@ADavidHaleJoint and @aadelsonESPN wrote an quality piece on the Challenges faced by new ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips.
It’s as sobering as view of the ACC as we’ve seen since 2013. That was the year the ACC signed the Grant of Rights, and prior to that it the ACC was in tenuous position.
There were several statements from the article that sounds eerily like statements written circa 2010-2012 with new years.
“If we don’t get our TV contract in the ballpark of [the SEC and Big Ten], there will be no level playing field in the Power 5,” said one ACC coach, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There will not be a Power 5 anymore, in my opinion.”
The SEC just negotiated a new 10-year deal with ESPN that will further increase its revenue starting in 2024. Although terms were not disclosed, multiple outlets reported the deal is worth about $3 billion. The Big Ten’s current deal, meanwhile, goes through the 2022-23 season, and it will likely get a new, more lucrative television contract long before the ACC’s current contract is up (2036).
In this article discussing Mark Emmert’s NCAA tournament TV deal as a huge mistake , guess which conference that deal got compared to.
“While experts are starting to view this deal as one-sided for CBS and Turner in real-time, that’s only going to become incrementally more glaring as the years go on. (ACC commissioner John Swofford’s final ACC contract, which runs through 2036, is already being viewed as a similar financial tourniquet that will feel worse with each passing year.)”
Not good… but back to the original article.
Here’s is where I find issue…
“Everyone’s thought for a long time that our league trended toward the bouncy ball rather than the pointy one,” one coach said, “but college basketball is not what it was as a franchise 10 years ago. Does that hurt us? Has our league ever really looked at pushing football as the future?”
Phillips doesn’t see it as a zero-sum decision but suggested the ACC must prioritize its biggest revenue stream across all schools — football.
No one disagrees that football is the driver for TV revenue, but laying the blame at the hands of the ACC is a problem. The ACC can only provide some avenue for football, but they can’t do the heavy lifting. That’s the school’s responsibility. In 2016 when the ACC was college football’s best conference, the groundwork was laid for future success. Other than Clemson, conference’s teams failed to capitalize.
Florida State collapsed into disarray. Bobby Petrino ran Louisville into the ground. Justin Fuente has basically been a bust at Virginia Tech. Georgia Tech won’t be relevant for years. In the last 3 years only North Carolina has made a nationally discernable improvement in their program through quality recruiting.
So what is Phillips to do?
With the ESPN Lookin coming it is Phillip’s first big opportunity to make a splash.
Phillips said. “What does the ACC look like with 14 football-playing schools and Notre Dame playing five in that mix? Where do we have some opportunities to grow that revenue, including distribution and getting out into households that we haven’t, in a format that allows people to watch us? I don’t think there are any exact or right answers right now, but I’m cautiously optimistic about where we can go in this look-in.”
In wouldn’t hurt if Comcast is signed on to carry the ACC Network sooner rather than later as well. Comcast is the glaring cable provider missing the ACC Network, and Phillips needs to get that deal done.
