By R.L. Bynum

CHARLOTTE — After the second consecutive ACC expansion that UNC, among others, opposed, commissioner Jim Phillips did his best Wednesday to present the additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU next summer in a positive light.

“I’ve never been more bullish, and I can’t say I felt that way a year ago,” Phillips said during a press conference at ACC Tipoff. “You either get on the offensive, or you don’t.”

Carolina voted against adding Virginia Tech and Miami in 2004 and Boston College in 2005, and was adamantly opposed to last summer’s move, with women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance particularly vocal about it.

“We are a national conference,” Phillips said. “We’ve been a regional conference. Two years ago, would we have done this? Probably not, but times have changed, and you either get on the offensive or you don’t.”

The ACC probably would have never made the move had the Big Ten not added UCLA and USC the year before to start the craziness of Midwest/East leagues adding West Coast teams. The offensive move might have been for the league to go after those schools a year earlier so that they didn’t have to settle for Stanford, Cal and SMU.

“I think when we looked at it two summers ago when the first move with Texas and Oklahoma, you kind of study it, et cetera, and we felt really good,” Phillips said. “We felt we were very proactive. We had many, many calls, hundreds of hours of time with the board as it relates to taking a look at would this make sense, would this group of schools make sense, would this particular school make sense. When we got into the spring and into the summer, I think it kind of all came together.”

Not long ago, a bloated 18-team ACC would have been unthinkable. But Phillips suggested that the pressures in the college sports landscape with the Big Ten going to 18 and the SEC and Big 12 at 16 forced the league to act.

“I think we’ll learn some things from history,” Phillips said. “And it won’t be perfect. Travel won’t be perfect. Scheduling won’t be perfect. But being proactive and making sure that we have set this ACC up for now and into the future, the ability to have success, I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

While Phillips said that the move was about enhancing league stability and chasing success instead of dollars, Stanford, Cal and SMU bring little to the marquee sports of football and men’s basketball. Only Stanford adds quality to the league in women’s basketball.

Video courtesy of ACC Digital Network.

Phillips’ defense was to look at history.

“Those two schools have had success in football in the past,” he said of Stanford and Cal. “David Shaw did an amazing job. They’re going through a transition there. Cal has had good football, as well, and SMU is really good. They may be at the [Group of Five] level, but you’ll see them I think immediately perform well in our league.”

After a season where ACC teams struggled to find Quad 1 men’s basketball opportunities during the conference schedule, it figures to get worse in 2024–25 when the conference welcomes three schools who have had zero NCAA tournament appearances since SMU made the field in 2017. Cal last made the field in 2016, and Stanford, coached by former Carolina assistant coach Jerod Haase, hasn’t earned a berth since 2014.

Phillips seems to recognize that problem and suggest a solution.

“We’ve had to schedule better in the non-conference. Not dissimilar to football, we have to perform better in the non-conference,” Phillips said.

Although last summer’s expansion was contentious, Phillips contends that there was “zero hangover” from the schools that voted against it. In addition to North Carolina, Florida State and Clemson opposed the move. N.C. State initially voted against it but flipped its vote, giving the ACC enough votes to approve it.

There is still a lot to be decided, including how to allocate the new money the ACC receives from its pro-rata agreement with ESPN.

“As it relates to the financial piece of it, we’re still working on some of that,” Phillips said. “We’re going to use some of the new [College Football Playoff] dollars for the success initiative pool.”

Phillips says that basketball teams will only visit the West Coast in league play once every two years, with each trip including games against Cal and Stanford and have travel partners. UNC and Duke, for example, might make the trip the same week and play both.

“The travel is something we spent time on, and I think that’s the biggest question the coaches have,” Phillips said. “I’ve not heard one coach at least tell me that they were against it or don’t like it, et cetera.”

Phillips obviously didn’t hear about Dorrance’s comments.

He said that the league is close to announcing the format for football scheduling.

The women’s tournament will be back in Greensboro this season for the 23rd time in 24 years (the exception being 2017 when it was in Greenville, S.C., because of HB2-related boycott.) While Phillips said that the league will still take the event back to Greensboro in some years, he strongly suggested that the 2025 tournament will be in Charlotte.

Regarding the formats of the basketball tournaments in an 18-team league, Phillips favors a five-day format (Tuesday through Saturday for the men and Wednesday through Sunday for the women).

“It’s been a nice flow for our teams, for fans, our staff,” Phillips said. “I’m not overly interested in adding one additional day. But we’ll listen to the membership and see what they have to say.”

To keep the tournaments to five days, Phillips said that some teams may not qualify for the event.

The old days of a three-day event in Greensboro with every league team participating are long gone, along with double round-robin regular-season schedules. The changes that the league frames as being better for the league only seem to bring negatives.

