Everything ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips Said at 2024 ACC Football Kickoff
College football season is quickly approaching and the unofficial mark of the new season is each conference's annual Media Days.
The ACC's version which is called Football Kickoff, started on Monday and fans and media members got to hear from multiple teams head coaches, student-athletes, and commissioner Jim Phillips.
Below is the full transcript of what Phillips said in his address at the 2024 ACC Football Kickoff.
JIM PHILLIPS: Let me begin by thanking each of you for joining us in Charlotte for one of our league’s premier annual events. To look out and see so many familiar faces is terrific. To the media in attendance, thanks for your coverage of the ACC, our membership, our championships, and events. To our television partners, we are so appreciative of your continued support and exposure. I want to especially recognize and thank Jimmy Pitaro, Burke Magnus, Ros Durant, Nick Dawson, Dave Roberts, Michael Shiffman, and Jeremy Michiaels and the entire ESPN and ACCN teams. As a league, we are fortunate to have the most amazing bowl partners and many of them are here today including Eric Palms of the Capital One Orange Bowl which has been the home to the ACC. In addition, I’d like to recognize Lieutenant General Richard Clark, who recently began his tenure as the new College Football Playoff executive director as well as bowl season executive director Nick Carparelli, who has done a fantastic role in that job since 2019. I’d also like to take a minute to thank my staff.
They have been amazing and have worked tirelessly to support this league each and every day. There’s no better representatives for the ACC than this group of exceptional people. Since my first ACC Football Kickoff, the ACC student-athlete advisory committee has conducted its summer meetings during this event. There's no group of individuals more important to our conference. At this time, I'd like to recognize the representatives from all 18 of our schools. If I could have the student athletes stand so we can give you a round of applause, I would appreciate that. Again, we are extremely pleased to have you here in Charlotte just blocks away from our League headquarters on the 12th floor of the Legacy Union building and we look forward to hosting you tomorrow for the reception in the lobby of our building.
At this time last year, we were preparing to move into our new offices and this year, I can confidently state that our first year in Charlotte has exceeded all expectations. There's great excitement and anticipation surrounding the year ahead for our conference and this is a tribute to the exceptional leadership at our institutions, specifically the ACC board of directors and our directors of athletics. We're thrilled to have Cal, SMU, and Stanford join the ACC and with our 18 world-class member institutions the league's profile is only enhanced academically and athletically. Our footprint is now national, spanning coast-to-coast. The ACC has a presence in each of the five most populated states in the country, no other power for conference is in more than two. In addition, the ACC footprint now includes four of the ten largest DMAs.
In February, I began my fourth year as commissioner and it's hard to argue that there has been a time in college athletics that has seen more change than what's currently transpiring in our industry. As a leader in college sports, the ACC is well positioned to positively affect and embrace future change. In a time of great change what remains constant is the greatness of the ACC, national championships, prestigious academic institutions, tremendous student-athletes, and a remarkable future.
This past year, the ACC won seven NCAA titles for the first time in ACC history. Seven different schools won national championships and over the past three years, the ACC has won a combined 23 national titles by nine different schools. The 23 NCAA titles lead all conferences in sponsored sports. The ACC has won seven or more national titles in each of the last three years, the best run in ACC history.
Beyond athletics, our member institutions continue to be the national leader in all academic metrics including US News and World Report best colleges, NCAA graduation success rates, and academic performance rates. Those things matter. Financially, as reported in the most recent conference 990, from the 2022-23 fiscal year the ACC surpassed $700 million in total revenue for the first time in league history with a 14% increase in distributable revenue from the year prior. Each ACC school receives an average of $45 million in annual distribution, a league record. We expect those numbers to only grow when the 2023-24 revenues and distributions are released. The ACC is one of the top three conferences in both overall revenue generated and per school distribution and we fully expect that will remain in the years to come. As a conference, we continue to aggressively focus our daily efforts on exploring innovative opportunities related to revenue, technology, television, data and analytics, and more. To give you a small sampling of what has transpired in the past year, the ACC generated an estimated $600 million in new incremental revenue over the term of the existing media agreements through expansion.
