ACC commissioner Jim Phillips’ ‘This league is bigger than any one school— or schools’ may not hold up

A conference’s media days often aren’t an easy time for the league commissioner. But that time gets much more difficult when two of the league’s most prominent schools are actively suing it in an apparent bid to force an exit. That’s the case for Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips, whose conference is currently embroiled in a mess of legal action with both Florida State and Clemson. And around that, Phillips tried to argue in his ACC Media Days opening remarks Monday that the conference is bigger than those schools:

Jim Phillips: “This conference is bigger than any one school or schools.”

— Brendan Marks (@BrendanRMarks) July 22, 2024

Here’s more on that from Brian Murphy at WRAL:

“We will fight to protect the ACC and our members for as long as it takes,” said Phillips, in his fourth season as commissioner. “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.”

…”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,” Phillips said.

…”This has been a league that started way before me — 71 years ago — and it will be a league that will be around a long time after I depart,” he said. “This league deserves us to take this really serious issue and to handle it appropriately.”

Added Phillips: “This conference is bigger than any one school — or schools.”

Those are certainly understandable claims for a conference commissioner to make. (And it’s notable that elsewhere in these remarks, Phillips made it clear that the legal actions from Florida State and Clemson will not limit his advocacy for them to receive College Football Playoff slots or other honors.) And yes, Phillips’ current role certainly means he has to believe that the ACC (set to be at 18 teams after Cal and Stanford join in August; 17 in football, where Notre Dame is still independent) is “bigger than any one school — or schools.” But if Florida State and/or Clemson do wind up able to force an exit, that will tell us a lot about if that claim is actually true or not.

At the moment, there are some things the ACC has going for it. There’s quite the collection of schools there, and while they haven’t been able to lure Notre Dame into full conference affiliation, they have set up a notable scheduling arrangement that sees their members play a lot of games against the Irish. And they do have a significant run-by-ESPN and distributed-by-ESPN conference network, with that being a major advantage over the fallen Pac-12. But the ACC TV deals, and particularly their through-2036 term (part of how that conference network was launched), don’t look great next to the SEC or Big Ten. And if FSU and or Clemson are indeed able to exit, we’ll see if the conference really is bigger than those schools.

[WRAL]