ACC Commish vows to continue to fight lawsuits, saying they hurt a 'beautiful league'

Phillips says the league will continue to fight FSU and Clemson.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Sat Jun 22 07:00:03 GMT-05:00 2024

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips says the league will fight Clemson and Florida State’s lawsuits every step of the way but also says he knows the sport is headed for a major reset.

Phillips spoke Thursday to the Associated Press Sports Editors Summer Conference in Charlotte, and he was asked about the lawsuits between the league and its two premier football schools, Clemson and Florida State. Both schools say the league is falling behind the Big 10, the SEC, and the Big 12 in revenue, and the schools in the conference won’t be able to keep up in the arms race.

Phillips said the Tigers and Seminoles won’t go away without a fight.

“We’re gonna fight it with every effort that we can. What has been agreed upon, twice, the Grant of Rights, deserves to be executed,” Phillips said. “We have taken that position. That being said, the treatment of the conference office with those two schools hasn’t changed at all.”

Florida St. got the ball rolling last December by suing the ACC and Clemson followed with its own suit in March. Both schools are searching for a way out of the Grant of Rights agreement, which centers around the ACC’s television rights.

Phillips said the lawsuits do harm to a beautiful product.

“But (the lawsuits are) damaging to the league, it’s harmful to the league. This is a beautiful league that’s been around a long time — 70 years. It’s meant a lot to this part of the country and college sports,” Phillips said. “We’re gonna fight. I’m gonna fight, and the courts will ultimately decide. We believe that everybody knows what was in that contract back then, and it was celebrated.

“People were excited about a new network (ESPN) and we had just lost Maryland, and it was a chance for unity and togetherness and the rest of it. There was a unanimous acceptance of, ‘This is a great deal for the ACC.’ That has changed in the minds of a couple.”

However, Phillips acknowledged that more changes are on the way, and no one knows how it will all shake out.

“There’s going to be a reset in college sports,” Phillips said. “And it’s OK. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be the end of college sports, by any means. It’s going to look different. At the end of the day, the opportunity to provide additional benefits for student-athletes is a huge piece of what’s going to take place.”

The ACC is seeing a big change of its own in a few weeks - Cal, SMU and Stanford officially join the ACC this summer, pushing the league’s total schools to 18.

“We feel good. We’re at 18, the Big Ten’s at 18, the SEC’s at 16, the Big 12’s at 16,” Phillips said. “Mass matters, it just does in today’s world. It may not have mattered 25 years ago, but quantity and quality matter. And that’s what we feel like we’ve done. As we went through this — we’re very happy with our current 15 schools — there was an opportunity, we felt like, to strengthen the ACC.

“As we went from a regional-based conference affiliation to now a more nationally-based one, Cal, Stanford and SMU fit the ACC incredibly well.”