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Phillips press conference transcript

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: Welcome to day two of this year’s ACC tip-off. Before I get started, I wanted to say something about the passing of Tasha Butts. Some of you may know Tasha. Some of you may not. Tasha Butts most recently was an assistant and then associate head coach at Georgia Tech. Was a great player at Tennessee.

I had a chance my first assistant AD job, had a chance to meet Tasha. She was a student-athlete there. Had a great playing career at Tennessee, played professionally, and then became an assistant coach, and her dream was to be a head coach.

She got that dream last March when Georgetown hired her, and she passed away on Monday after a long battle with breast cancer.

I had not seen Tasha in nearly two decades after I saw her on the campus at Tennessee, and she was just so full of life and just such a special woman and a special person, and oh, too young.

I had a chance to talk with the women’s coaches yesterday and said the same thing, so I appreciate you letting me start today. But I think it’s a reminder of the frailties of life, but just how powerful people are, and I know Tasha leaves an unbelievable legacy, so our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Butts family.

Thank you for allowing me to say those words.

Listen, yesterday was a terrific first day of ACC tip-off, showcasing our 15 amazing women’s basketball teams. During the summer, I think a lot of you know, Jackie Carson joined our team as a senior associate commissioner for women’s basketball, and she’s done a tremendous job in her first three months.

We also hired Barbara Davis from the Big East as our director of women’s basketball, and we know their additions will be extremely beneficial to the ACC and its membership.

Yesterday we also welcomed Tory Verdi, who was named Pitt women’s basketball coach last spring, and the day was a chance to celebrate what makes ACC basketball so special. Our student-athletes, coaches and programs.

We’re extremely proud to head into the season with the nation’s best seven teams ranked in the USA Today coaches’ poll. The collective strength of ACC women’s basketball has been well-established. Consider our postseason success.

First, we led all conferences in 2023 with eight NCAA Tournament teams. Last year marked the fifth consecutive NCAA Tournament in which eight teams were selected, also the most of any conference in that span.

ACC teams have made five trips to the Final Four in the last five NCAA tournaments with Virginia Tech representing us last year.

Nine different institutions have represented the ACC in the women’s Final Four. The ACC is the only conference to have at least three teams in the Sweet 16 in each of the last nine NCAA tournaments.

Finally, the ACC also owns the most NCAA Tournament wins, 119, of any conference in the last decade of competition.

Pretty remarkable.

After spending a full day with our student-athletes and coaches yesterday, I assure you there’s incredible excitement, and it’s going to be a season for all of us to remember.

Today we turn our focus to ACC men’s basketball, and we know there’s never a shortage of anticipation for our teams and our conference. This year, we welcome three new coaches to the ACC sidelines: Georgia Tech’s Damon Stoudemire, Notre Dame’s Micah Shrewsberry and Syracuse’s Adrian Autry.

Our men’s basketball teams continue to excel. The ACC has captured three of the last eight NCAA championships with 99 NCAA Tournament wins in that span. Current ACC schools have won eight NCAA titles in the last 22 tournaments and own 17 National Championships overall.

Our schools have combined for 67 men’s Final Four appearances and a nation’s best 664 NCAA Tournament wins, and the league owns the highest all-time NCAA tournament-winning percentage of any league, 618.

All 15 ACC league members own a staggering 1,000 or more all-time wins, including eight schools with 1,500 victories or more.

Finally, four of the top eight and six of the top 30 winningest programs in the NCAA Division I basketball history reside right here in our conference, the ACC.

We understand the bar is always set high for the ACC, including in men’s basketball, and I’m incredibly confident our teams will once again rise to that occasion.

A lot has happened since we were together this summer at ACC kickoff. It’s always terrific to see so many of you during my travels to our campuses and to our other events. The ACC and its membership continue to be national leaders.

Academically the ACC once again leads all FBS conferences in this year’s U.S. News and World Report Rankings. Athletically no Power Five conference offers more than 28 sponsored sports, and our 15 women’s offerings lead all.

Our programs have won more NCAA National Championships than any other conference in each of the last two years. Currently, six programs this fall are ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 in their respective sports, the most of all conferences.

The ACC has won seven National Championships in football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball since 2015, and is the only conference to win each of those four titles over that stretch.

The ACC and its membership have so much to be proud of and the last two months have been monumental.

Our new conference office headquarters are just a few blocks away, and although we knew being a part of the Charlotte community would be incredible, it has exceeded our expectations.

I invite you to come and see our operation at Bank of America Tower on the 12th floor, see our state-of-the-art facilities.

As a league we launched the ACC’s new brand campaign: Accomplish greatness. Amy Accola did an amazing job, and you’re starting to see that pop up on our network and you’ll see that throughout the year.

It’s been embraced by our schools, and in the next week we will roll out our television spots and initiatives surrounding ACC basketball.