Adding Dr. Pepper as the newest official sponsor is part of a new multi-year agreement with the ACC and Disney advertising, enhanced our efforts in the areas of video highlight technology through a conference wide adoption of WSC Sports which utilizes AI to generate automated video highlight clips available to each of our institutions, exploring data opportunities across all consumer low latency live events and sports performance all intended to add value to our member institutions and to the conference. Also, as announced last week, the new collaboration with Apple will allow coaching staffs to have more access to information that will enhance game strategy, tripled courtside seating and hospitality offerings at the men's basketball tournament and we'll further expand on that this year in Charlotte, implemented new ticket and hospitality offerings at our ACC Championship events, extended our partnership with SiriusXM that provides a 24/7 satellite radio platform to our fans, one of only three conferences in their portfolio, and extended our conference wide office contract with Nike. We have also partnered with Integrity Compliance 360 which provides each ACC member institution access to integrity monitoring technology, in-depth analysis of the bedding landscape, and allows our schools to opt-in for additional resources.
The ongoing emphasis in college athletics surrounding revenue generation and financial prioritization has never been greater. As a conference, we have been and will continue to be aggressively evaluating all areas that potentially enhance our conference financials for both the immediate and long-term future of the ACC. As has been reported, our board of directors formerly adopted an innovative and progressive new revenue distribution model to begin this year. ACC schools that achieved success by participating in the College Football Playoff, finishing in the Top 25 of CFP rankings, participating in bowl games, and receiving a bid as well as advancing in the NCAA men's basketball tournament will be financially rewarded. What this equates to is a range of $20-25 million in revenues that can be earned this coming year by any school based on its success and is in addition to the annual per school distribution for any member of our league. It was truly a remarkable year for the ACC financially, competitively, academically, and beyond and we will only build on these successes and priorities in the future.
As ACC commissioner, father of multiple college student-athletes, someone who has spent his career as a servant to college athletics, and tireless advocate for student athletes, the opportunities ahead of us are exciting and critically important. The ACC has played a vital and leading role in national discussions and in finding solutions and resolutions to a myriad of issues including the proposed settlement of House and the related legal cases. As the ongoing legal process is hopefully brought to its conclusion and to a new stage will we build a more sustainable college athletics, the ACC remains engaged in discussions regarding implementation of the proposed settlement. Those discussions have and will continue to include ACC coaches [and] administrators in our peer conferences. I'd also like to recognize NCAA president Charlie Baker and his efforts to modernize college sports, not an easy assignment forsure. Over the next year, we will be laser focused on the proposed new model providing clarity to our schools and our student athletes and ensuring ACC memberships not only compete but thrives in the future of college athletics. Creativity and innovation will be key and the ACC will be leaders in this new frontier.
Staying on the national landscape, I remain directly involved in our congressional efforts in Washington DC. In March, I participated in the NIL college sports roundtable with Nick Saban, Senor Ted Cruz, and the Cavinder twins, among others. While the proposed resolution of the house case is one step, we must remain steadfast in our efforts for federal legislation. This includes actively discussing with Congress a national solution that will create a fairness and clarity around student-athlete NIL opportunities, a declaration solidifying our athletes, our students not employees, and narrow liability protection so we may continue to modernize college sports without the threat of ongoing lawsuits. We must stay proactive with those in Congress, who understand the immense value of access to higher education that is provided by college sports and that is necessary to provide these opportunities to all student-athletes, not just a few.
