CHARLOTTE, NC – Inside a small room on the second floor of the Hilton hotel on Monday, Jim Phillips escapes, at least for a moment, from the hustle and bustle of his league’s opening press days.
Seated at the head of the table, Phillips, the ACC commissioner, gestures to the four loose pages in front of him that provide the best evidence of his meeting.
Seven different ACC schools, for example, won NCAA team championships this year to go with the 16 that won the last two years. The three-year total of 23 titles leads all conferences. The ACC, in turn, leads all power conferences in several rankings, including US News & World Report, NCAA graduation rates and NCAA academic performance statistics.
The list goes on. The scheme brought in a record 700 million dollars last year and distributed it to its 45 million members – the third most in the country. And, finally, the ACC is home to two of the three active football coaches who have won a national championship and won the second CFP titles of any conference in the past decade.
For Phillips, those who question whether the ACC is the third best conference in college sports behind the SEC and Big Ten need look no further than the list in front of him.
“Let’s chase the third one. By any metric that matters — CFP visibility, national championships, our network presence, revenue generation, academic excellence — I’m comfortable with where the ACC is: in the top three, ” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview on Monday.
Shortly before that, Phillips, usually soft-spoken and mostly non-controversial, opened the four-day event in Charlotte with an hour-long, and sometimes ling, a scathing speech about the ACC situation.
He blasted Florida State and Clemson for their “obstructive and dangerous” attempt to exit by suing their conference, asserting that the ACC is willing to fight the schools in court “as long as necessary” and protect enthusiastic former commissioner John Swofford, the target of public attacks for a long-term television contract with ESPN that some members are restless as other media deals are rising.
He did something else. He was mostly absent from the subtleties, he created a clear picture of the management of the college sports: SEC, Big Ten and … ACC.
He confirmed that “ACC is one of the three highest gatherings of income and distribution,” and we fully expect that will continue and grow.
Two words were not mentioned here in Charlotte: Big 12.
And yet, the public opinion from Phillips felt rightly directed at that. others about 13 days after its commissioner, Brett Yormark, began his press days in Las Vegas by saying that his league “has established itself as one of the top three conferences in America.”
While the Big 12 has publicly reviewed private equity and conference naming rights, the ACC has reviewed the issues privately, Phillips said. “Just because we haven’t talked about it in public yet,” he began before trailing off. “Shame on anyone who thinks we haven’t worked on those things and more in secret and secrecy.”
Finding untapped revenue is a top priority for the ACC and Big 12, each of which has fallen financially behind the SEC and Big Ten. Television distribution caps — the primary reason for FSU and Clemson’s exit attempts — could rise to $30 million per school over the next two years.
But help is on the way, says Phillips. The league is using its College Football Playoff allocation and other ESPN-related funds from the expansion ($600 million) to create what it calls a “success fund” that pays units to schools based on standards, to including qualifying for a bowl game, finishing in the top 25, and participating and advancing to the CFP.
The ACC team could receive as much as $25 million, Phillips said. That’s closing the gap, real money, he claims. Indeed, the move will help “close the gap,” said Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich. While big money doesn’t always lead to big success, there is a correlation between success and resources, North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham told Yahoo Sports last year. And in the new age of college athletics, “it is important for a person to be successful in the track and field,” he added.
But it won’t close the gap completely, said Florida State athletic director Michael Alford.
Thanks to the new CFP distribution model – 58% of the money goes to the SEC and Big Ten – ACC teams will be the same 40 million dollars behind the schools in those two conferences.
“That’s why efforts to succeed in our meeting are so important. It’s important to invest so that you can use the money and close that gap as much as you can,” Alford told Yahoo earlier this year, “but. [the CFP] moving away from performance-based recommendations has made the gap nearly impossible for individual programs to close.”
Florida State officials have drawn their sabers more than any other ACC program in publicly criticizing their conference. Locked in a lawsuit in an effort to get out of the franchise agreement 12 years before it expires, the Seminoles are using legal methods to expose ACC contracts that are usually kept secret.
The internal conflict continues in the league as a whole – even in these media days. In addition, Florida State head coach Mike Norvell and players attended Monday’s opening day along with those from SMU, the same SMU that entered the conference this year despite FSU and others (Clemson and North Carolina) voted against the increase last August.
It’s a strange game, it’s the kind of dysfunctional family that Phillips tries to manage as best he can.
“We had a disruption for six months. I think we did a pretty good job of it,” Phillips said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t spend some time there [Clemson and FSU lawsuits]. And I don’t think that will change. ”
It can? Would the ACC be willing to return to the league for two sessions if, say, they had nowhere else to go?
“The idea is for them to be in the league. That’s what we’re working on with this suit, that it’s part of our league,” Phillips said.
Clemson and FSU are of the opinion that, if they are not officially relegated to ACC franchises, there will be takers.
But it is unlikely that any school in the SEC or Big Ten will agree to accept a reduction in their TV offering to increase any other school. For the SEC, it is especially so given its step: the strategy already has a place in South Carolina and Florida.
In order for the Big Ten and the SEC to expand, they may need a lot of money from their television partners – a lot of money (over $100 million a year). Mainly Fox for the Big Ten and ESPN for the SEC.
Can the ACC please its two undecided members with more money? Maybe.
There is another source of unearned revenue: the ESPN contract itself. Although the common belief is that the contract runs until 2036, that is not true. The agreement expires in 2027.
ESPN must vote before next February to opt-in for another nine years. The ACC and ESPN are in active discussions about an extension, discussions that Phillips described as “positive and productive.”
Can networking increase the value of a partnership?
“We’re talking about that,” Phillips said.
But enough of all this, the commissioner says. There is football soon to be played – one of the most stressful seasons in ACC history. For the ACC and Big 12, the heat is on to advance as many teams as possible to the 12-team expanded College Football Playoff beyond the automatic bids their players receive.
The two conferences added seven new combined teams. Now they are almost from coast to coast.
About five weeks before the start of the season, the politics of the CFP’s major awards begin. Banner greeted press day attendees in the Hilton lobby on Monday with one of Phillips’ predictions: “The ACC,” he said, “has the toughest nonconference schedule in the country.” .”
A common message for the league to emerge? Maybe. But these are rare times.
#FSU #Clemson #block #ACC #commit #Jim #Phillips #offers #strong #critique #league #top
