Some late breaking news tonight. ACC plans to hire Northwestern AD Jim Phillips to replace John Swofford.
Sources: The ACC has targeted Northwestern AD Jim Phillips to be the next ACC commissioner. The ACC is finalizing an offer for Phillips to replace John Swofford. More details on @yahoosports: https://t.co/b0xEe0BtLe— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 14, 2020
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Big if true. Northwestern did pretty well under him
Well shit. He's a Duke alum.
You were expecting the hire to be outside the circle???
Not according to his bio. Illinois, ASU and Tennessee.
did anyone tell Tobacco Road, they might still change things around if they find out
Maybe UNC will actually suffer some consequences now. One can dream anyway.
I want to be the first to welcome our new overlords.
happy it's not whit
That was my first and only thought. At least it's not Whit, so we are still in good hands.
Kind of amazed at a hire from outside of Tobacco Road. The rest of the ACC might have put their foot down. Hopefully we can start getting some Big 10 style bucks.
I was wondering if Notre Dame had some input here...
I would allow their input when they put forth their plan/conditions/demands for joining as a football member, otherwise, they would be at the far end of the table.
ND is like the Freshman who goes through rush, doesn't accept or decline their bid and wants to hang around like a brother. You don't want to push back on them too hard, because they might join, but you don't want them having all the perks either.
wut
There has to be some sort of connection to UNC that we're not aware of, right?
The only ACC connection I see is he worked under Kevin White at Arizona State and Duke. He is a virtual outsider for the ACC, and I think is a really solid, safe hire for the ACC, especially after the Clemson Board gave their President a raise to stay.
This guy should've probably been the Big Ten commissioner, and was the preferred choice of Delaney.
The big first step is to see what he can do with the ESPN contract that is atrocious compared to the other power 5 schools so he has his work cut out for him.
Glad the Swofford era is over. He did some good things, but I think he screwed up the TV deals because of his loyalty to old partners (Raycom) of the conference.
I'm curious to what you think those good things are? He had to expand the conference for football because the ACC was terrible and could have lost their BCS bid (should have too). Other than not spending a fortune on new ACC offices in an extremely expensive city like someone (Pac12) I really don't know what good he did.
Sure, he's grown the conference foot print for the purposes of enhancing football in the conference without sacrificing the basketball product.
He's secured Notre Dame as a potential conference member in the future and may be the tipping point to be able to break the ESPN contract and perhaps get NBC involved in an ACC television deal?
I think it's really good that ND played a conference schedule this year, was successful, and whether they lose Saturday they're probably in the playoffs. If the goal for ND football is national champs you just showed them how to get there every year with an ACC conference affiliation and schedule.
That's a pretty good table set for the future that could undo the issues that Swofford created with the latest TV deal. So at least the new commissioner has options.
Too many people let their blind ND hate get in the way of seeing that even just the partial association in football is a huge benefit to the ACC - it's not as good as having them as a full member, sure, but contrary to everyone who screams "join or get out" every time they play, it's way better than nothing and certainly got our foot in the door for more eventually
No way of doing that before the current ESPN contract expires in July of 2036. But, you've given me an idea that may entice ND to join by then if they haven't already, and that is signing NBC to televise ND's conference road games in addition to their home games.
Still hilariously early to be considering, however.
Consider the SEC has now taken both the 330 and 730/8 ABC time slots, a shot with NBC or even CBS is right around the corner.
I don't know if they could make that deal because the games are controlled based on the home team and the package of games would either have to be very specific or be full of loopholes.
One of my friends worked in the president's office at Georgia Tech in 2009/2010, so he had a lot of first hand insight into conference realignment stuff that was going on around that time. I was complaining to him about Swafford this weekend, and he basically said "we're lucky the ACC still exists, and it wouldn't P5 conference if it weren't for Swafford"
He snagged Syracuse and Pitt (more or less just watered the conference schedule down and more ways to split revenue) and forced the schools into signing over their TV rights for a long time to prevent anyone from looking for greener pastures. I would view him more favorably if he actually worked to get the ACC Network up and running 8-10 years ago and negotiated better tv deals rather than resorting to nepotism and going with his son at Raycom to the financial detriment of the schools. Swofford has financially set us behind most of the rest of the P5, and it will be up to the next person to change that.
