CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jim Phillips is a true believer. If there was any doubt about it before, there was none left after Wednesday. At a time when not only his conference but college athletics in general is being pulled in new, odd directions by forces both benign and malignant, the ACC commissioner insists on fighting the good fight.
The Big Ten and SEC are dividing up the spoils, California schools are now about to be in a conference with Rutgers, football power has become a magnetic force attracting millions in television money at the expense of logic and the NCAA’s head-in-the-sand failure to proactively address the liberalization of athlete rights allowed reform to be forced upon it with predictable consequences.
That’s just the state of the game in 2022.
