AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — The ACC, according to its leader, is stronger than ever. With football ratings spiking and a lawsuit from two of its members largely in the rearview, commissioner Jim Phillips was sunny about the league’s future.
“The league is strong. The league is well positioned,” Phillips said to open the conference’s spring meetings. “The league is healthy. It’s thriving, it’s flourishing. I’ve been here five years, and to me, this is the healthiest that we’ve been in my tenure.”
Phillips touted as evidence the fact that the conference doubled its number of corporate sponsorships in the past three years, as well as ratings wins in football and basketball. (ACC football viewership was up 68% over last year, men’s basketball viewership up 41%.)
And after only four ACC schools made the men’s NCAA basketball tournament in 2025, eight made it this spring, the most in nearly a decade. And Miami played in the football national championship.
Here were three topics that had the Amelia Island Ritz-Carlton buzzing.
1. CFP expansion to 24 teams
Sitting just outside the College Football Playoff 12-team bracket was Notre Dame, which is famously independent in football but has a scheduling agreement with the ACC. That school’s special relationship with the conference was (and has long been) a topic of closed-door back-biting, but Phillips happily cited the Fighting Irish as his most recent exhibit when asked about the growing support (reportedly from every Powerour conference except the all-powerful SEC) for expanding to a 24-team playoff.
Phillips was supportive of Notre Dame despite a feud that exploded into public view when Notre Dame’s athletic director said the conference did “permanent damage” to its relationship with the school by campaigning for Miami.
“When you’re leaving national championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don’t have the right number. We lived through it, we suffered through it with Florida State when the field was four, and I know other schools have suffered for it,” Phillips said.. “And I’ve said this very directly: Notre Dame was a CFP-worthy team this year. They just were…. The other rationale I would just say to you is there is so much investment going on in the sport of football and college athletics. And I’m not necessarily concerned about schools that have traditionally found their way to the College Football Playoff. I’m talking about those that would have a chance that right now don’t have a chance to get into that playoff and have a reasonable chance to win it.”
2. Duke’s direct deal with Amazon
Two weeks ago, Duke made headlines with a surprise deal to air three of its games exclusively on Amazon. One of those games is against Michigan, and within days of the announcement, Yahoo Sports reported the Big Ten was not pleased with the deal, and believed it holds the rights to that game.
Phillips was asked his view on the deal, and specifically whether he was “worried it may undermine” the ACC’s contract with ESPN.
“I’m not worried about it because ESPN was in every one of the conversations,” he said. “To Duke’s credit, they came up with something creative and they brought it to ESPN and us. And where it finished and where it started, maybe it wasn’t exactly the same spot. But at the end of the day, they also negotiated and had to commit to some things that ESPN wanted, as our television partner. And a couple of games, obviously, are out of footprint and that allowed some movement there. I’m happy for Duke. It’s additional dollars into the conference—obviously, it’s going to Duke—and if there’s other opportunities that are out there, that schools bring forward, we’ll look at it. So I think it’s an innovative way by Duke.”
When pressed further in a follow-up question on whether the ACC has talked to the Big Ten about which conference really owns rights to that game, Phillips said, “No, Duke liked getting this little deal with Amazon, Duke can talk to the Big Ten,” to laughter from the whole room.
3. Private equity
Phillips has remained consistent that the ACC hasn’t yet seen any private equity offer compelling enough to take. When asked by Front Office Sports nearly a year ago, he said, “Our group is very educated about it, and there just hasn’t been anything that really has made sense for the ACC, similar to others… If you ever got to a place where it made sense, I’m sure somebody would do that.”
His response this week was nearly identical: “We have had a lot of education for our presidents on the PE space… To date, there’s nothing that has made sense. And so we’ll look at it again—in fact we’ll talk about it next week in Charlotte—but there’s nothing that has been put forward that interests us.”
The difference between now and last July is that since then, the Big 12 announced a deal with RedBird Capital Partners and Weatherford Capital that brings the conference a $12.5 million infusion, opportunity to coinvest in new revenue opportunities, and a line of credit for up to $30 million for each individual school. (No member school so far has said it is taking that line of credit, and 12 of the 16 member schools say they are not yet taking it.)
Phillips commented on the Big 12’s deal: “We’ve looked at the RedBird deal, I’m happy for [Big 12 commissioner] Brett [Yormark] that he got that done, he worked hard on that, that’s what he wanted to do for his league. And we know what that looks like for the ACC. But that just hasn’t been something our group has wanted to do.”