As I turn my attention to the year ahead, I must directly address the ongoing disputes with two of our members about the contracts they each signed twice and whether they will honor those agreements. With multiple ongoing legal cases, there are limits to what I can say but I can state that we will fight to protect the ACC and our members for as long as it takes. We are confident in this league and that it will remain a premier conference in college athletics for the long-term future. These disputes continue to be extremely damaging, disruptive, and incredibly harmful to the league as well as overshadowing our student-athletes and the incredible successes taking place on the field and within the conference. People feel passionate about athletics and they feel particularly passionate about college athletics at their respective schools. This passion is what makes college athletics so special but this passion can also lead to personal attacks. John Swofford is a decent and honorable man and is widely respected in our industry. He led this conference with a steady hand for over two decades and did so through consensus and compromise. The fact is that every member of this conference willingly signed the grant of rights and unanimously, and quite frankly eagerly, agreed to our current television contract and the launch of the ACC Network. The ACC, our collective membership, and conference office deserves better. The support for our student-athletes, coaches, and programs is extraordinary and that will continue despite these disruptions. We intend to continue to fight every day for the ACC and its members and to do so in a way that I hope makes our membership proud. Where there are disagreements or disputes, I intend to continue to deal with them in a respectful and honorable fashion. The ACC deserves nothing less. The ACC will remain a healthy and vibrant conference that competes at the highest level.
This is a monumental summer for the ACC which kicked off with the July 1 celebration as the ACC became an 18-member conference. This past weekend, we held our third annual ACC Unity Tour. It was an honor to once again be part of this important initiative which was held in Charleston, S.C. We will remain committed to prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as they are important to our past, present, and future.
At the end of this week, we will all turn our attention to one of the world's brightest stages with the start of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Overall, more than 290 student athletes and coaches representing six continents and 54 countries will compete for our now 18 schools. The U.S. Olympic team will be represented by 97 current or former athletes with 40 returning and 57 first time Olympians. On multiple U.S. Olympic teams, rosters are comprised of a significant number of athletes from current ACC institutions. This includes anywhere from 25 to 60-percent of swimming, women's soccer, field hockey, fencing, and others. I hope you are all as excited as I am to root for our ACC student-athletes and coaches and we certainly wish them all the best of luck.
Before I turn our attention to the exciting upcoming football season of ACC football, let me take just a moment to talk about our extraordinary television partners. We appreciate our ongoing partnership with Disney and ESPN and we are collectively focused on working together for the long-term future. Our relationship has never been stronger and we are proud to be aligned with the most innovative and forward thinking partners in the business. As one of only three conferences with a dedicated fully distributed national network, ACCN is a differentiator. Eight years ago, the announcement about the future launch of ACC Network took place at this same event here in Charlotte. It was a time of great celebration as representatives from ESPN, administrators, and coaches from each of our campuses, and the leadership from the conference were all on site and participated in the announcement. This was an enthusiastically celebrated event across the entire membership as well as the media, leading into the official launch of ACC Network on August 22, 2019. This August, Disney, ESPN, ACC Network, and the ACC will recognize the fifth anniversary of ACC Network with a celebration in Bristol. This is just another significant milestone for our collective partnership that only continues to prosper. From achieving full distribution, to the combination of new corporate and title sponsors, to the creation of road trip, taking The Huddle on the road, and countless other initiatives and evolutions including the integration of our new schools in the states of Texas and California, we really look forward to what's ahead.
As you are aware, we enter the first season of a historic 12-team expanded college football playoff. Over the ten-year history of the four team CFP, we have won the second most national titles and we're only one of two conferences to have a 500 or better winning percentage in CFP games. As the commissioner of the ACC, I was at the table with my fellow colleagues as we hammered out the structure and logistics for the next two seasons. Beginning this year, the enhanced CFP provides opportunities for several ACC teams to annually earn a spot in the CFP field. To be sure, there are still details to be worked out with the CFP beyond the next two years and I look forward to working collaboratively with my fellow commissioners. What we do know is beginning in 2026, the ACC champion will have an automatic entry into the playoff. The expanded CFP is a good thing for the ACC. At this time, I want to showcase ACC football starting with a quick video. There is significant anticipation surrounding ACC football and our 17 football programs will all look to accomplish greatness. With 33 days until week zero, we know the focus will be on what's ahead for this year. ACC football has the toughest non-conference schedule in the country- 27 games against Power Four opponents including Notre Dame, nine non-conference games against teams ranked in the final 2023 AP Top 25 Poll, ten non-conference games against teams in ESPN's 2024 Way Too Early Top 25. All of these are the most of any conference. We have elite coaching leadership. Six ACC head coaches named to the 2024 Dodd Trophy Preseason Watch List, no conference has more.