I think it's going to be interesting to follow. Obviously the TV contract is hideous, but it was also re-negotiated at a time where the largest brands in the conference were not good, and the BIG 10 network was thus far a failure. It's easy to see we chose wrong looking back though. Swoff definitely did a good job enhancing the membership of the league in my mind though, upgraded from Maryland with Louisville, snatched the premier brands from the Big East minus WVU, who the league presidents allegedly would not accept, and basically set us up for ND to join in the next 5-10 years. We should have done better, but we also could have done way worse.
It's also interesting since the ACC has the best digital network of the power conference in terms of youtube and general internet content. It has over 200 million views and the SEC is at 16 million. As more and more people cut the cord, will we be able to leverage it? I think step one is forcing a way to renegotiate the contract, but not sure how one would go about that.
Yeah I mentioned he expanded because we should have lost our BCS auto bid status, but what commissioner would have just let that happen? He let it get to that point.
Mike Tranghese lol
From the top rope!
You joke but he was the one that saved the ACC, he made the pitch to eliminate the "Big East" rule that would have remove the ACC's autobid.
In hindsight, FSU was on the verge of collapse when they announced their first round of expansion, but nobody had any way of knowing that they would soon fall from their perch among college football elite. And as long as FSU was still up top, there's no way the ACC would've lost their BCS bid.
FSU actually foresaw it and wanted to expand in the 90s because they wanted competition.
With the impending NIL fights its also worth having a guy who has been an AD is valuable in its own right.
Even if he isn't first in line for paying them kids their money, he is smart, respected, and hopefully tough enough to moderate some of the extreme Anti-NIL voices in the conference.
The AD's at Pitt and UNC being the two biggest, who at one point for instance wanted to make signing autographs against the rules for athletes.
i don't think he's the guy for that
But is there anything he can do about the ESPN contract? I would assume unless the conference expands (and nothing is in the original contract to handle expansion) again he would have to pay some obscene fee to break the existing contract. The ideal scenario is he convinces ND to join in full which breaks the current contract (not sure if it works that way) and does an open bidding of the new deal and NBC cracks open the wallet to get their baby back.
Even if ND joins, I would imagine that their home games would continue to be televised on NBC through at least the 2025 season, when their current contract ends. I doubt that the addition of 1-2 Notre Dame road games (on top of the 2-3 they already play each year) would be enough to be considered grounds for renegotiating the contract.
One look at the ACC TV and Bowl package tells you that we get no bump from ND whatsoever.
Should have expected you to be the one to comment on this.
can we get ian book interviews during every game if they join?
Good Riddance.
FWIW:
Greeny (from ESPN) touched on this hire for a decent amount of time and called it a great hire. Apparently he's done great things at Northwestern, he knows him very well personally, and thought the Big 10 made a big mistake by passing him over.
Nothing but praise for the guy, hopefully this bodes well for the Conference going forward.
Not saying its not a good hire, but I think the fact that Greeny knows him well personally might lead to a bit of bias.
The fact that Greeny knows him personally versus from article several hundred miles away might lead to a good, realistic review of his capabilities.
It might, or it might not. Greeny knows him personally, but he never worked with him or for him, or employed him. I know my BIL personally, but I have no idea if he is good at what he does.
Greeny is a journalist and can research that stuff, but he could also research it if he didn't know him personally. The fact that they have a relationship could mean there is bias.
Announced.
https://theacc.com/news/2020/12/14/general-acc-selects-james-j-phillips-as-conferences-next-commissioner.aspx?mc_cid=8761376e4a&mc_eid=4dee2471fa
Quick where does his son/daughter work? might be good time to buy some stock.
/s ... from appearances he really elevated NW. hope he can get our shit network deal unfucked.
Too late to throw whits name in this hat?
Nope, but you can guess that Whit just applied for that job at Northwestern after the BOV told him to fall on a sword at the press conference.