CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In a way it was the same as it has ever been here on Wednesday during day one of the ACC’s annual preseason football kickoff: the same cliches and the same kind of boundless optimism eternal this time of year; the same expansive hordes surrounding the big names; even the same cookies, sweet and heavy on the icing, the ACC provides sugar-deprived attendees.
And yet an unfamiliar and anxious vibe permeated the event, too, creating a current of tense uncertainty that overshadowed all the self-promotion. Jim Phillips, in his second year as ACC commissioner, spent a good long while espousing the league’s accomplishments during his annual state-of-the-conference address, though he paused toward the beginning to state the obvious.
“I’ll make sure to address some of the topics in the news recently,” he said, before an extended soliloquy in the tradition of his predecessor, John Swofford, who usually opened these gatherings with 20- or 25-minute monologues highlighting all of the ACC’s yearly accomplishments. Phillips did that, too, but also knew he could not avoid the unavoidable. Nobody here could.
It made for perhaps one of the strangest ACC football kickoffs in the long history of the event, this day of dichotomies. For while Phillips and the conference’s football coaches spoke with pride and hope about the recent past and short-term future, they also often found themselves either defending the ACC’s place among its peers, or wondering about its long-term viability.
“The topics in the news recently,” as Phillips described them, were obvious enough to anyone here in a large ballroom inside The Westin Charlotte, or watching from home: He was referencing the Big Ten’s recent raid of the Pac-12 for USC and UCLA, and the avalanche of speculation and panic that has followed. Amid all of it, the ACC has never appeared more vulnerable.
Suddenly, the conference’s revenue deficiency, relative to the SEC and the Big Ten, has come more and more into focus. Suddenly, the phrase “grant of rights,” has become a part of the sporting lexicon, at least among those who follow college athletics. Suddenly, a future that for so long appeared so sound for the ACC now seems shakier and more uncertain than ever.
There was a lot for Phillips to brag about here on Wednesday and brag he did, at times. About the league’s seven NCAA championships, which tied the conference record for an academic year. About the 20 individual NCAA championships ACC athletes won. About the recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of universities, with seven ACC schools among the top 40. About the league’s progress in racial and social justice initiatives; its commitment to mental healthcare.
“We are one of the leaders in the country,” Phillips said a little later, “in all of those areas I talked about. Except the revenue piece of it. And that’s been brought to light with the recent move of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten.”
A mix of idealism, realism
This is now the world in which the ACC lives: during the past decade its revenue doubled once and doubled again, and yet it is still not enough. Not with the Big Ten and SEC increasing their own money piles at an even faster rate. A year ago the ACC’s revenue gap came into focus after the SEC announced its intent to add Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. But now, since the Big Ten’s decision to expand to the West Coast, the ACC’s finances have come under an electron microscope.
In the meantime, the so-called Power Five has become something of a misnomer, given the Big Ten and SEC’s consolidation into a Power Two — “two suns,” as Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick put it recently, “with all the gravitational pull.” If those conferences desire to expand further, there’d be no shortage of suitors lining up outside their respective headquarters in Chicago, for the Big Ten, or Birmingham, Ala., for the SEC.
Throughout his address here on Wednesday, Phillips referenced those two conferences without actually saying their names. He spoke in idealistic terms about the traditional collegiate model, the value of combining high-level athletics and high-level academics; the significance of non-revenue sports; the perils of moving closer toward something that mimics the pros.
“We are not the professional ranks,” he said. “This is not the NFL- or NBA-lite.
“We all remain competitive with one another,” he said, referencing the ACC’s rival conferences without naming them, “but this is not and should not be a winner-take-all or a zero-sum structure. ... 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 two or three gated communities.”
That was Phillips at his most idealistic. Yet it was fair to wonder whether that idealism had a place in what major college athletics has become — and what it has long been. Throughout the rest of the day, half of the league’s football coaches — those from the Atlantic Division, with the Coastal’s coaches talking on Thursday — did their own dances between idealism and realism.
Some of them would’ve rather ignored the debate altogether, or the questions about the ACC’s long-term viability or where their particular schools fit into broader conversations about realignment and structure. Mike Norvell, the Florida State coach, responded with the standard sort of safe reply when confronted with the question of his faith in the ACC, and its direction.
“I think it all comes down to leadership,” he said, before promoting Phillips’ “incredible” leadership ability and the ACC’s “tremendous, tremendous” brand. And what would Norvell say to those frustrated Florida State supporters who wish their school were somewhere else aside from the ACC, in a league that allowed it to make more money?
