as seen by his 2022 negotiations with ACC Network and Raycom. His leadership helped the ACC Network strike a deal with Raycom to carry all the women’s basketball and men’s baseball tournament games that had previously been televised on a regional sports networks (Fox Sports and Bally Sports) Now, those ACC fans looking to watch these tournaments only need to access ACC Network going forward.

So as we get closer to the ACC Kickoff in 2024 all eyes will be on the Commissioner and his  briefing on the recent ACC/ESPN “look-in” and the unveiling of the new ACC success initiative. While the ACC is often disrespected this briefing can and should be the start of norming process for the ACC being clearly the number three college athletic conference going forward! That is pretty impressive as a decade ago people across America thought the ACC would never survive realignment. I would also argue that Jim Phillips has inherited a bad TV deal, and despite such a bad deal he has done a terrific job navigating it up to this point. Please remember despite what the rabid FSU fans say, Jim Phillips did not make the decision to start QB Jordan Travis in the meaningless game where he git injured that ultimately cost FSU a spot in the playoffs. So far I would give Jim Phillips a solid B during the past three years. I could have given him an A, however his association with the Alliance was embarrassing and of poor choice, and while I can understand why he made the decision it ultimately wasn’t what was best for the ACC or their Student Athletes. While the ACC commissioner role is probably rewarding it is also probably a much harder job then being the commissioner of the BIG or SEC! Fortunately for the ACC, Jim Phillips seems up to the challenge going forward!