Two of the three active coaches in the country to win a national title reside here in the ACC, Mack Brown and Dabo Swinney, and the combination of our proven veteran coaches, combined with our dynamic young coaches is incredibly powerful. The ACC is the conference of quarterbacks. 13 enter the season with over 20 career touchdown passes and 3,500 career passing yards. Eight quarterbacks are projected to start week one in the 2024 NFL season, 25-percent of NFL teams. And, since 2018, at least one quarterback has been drafted in the first round in five different drafts, the only conference that can state that claim. ACC football has the nation's top returning passer and receiver in yards per game from last year in Cam Ward of Miami and Caullin Lacy of Louisville, plus the second returning rusher in Omarian Hampton from North Carolina. Additionally, when you look at the final CFP Top 25 rankings over the last four years, there are only seven programs that have been in each with Clemson and NC State representing the ACC. No conference has more than two teams that can state that claim. The combination of our preeminent players and elite leadership only furthers expectations on what's ahead for our individual teams and conference. There's not a more exciting collection of teams in the country than in the ACC. On the football innovation front, the ACC remains committed to embracing the use of technology to elevate performance of our student-athletes, teams, officials, and more. Between our state-of-the-art ACC game day operations center and working with apple to bring iPad technology to the sidelines and our coaches booths, we are proud of on our unparalleled prioritization of technology and the positive impact it will have for our league.
Finally, the season kicks off in week zero. SMU will open against Nevada while Florida State and Georgia Tech will meet in the Air Lingus Classic in Dublin. Immediately following our ACC Network fifth anniversary celebration in Bristol, I'll head to Ireland and anticipate there will be many of our partners on that flight as ESPN's College GameDay will broadcast live before the ACC’s first league game of the year, marking the first time the premier pregame show will travel outside of the United States. Upon returning from Ireland, we will immediately jump into week one which features all 17 teams competing. 15 non-conference games will be played Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before leading into our annual Labor Day Monday night game. The ACC regular-season undoubtedly will be one of fierce competition as teams contend for the opportunity to play in the annual ACC football championship game right here in Charlotte. As announced last week, the game will be, again, televised in primetime on ABC before our teams head to the college football playoff and represent the ACC in our strong lineup of bowls as part of bowl season.
Make no mistake, I am extremely confident and enthusiastic about ACC football. I'm hopeful I was able to address what I knew would be some of your questions. I'm happy to take any of those questions from the floor so I'll turn it back over to Amy.
Q: Jim, you just talked about how the lawsuits are damaging and disruptive to the ACC, I'm just just wondering how this doesn't continue to become a distraction as we try and turn the focus to football?
JIM PHILLIPS: Good to see you Andrea. We've had six months of disruption and I think we've handled it incredibly well and so I think it's important for me to to lead our group in particular not only our staff but more importantly our schools to compartmentalize the legal piece of what's happening and not let it distract us or take us away away from what we're all trying to do and that's provide great experiences for our student-athletes, teams, coaches, put the focus back on the fields and the areas of competition. But I will tell you, there isn't a day that doesn't go by that I don't spend some time on the legal cases [and] I don't think that that's going to change. We're really fortunate to have hired Pearl Houck, our first internal GC and great legal teams in a myriad of places. We have proven that you have to move forward even with these types of distractions and really important issues that are part of your daily lives.
