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.