As all of you know, on September 1st, we welcomed three world-class institutions and athletic programs to the ACC family: Cal, SMU and Stanford joining us next summer.

The decision by the ACC board of directors strengthens the ACC both now and in the future, and it benefits each of our current institutions.

Throughout the entire process of exploring potential expansion, the priorities were to enrich and strengthen the ACC athletically, academically, and financially, while also enhancing the overall league stability and the board’s ultimate decision achieves all of those priorities.

There’s much more I could say with you this morning, but let me just tell you again, I appreciate all of you being here. I’ll stop at this point and be happy to take any of your questions.

Q. You used the word monumental to describe the last few months. To say the least, it was a spirited discussion when it came to new membership during the summer; you just had your fall meetings. Where would you assess the membership right now just in terms of everyone being content and aligned?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: I’ve never been more confident in the league than what we just went through over the last three or four months. Let me articulate it a little bit further. First, we talked about having a different distribution of revenue success initiatives that we made a public statement about in the spring, in May, after the board meeting. We have moved quickly on that and will distribute dollars differently for the first time.

We listened to the membership on that.

Secondly, we had this amazing brand campaign that Amy led, Accomplish Greatness, which I think we’ve needed to do to modernize and forward face our ACC brand.

We’ve had the expansion piece that you’ve talked about, and we’ve moved to Charlotte.

Listen, the expansion piece, as I indicated, academically, there’s no one that can tell me or anyone else that those aren’t three really good schools that fit the ACC.

Athletically, two of them have led the Sears Director’s Cup. One has dominated it, the other has been involved in it. Funnel more student-athletes from those two schools than any other, and also have had good history in a variety of other sports. They bring two new markets to us: San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Dallas Fort Worth.

We are a national conference. We’ve been a regional conference. Two years ago would we have done this? Probably not, but times have changed, and you either get on the offensive or you don’t.

Where is the health of the league? The league is healthy. The league is healthy. At the end of the day, my job is to run the ACC and make sure it’s healthy for the next 70 years as it has been the last 70 years. I cannot control individual feelings on campuses, but we have addressed head-on anything that our campuses have indicated.

I feel great. I really do. I’ve never been more bullish.

I can’t say that I felt that way a year ago.

That’s where we’re at. The meetings were fantastic. We had our three new schools there with us, so we have had a chance to start some dialogue there. We’ve got a lot of work left with scheduling and some other things, but the future is really bright in this conference.

This conference has been undervalued, and I’m going to continue on that. When you talk about CFP appearances, you talk about National Championships in college football, you talk about the basketball success I just mentioned, you talk about a conference that’s won more National Championships than any other conference, you talk about a conference that has a network — there’s only three and there will always only be three. There’ll never be more collegiate networks.

You talk about the success we’re having in the classroom. I could go on and on. We distribute money, a third that continues to grow.

The narrative has run away about you have to make a certain amount of money to have success. You have to go chase the dollar. I think it’s about are we chasing, again, dollars, or are we chasing success? And that’s what we’re doing, we’re chasing success with real student-athletes that are graduating at the highest level from enormously difficult institutions.

When this is all said and done, we’ll have eight of the very best private institutions, ten of the very best public institutions. We’ll be in great markets.

That’s where I think the league is, and that’s kind of what we talked about during the meetings. It’s not pollyanna-ish. It just isn’t.

Q. You had three schools very vocally voted against expansion. There are rumors and texts sent to your ADs talking about potentially one school using private equity to go independent. You’ve had schools that — this was not a unanimous vote. What can you do now to keep any schools that were against expansion in the fold? Or one of the stated things that your ADs and presidents said after expansion was we have to get to 18 because if lose schools we need to stay above 15. That was a logic that was given to us. To what degree are you guys preparing for a future without some of your current members?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: I cannot control individual decisions on campus, and we can’t.

We have absolutely listened. I’ve tried to be a really good listener. It hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. We’ve been proactive. The distribution of dollars with success initiative is part of what I’m hearing, and maybe a majority of what I’m hearing from some of the schools that have been vocal about it.

Getting to 18 protects the ACC, now and into the future. Schools will ultimately make the decisions that they want.

But what I keep hearing from them is they like being in the ACC, and we are making progress, and we have addressed some of the things that they’ve talked about.

I would really encourage all of you to go back to whatever schools that you want to to discuss that.

As far as not a unanimous vote, in 2004 and 2005, the ACC made offers to Virginia Tech, Miami and Boston College. That was not unanimous. Carolina and Duke, from what I remember, voted against it. People made a big deal, I know, about NC State and Carolina separating in their vote. There’s history there.

At the end of the day, we had a high threshold. You’re talking about 80 percent of the league voted in favor of that. I’m not sure in this world you can get 80 percent of vote on anything, on any issue.

We move forward. We move forward together. I don’t feel any hangover by any of the schools that may not have been in favor of the expansion piece of it. Zero.