Q: You've spoken in the past about your concerns about college athletics becoming a gated community or a series of gated communities. The house settlement has proposed a lot of the money in that settlement is going to go to Power Five athletes, a lot of the money is coming from the NCAA at-large including schools that don't even play football. Do you have concerns about how that would exacerbate the divides in college athletics and do you think the settlement is equitable?
JIM PHILLIPS: Good to see you Luke and I think another really good question. Here is what I would say, I'll take the second part first. It is, to me, equitable relative to who's paying for that, etc. We've all been part of this association. This idea that it's football only and it should be driven by the football coaches I do not agree with that and I think the board of directors emphasize that, they would not have signed off on that if they felt differently, so there's shared pain on this. The NCAA, I give our new president Charlie Baker a lot of credit, he's trying to take the most of it on. As it relates to the first part of the question, I talked about that a couple years ago and I don't think everybody liked what I had to say in that particular Forum. It's okay but that has been kind of our history of being under the tent kind of together, but you're seeing some clear separation and I think there'll be choices to be made and that's what we're working through right now with this proposed settlement is there's so many steps that affect the long-term future but you don't know what the future is going to be until you start to get into it. So, for example, we're talking about roster sizes and that's been well communicated out there, I'm not going to talk anything about that, but that's one element of it, but the distribution of dollars will be different for the first time in a real a real meaningful way for our student athletes. So, I'm excited for our student-athletes, as I said before. I have in my own family and for Laura and I, we know what having student athletes in your house looks like so I'm really happy for them. This is a good thing for student athletes. There's going to be added significant pressure for each of our schools not only in the ACC but around the country to continue to try to provide broad-based programming, Title IV, all the things that we believe in, so it will be a challenge but I'm excited about it, I really am. The final thing I'll say to wrap up Luke, is this is what I would call a reset and I said this from the very beginning, I said this several months ago when it looked like we had some kind of agreement this is a reset in college sports. It doesn't mean that college sports still can't be great and still as interesting in all the rest of it but it's a reset in the structure of it and I look forward to being a part of those discussions and helping lead us as we move forward.”
Q: You mentioned the ACC’s exploration of revenues and the 600 million in new incremental revenue from expansion. Have you and/or the board and ads discussed private capital private equity naming rights and if so, what have those discussions been like?
JIM PHILLIPS: Appreciate it David, good to see you. I'm not going to go into internal conversations that we've had with the board but I wouldn't be doing my job if we aren't exploring every area that's available so I know that it gets out there and sometimes folks wanted to get out there, etc. We've done a really nice job of keeping things together in a private way but I would just say we are and we have continued to look at all options as it relates to revenue and I'm proud of two things in particular that I mention in my notes about revenue generation. Revenue just isn't there, you just can't just will it, but what we did with expansion with three new schools I think really will help our conference and then what we're doing with success initiatives and this was before the litigation even began, that was something that we wanted to do, I felt like we needed to do. The board was terrific. It didn't have unanimity at first but as we walk through it, it will reward those teams that have the most success and it's not an absolute correlation but those that invest more have a higher chance to have success. We all know that doesn't guarantee it and so that will be good. That will be a nice incentive and a realization of success when we distribute for the first time of any conference at least in the power four in a you know disproportionate way.
Q: I would say that your comments to start were probably a little more forceful and emotional sounding than we've heard you largely talk about some of these issues with the lawsuits. I'm curious if you think this is something that you need to change the narrative a little bit or the talking points a little bit and and if so, what is it that gives you so much optimism about the future of the league with or without Florida State and Clemson?
JIM PHILLIPS: Forceful moments deserve forceful support and leadership and I don't know that I've changed at all other that I stand by everything I've said from the moment the first interview I did around the Orange Bowl on ACCN to today. This is a really important time for the conference and either you believe in what's been signed or you don't and so we are going to do everything we can to protect and to fight the league because I see a group of student athletes there. We now have 12,200 student-athletes and this has been a league that started way before me, 71 years ago, and it will be a league that'll be around a long time after I depart. This league deserves us to take this really serious issue and to handle it appropriately. What gives me promise and conviction of it? Because I understand these schools, I understand where we're going. We've made some really good adjustments and this conference is bigger than any one school or schools.”
