With the close of ACC Kickoff, another season of ACC football is just around the corner. I’m looking forward to it. Can Clemson compete for a national title? Will Florida State rebound? Can Georgia Tech or Miami take that next step? Is Louisville the team we should be talking about, and what about that new football coach at UNC? On and on, but I really wanted to see what ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips had to say too.
A transcript of what Jim Phillips had to say can be found here.
Two things I really wanted to see Phillip discuss was…
Why did the ACC members agree to settlement terms that appear to so heavily favored FSU and Clemson?
Now Phillips said a lot about the settlement but skirted around the actual topic.
I have a responsibility to make sure that our ACC schools want to be in this league, not just have to be in this league, and I think that’s important. Again, just replaying five years ago, one of the things I said was I wanted to make sure that I listened. If you were going to serve the membership, you had to listen to the membership. I think that’s what we did. In this particular case, we did that, and we did it, I thought, in a very fair and equitable manner.
Ok, that’s a nice sentiment, but I saw nothing that addressed the actual topic of why ACC settled other than that it was just to end the lawsuits. Again, congrats to FSU, Clemson, and anyone else that wants to leave in a few years unless you have a plan of increasing revenue in the next 3-4 years, and just bought some time for that. Couldn’t he have said something a little more concrete?
That brings me to my second question.
How will the ACC significantly increase revenue over the next 3-4 years?
Wow, there wasn’t much talked about this. There was just a bit about the extension of the deal with ESPN. What were the terms? Was there an increase? Phillips spoke around the topic of being in the top 3 in revenue, but that doesn’t matter when you are so far behind the P2. What was the plan?
I have no idea because Phillips didn’t talk much about it.
If the goal was to buy the ACC a few years of stability, with a plan to significantly increase revenues, then where was it?
Phillips really addressed neither 1st or 2nd question.
