ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips trying to navigate conference realignment

CHARLOTTE — As a hurricane of conference realignment spins around the nation, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips stands in the eye.

With the SEC adding Oklahoma and Texas in the near future, and the Big 10 soon bringing USC and UCLA into the fold, the ACC seems like a prime target for those conferences when they come looking for new blood again.

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But Phillips painted a different picture at a press conference at the ACC Kickoff in Charlotte on Wednesday.

“It remains my belief there is no better conference in the country,” Phillips said. “When you combine our incredible student-athletes, world-class institutions, broad-based sports offerings, and our commitment to maximizing the educational and athletic opportunities for students.”

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Despite Phillips’ belief, many are skeptical that the ACC will remain among the premier conferences in the sport. He frequently used the metaphor of “gated communities” to describe the national college football landscape.

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“The ecosystem is not dissimilar to our respective neighborhoods that we live in,” Phillips said. “Keeping them healthy and diverse is a priority. There will always be a variety of communities: gated, upper class, middle class, or more modest. … Any new structure in the NCAA must serve many, not a select few. This includes national governance, media rights, membership, NCAA, (College Football Playoff) access. The list goes on and on. We are not the professional ranks.

“This is not the NFL or NBA Light. We all remain competitive with one another, but this is not and should not be a winner-take-all or a zero-sum structure. College athletics has never been elitist or singularly commercial. … I will continue to do what’s in the best interest of the ACC, but will also strongly advocate for college athletics to be a healthy neighborhood, not a two or three gated communities.”

One avenue to keep the ACC competitive with the SEC and Big 10 and stay in one of those “gated communities” would be expansion, which Phillips did not rule out in the future. The most tempting target to add is Notre Dame, which is a member of the ACC in every sport besides football, where it maintains its traditional, staunch independence.

“They know that we would love to have them as a football member in the conference, but we also and I also respect their independence,” Phillips said. “Having worked there, having two children there, going to school right now, one a student-athlete, I know what independence means to Notre Dame. So you respect it, and I know that if there comes a time that Notre Dame would consider moving to a conference and away from independence, I feel really good about it being the ACC.”

Should another conference come calling and try to sway a major ACC program like Clemson, Florida State, Miami, or another, Phillips said he is confident those teams will stay, if not out of loyalty to the conference then due to the ACC’s television grant of rights, which lasts until 2036.

“I can just go by what history has told us with the grant of rights, including in current times,” Phillips said. “People talked about Oklahoma and Texas leaving immediately. I think that’s pretty well-stated now that that’s not the case. They’re going to wait until their grants of rights is over. Listening to UCLA and USC at the end of June, June 30th, and subsequent days after they clearly are going to stay in the PAC-12 until their grant of rights is over.

“So you can follow the logic there. I would think that the significance of what that would mean, the television rights that the conference owns as well as a nine-figure financial penalty, I think it holds, but your guess is as good as mine.”