Q: Commissioner, you spoke on students, not employees and fairness and clarity. There's been a lot of coaches around the country, not just the ACC that's mentioned they're concerned about NIL and the revenue gap and you've had coaches go on record stating that how can they compete with other teams when it comes to NIL if they don't have the necessary funds to match Alabama or Clemson or Notre Dame. How can those teams in the middle of the pack compete when it comes to NIL if they don't have the necessary funds to do so?
JIM PHILLIPS: A couple of things. One is this, I just talk about student versus employee and a couple reasons why I I don't believe that's necessary, I'm against it. Taxation. I don't think parents and families want to be taxed on scholarship, room and board, book, tuition, travel, equipment, health, medical, all of those benefits right. Termination, you're an employee, there's something called termination of employment, I don't think student-athletes should have to face that. We have nearly 25,000 international students that are on visas, there's a direct conflict as it relates to them working in the United States and be being declared employees. So, there's a lot of reasons why but ultimately we want to continue to provide student-athletes with benefits and you see the evolution the Alston Awards, cost of attendance, NIL, now the house settlement case, it’s really a good time to be a student-athlete from [a] benefit standpoint. I think there's a lot of pressures, we won't get into that right now, but I think they have a lot of burden, a lot of pressures, a lot of expectations. Social media is really difficult but that's the employment piece of it. The other part of your question as it relates to how do you close a gap, how do you be competitive? The ACC’s never been a league that's led in revenue generation and distribution, we just haven't. But, we've had an incredible span of success. This will be about creativity and innovation for our schools and for our league and I tried to go over some of the things we're trying to help the league with and our member schools and I know that we'll be able to do it. I think the good thing about this is these will be local decisions. These will be decisions made by our 18 schools about how much they want to participate in that 22-percent of what we think will be the house settlement. That's a good place for us to be but the more money we can generate, obviously, the more money that goes back to the schools. It's not the ACC's dollars, it's really the school's dollars, so I'm confident in our schools, I'm confident in our direction and plans about creativity and innovation helping us some close that gap.
Q: You mentioned that you've now been here a year, I have a multi-part question. I'm curious if the size and scope of your staff has changed much in that year, secondly one of the reasons you came here was to expand your corporate base. Is that working? And then lastly, with the approved renovations of Spectrum Center and Bank of America Stadium, how does that impact your revenue and presentation of championship events?
JIM PHILLIPS: Good to see you Eric. I'll take it one at a time, had to take some notes because it was getting lengthy there. Staff’s about the same, we're under 50 full-time staff members. I said it before, they're exceptional. It's like your world, the time that each of you have to put in to do your job, it's insatiable. If you can give it 12 hours today it's 12 hours, you give 14 hours it'll take 14, if you only give it eight, that's what the staff is. It's less than 50 trying to provide the greatest experience we can for now. 12,200 student-athletes, I think the world of them. I wouldn't want another team, a better group of individuals so that's the group. Second piece, corporate sponsorships never been better. I think this last year we did more than my first two and a half years, almost three years, just locally here. The presence has been great, the media piece of it been great, the international airport, maybe [a] connection to your first part Eric, the recruitment and retention of talent has been really eye openening about people wanting to kind of move to Charlotte, etc. I will say this though, I loved our time in Greensboro and I will always cherish that time and I really enjoyed my two-and-a-half years there. That is a great community and I think everybody knows how difficult that was for the ACC to move to Charlotte. Spectrum Center, I'm very excited about the renovations. I had a chance to meet with the new owners at a game during the year, a Hornets game. I think that can be really good for us. Obviously, we're going to have the men's basketball tournament there this year, it's the first time Eric, since 2019. We have about a 105,000 living alums in the Charlotte area and I'm excited about just putting that tournament that has such great history in this great state, in Charlotte, and being able to walk, as maybe some of you are experiencing, these during our kickoff this week where you can get to a hotel and not need anything. You can walk to a restaurant, you walk over the Spectrum Center, you can go to some museums, and the rest of it. So, I'm excited about that and we'll continue to look [for] ways to use the Spectrum Center. We’ll be there with women's basketball shortly after which I'm again really excited about that and having football here, having baseball here, we're playing lacrosse here, it's a really a nice focal point as we not only have our championships in the Charlotte area, but we'll distribute them around and we want to continue to get into different markets and all of that. But, this is a good place for the ACC to call home.