“For us, we focus on the moment,” Norvell said, emphasizing the “incredible amount of work that’s been done to push our conference” forward. The work there is most nebulous, though, and difficult to define.
Phillips acknowledged that the ACC is in the midst of ongoing conversations, presumably about ways to increase revenue, with ESPN, its primary television partner. Phillips acknowledged, too, the possibility that the conference might consider an unequal revenue distribution model, one that would more reward schools for performance and perhaps their investments in football.
“All options are on the table,” Phillips said, more than once.
Still, the greatest question that faces the ACC is also the one that causes the most anxiety, and the one that created the most unease here Wednesday: What can the league really do? Its television contract with ESPN runs through 2036, by which time both the Big Ten and SEC might well likely generate double the revenue that the ACC does. Notre Dame, which would indeed be a lucrative commodity if it ever joined the ACC in football, appears likely to maintain its independence.
And so what are the options?
There’s no clear answer to that question, which means that there’s no clarity about the ACC’s long-term future. In the short term, at least, “it’s kind of hard to be worried about our league” because of the grant of rights, N.C. State coach Dave Doeren said.
“I mean, we have 14 teams that can’t go anywhere. A $120 million escape fee — it’s a pretty big fee, you know?” And yet, Doeren said, “I think it’s going to change somehow, some way. I don’t know which way, and that’s the commissioner’s job to figure it out.
“And we have total faith in Jim. He’s done a great job since he’s been here. But it’s changing, you know, and where it’s going is driven by television and network things and things that are outside of my conversations, right? So I’m watching just like you are.”
Doeren’s commentary perhaps best represented the general consensus here, among his colleagues: That change was coming, undoubtedly, but who knows what form it’d take or how everything might look on the other side. For now there was only this moment, with Phillips navigating the ACC through what has arguably and quickly become the most challenging time in its history.
An uncertain future
Usually, this is a time of year short on introspection and heavy on hype. Conference media days are built to sell hope, to build brands. On Wednesday, though, the ACC’s version became a Rorschach test on the state of college athletics, with those in attendance considering the same tumultuous landscape and offering their interpretation of what they saw.
At times there were smaller-school coaches and players defending their place, with Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson insisting that if realignment questions were “based on the merits and investment, we’ll be in great shape.”
“I mean, name another football program in the ACC that’s invested more than we have the last five years in football,” he said. “We’ve spent over $100 million on football facilities in the last five or six years.”
And yet he knew, too, that these days winning and even investments might not matter as much as television ratings and a school’s “brand” or its following. It’s those things, or the lack of them, that has the ACC in this predicament in the first place. And it’s those things, and the abundance of them, that most compelled the Big Ten to go west in pursuit of USC and UCLA.
“They’re gonna log a lot of miles,” Michael Jurgens, a Demon Deacons offensive lineman, said dryly about the prospect of USC and UCLA flying across the country for conference games in the years to come. He considered the question of whether, as a college student, he’d be OK with such a demanding travel schedule.
“Might be tough,” he said. “Especially as an undergraduate with a lot going on? Yeah, that might be tough.”
There’s no part of this rapidly-changing college football world that’s easy, especially for those on the outside of two conferences that seem intent on growing larger and wealthier. Suddenly, Phillips’ responsibilities are much weightier than they were when he became the ACC commissioner 18 months ago. Suddenly, instability reigns.
Perhaps the greatest sign of familiarity here on Wednesday was the large crowd of cameras waiting for Dabo Swinney, the Clemson coach, when he entered a breakout room following his larger news conference. Usually Swinney holds court and directs a lot of football talk at these get-togethers but the questions about the future came quickly, as did his deflections.
“Other people will worry about all that stuff, and deal with it, and the challenges ... I don’t know where I’ll be in” 2036, Swinney said, referencing the end of the ACC’s TV deal and the expiration of its grant of rights. It was, at first, a predictable response from a coach who didn’t want to consider, at least publicly, the unknowns surrounding his school’s conference.
After a while, though, Swinney opened up, and to those Clemson supporters who’ve grown antsy in the ACC, frustrated by its lack of money or football status relative to the SEC, Swinney said he’d say this: “Bloom where you’re planted.”
“That’s what I’ve always said, you know — people come to Clemson because we’re Clemson,” he said. “... So my message is just support Clemson, and it’ll all work itself out one way or another.
“I don’t know why we just don’t go home,” Swinney went on, using a baseball analogy. “We’re halfway around there (with) you know, where we are.”
Swinney looked ahead, into the future, and “what that looks like — I don’t know.”
“I just know what’s coming,” he said, though nobody can be quite sure what that means for the ACC.
