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The ACC looks to be sitting solidly third among the Power 5 conferences.
It hasn’t been a great week for ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, but it will end on a relatively high note. The former athletic director at Northwestern has been swept into the tail end of alleged hazing among athletes there.
Phillips, in his third full year as ACC boss, faced questions on his involvement at his former school, and he repeated his strong denials of any knowledge at the end of his State of the ACC speech at the preseason football media day Tuesday.
In this area, at least, fans care far more about that STATE of the ACC, regarding possible dissolvement or realignment in the coming years. The commish began with the good news, that the conference has more all-around national championships than any other league and second-most in football.
Phillips is bullish on the ACC’s future because of its past. It’s a given that the ACC needs a tiered distribution of revenues and a lot more in the pot overall to keep from losing sight of Big Ten and SEC. Phillips said an agreement is almost ready to pay the schools more that drive the most football revenue.
The ACC Grant of Rights, which all schools signed through 2036 under John Swofford after Maryland bolted for the Big Ten, will end up in court with at least eight members suing to break it so the league can renegotiate more TV money with ESPN. But regardless, the ACC should stay solidly ahead of the Big 12 and Pac 12, which are not getting what they want in new contract talks.
With Texas and Oklahoma and UCLA and Southern Cal bolting their leagues for the projected $100 million per year per school in the SEC and Big Ten, it seems like the ACC will never get it and that may cause members to leave.
Clemson and Florida State have been bandied about for years as logical targets of the SEC. But, with state-dominating Texas and Oklahoma coming, the SEC doesn’t really need the small TV markets the Tigers and Seminoles bring with them. So they wouldn’t boost the overall distribution much, if any.
In the case of Carolina and Virginia, they are better fits in the Big Ten and have rabid, if not as large, alumni and fan bases and would give new brand recruiting and TV exposure to the Big Ten. Neither might ever win that conference football title, but they will be competitive with the rest of the league below Ohio State and Michigan.
So if true that it’s become all about the money in every sport, business and most families, the ACC and some of its proudest charter members may have hard decisions to make.
But, for now, Phillips has cooled all that down, if not his own hot water.
Featured image via Associated Press/Nell Redmond
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