Q: David asked you about alternate ways to generate money. I'm curious specifically with private equity. What concerns would you have with schools pursuing an investment on that front?
JIM PHILLIPS: Nothing’s for free. That's probably the most important piece of this thing and yes, influx of cash allow you to do some things but do schools want to do that individually, do they want to do that collectively, do they not want to do it at all, again I think it's just the times that we're in that you're looking at lots of different options and trying to make sure that you're vetting them at the right level to make really good educated decisions.
Q: Commissioner, just wanted to ask, you had some strong words for Clemson and Florida State today, just curious to what your working relationship is with them right now and has that been a distraction at all in your business activities with those two universities?
JIM PHILLIPS: I think very highly of Rick McCollough, I think very highly Jim Clemens. I'd say we're friends. I think very highly of Michael Alford and think very highly of Graham Neff. It hasn't changed my working relationship with them at all because of how I've tried to address it and how I've asked the staff to address it and that is the legal piece will be the legal piece and we'll do what we have to do, just like they're going to do what they have to do. But, the moment that that first lawsuit happened in in December, I grabbed the staff and I told them that we are not going to treat any school any differently because student-athletes have nothing to do with this, coaches have nothing to do with this, a lot of Administrators don't, that is just a separate piece. We owe these young men and women at those two schools the very best experience possible so this thing doesn't have to be evil, this thing doesn't have to be about hatred, and all the other things that we all see just free flowing in our societies. It's important and we've taken our stance and we'll stay on that stance but we'll do it in a very respectful way.”
Q: You said earlier that the 12-team college football playoff format is good for the ACC. Do you feel the same about a 14-team playoff and perhaps uneven AQs?
JIM PHILLIPS: It’s good to see you Josh. I just want to say this, Josh is a really big Baltimore Orioles fan and he was like crushing me with a text about [how] he's going to see the Cubs play Chicago Cubs play at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Cubs aren't having a great season, the Orioles are certainly having a great season, and then I haven't heard from him till this morning. I thought he was in the witness protection program. Not that everyone would know, but the Cubs went to Baltimore and swept all three games, it wasn't even close. So, good to see you. Do I need to answer that question? All right, listen. There's a lot of things that have been talked about and will be talked about, about the CFP and I used the word hammered, we hammered it out in my opening remarks, and that's what that's what occurred. But, at the end of the day it's a good thing for college football, it's a good thing for those that play college football at the FBS level, and we're at a 12-team event. I think it's been intentional that we haven't looked beyond these next two years until we have a chance to see how the 12-team format plays itself out. I think it's really good as it relates to just more opportunities for student-athletes to play. My biggest issues were protection of the ACC and conference champions and the health and safety and welfare of student-athletes if this ends up being a long season. So we'll address the ‘whether we stay at 12 or go beyond.’ It's really speculation right now because honestly, since we have met and declared that 12-team playoff, we've had no discussions about what a potential new format would look like.”
Q: Coach K recently told me that when it comes to realignment, he sees one of the biggest factors is “Fox being at war with ESPN” and you just described ESPN and your relationship with them as having never been stronger. It would seem it would help the ACC if somebody at ESPN would come out and say this is our partner through 2036 as that original contract was written, rather than discussions about a February deadline and opt-out option. What can you tell us about how ESPN is advocating for you given your description that the relationship has never been better?
JIM PHILLIPS: We have a great relationship. I'm not just saying that, we have a great relationship with ESPN and the ACC Network and all the rest of that. We've had significant positive discussions and progress on one component of the contract. Our partnership with ESPN is not going away and we have talked to them about additional resources and how do we monetize it. We're 50/50 partners on that and so they’re as motivated as we are to generate more revenue for the overall television deal. So, I'm very optimistic about where we're going with them. They understand the importance and I'll just leave it at that.”
Q: With the time zones now spanning coast-to-coast,what are the challenges of scheduling particularly in a multitude of sports where travel is going out to Cal and Stanford and how have ESPN been helping in trying to create the best game slots too for programs and viewership?
JIM PHILLIPS: Being in multiple time zones is really good from a programming standpoint and we're excited about what that looks like. We've had conversations with them and our internal people have done a really good job with some of the folks up in Bristol. I think one of the components we have to continue to look at is what's it doing from a student-athlete standpoint and honestly we spend a lot of time on that, we really did. It's unfortunate because when you go through expansion, you're not able to engage with necessarily student-athletes because it's at such a high level, it's at the board level and so you can't get all kinds of opinions about it and all the rest of it, but we were very clear with the three new schools about what would be the reaction, what would be the feeling because they're going to be coming to the East Coast more often than our student-athletes are going to have to go to the West Coast and they were obviously very enthusiastic about it, etc. So, depending on what sport it is, it'll vary about the number of trips going east to west or west to east, but it's almost unlimited when you think about not only do you have a great partner in ESPN but you have your own network again. One of only three where you can do it for a variety of sports, different time zones kickoff or first pitch or start of a soccer match, whatever sport that that you want to use as an example. I don't know that we have it all figured out, only that you're going to see us from 12:00 in the morning for football, 12:00 noon all the way up to that late game on Saturday night, but having some parameters about when you travel in one direction or another not maybe having another trip out there for another year for the current teams and then maybe having that off week come after that in both ways, sometimes when it's Cal Stanford SMU coming towards the East. So again feel good about where that's at and I feel like we can really have some great platforms on ACC Network, ESPN, ABC. etc. "
Q: Two quick ones. Last year at this time, you mentioned the exposure that the league was getting with all those primetime Saturday games. A lot of noon kickoffs, obviously the SEC has taken a lot of those kickoff times. If you talk to ESPN about making sure that the ACC, that those Saturdays aren't just SEC triple head after SEC triple header. You also mentioned roster size, I wonder when there are decisions made on that? Will the entire ACC have to adopt those roster sizes, adopt those scholarships or will you allow that decision to be made on a campus by campus basis?
JIM PHILLIPS: Good to see you Brian. Let me go in the reverse order. Roster sizes, what I'll say is, we've had an awful lot of conversations with our schools, with our AD’s, SWA’s, coaches, and the rest of them. I think one of the things, if the settlement goes through, is this is not a reduction of scholarship opportunities, this is scholarships in addition to what we're currently getting. So, this is going to be good for our sports as it relates to equivalency sports. That right now, our baseball is at 11.9, you can't have a baseball team with 11.9. So, it'll go up exponentially. I feel like we're in a good place there, I can't really say much more. We've met as commissioners probably once a week for the last six weeks on it, but getting information so that collectively we can get to a number that feels right. It's a little bit like the Teeter Totter principle, if you push on one sport, maybe on the male side, it drops the women on the other and so you're trying to make sure again there's equity, Title IV is met, and some of those kinds of things so it's a pretty complex, but I feel really good about the progress we've. The first part of the question, we have talked about time, situating the ACC in really good spots both on ABC and the ESPN channels as well as our own network. I feel good about it as we look into the season, I feel good about what I've seen in the month of September, about where we're going to be, but they understand fully and I also know our teams are going to play well and when you play well you get rewarded.”
KIM RANKIN