Q. You mentioned the conference being undervalued, and last year I know during conference calls coaches felt like there wasn’t enough exposure for ACC basketball.

Since 1997, out of 20 NCAA tournaments, the ACC has had 20 teams at least make the Final Four. What can the coaches do to bring more exposure to the ACC? Is it more just coaches talking about the conference as a whole? What can you see from coaches to bring more exposure to the ACC?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: We spent a lot of time in the off-season talking about men’s basketball and women’s basketball, how we were scheduling. We brought Ken Pauga in, who’s really good, works at Michigan State, but he’s kind of the guru of scheduling and the NET and the metrics involved in selection, et cetera.

We’ve had to schedule better in the non-conference. Not dissimilar to football, we have to perform better in the non-conference. From a conference standpoint, we’ve really pushed hard with this branding campaign, with the network, additional shows, additional features, trying to promote the game and the ACC at a higher level. That was all through the off-season.

I feel like we’ve got a lot of momentum behind men’s and women’s basketball. There’s been serious investment at the conference level but also at the institutional level.

We want to keep those statistics, as you mentioned, going. The history of the ACC, some could argue, I think it’s the best basketball conference in the country. Maybe the last few years we haven’t performed or won a National Championship like we always go into the season hoping for, but when you look at the whole body of work, this is a phenomenal basketball conference, and we’re trying to double down on some of our past success.

Q. In terms of the reaction of the league, this is such a proud basketball league and obviously the expansion decisions are largely driven by football economics. What has been the reaction and the feedback from the basketball coaches and what has been your message to them on that front?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: It’s been really good. I’ve heard from a majority of the coaches on the men’s side. I’ve heard from basically all the women coaches who I was with yesterday. They understand it, and they get it, and they’re excited about it because where we are today in the world of college sports, a move like that, you can’t pass up with the environment.

A chance for our schools to get into the Bay Area, our current 15, and get into the Dallas Fort Worth, they recruit nationally, and now we have a chance to go out there.

The travel is something we spent time on, and I think that’s the biggest question the coaches have. I’ve not heard one coach at least tell me that they were against it or don’t like it, et cetera.

Maybe they don’t want to tell me that. But the travel is the piece that we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time on with some working groups. For the current ACC schools it’ll be one trip basically every two years, every other year. When you go out to the West Coast you’ll play Cal maybe on a Thursday and Stanford on a Sunday or whatever days, so there will be for the first time kind of travel partners.

Florida State and Miami will go out to the Bay Area and one will play Cal and one will play Stanford and they’ll switch. Duke and Carolina, Virginia/Virginia Tech. Then coming back the other way, it’ll be between four and five trips. We’ve thought about with Paul Brazeau and Jackie Carson, do we have to play some conference games a little bit earlier in the year, should we play some before the holidays, et cetera, and try to limit some of that travel.

They’re excited about it. They feel, as I just described, this is a chance for them to bring their programs and their brands out to different markets that are national cities and have a media presence. Again, top 10 market — the follow-up to that would be we’re working hard on distribution out there of the network, which is going to be a really key piece of that thing, as well.

I’ve gotten positive reactions from our coaches.

Q. The expansion moves have largely been viewed as reactive. Why not truly go with the national conference when the signs were there last summer or even the summer before that? ACC history was being proactive with expansion, so what prevented you from being on the offensive before?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: I think when we looked at it two summers ago when the first move with Texas and Oklahoma, you kind of study it, et cetera, and we felt really good.

I think some of the vibes and some of the conversations we had with individual institutions, that became apparent that we needed to try to do something financially as well as protect the fortress.

We felt we were very proactive. We had many, many calls, hundreds of hours of time with the board as it relates to taking a look at would this make sense, would this group of schools make sense, would this particular school make sense.

When we got into the spring and into the summer, I think it kind of all came together.

Q. The ACC women’s basketball tournament is going back to Greensboro for I think the 23rd time in 24 years. Is this the long-term home for the tournament, or is the conference interested in exploring other venues, maybe a rotating model like the men’s?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: We are talking with our coaches and looking at scheduling in totality. Greensboro has been a wonderful home for the women’s tournament and for the men’s tournament. We will certainly continue to populate Greensboro with our championship.

But we’re in a new home, as well, in Charlotte, and we want to take advantage of this world-class city. I think what you’re going to see this fall is you’ll see an announcement that will take us maybe over the next three or four years with our basketball tournaments as well as our Olympic sports.

Here in the state of North Carolina, there were some commitments that we made to the state in order to stay here and receive some funding. We’ll honor those commitments contractually, et cetera, but this is a really nice place for us, Charlotte with some games in Greensboro.

But then we’ve also been up the coast some and we look forward to being in Washington, D.C. on the men’s side come March and on the women’s side back to Greensboro.

Again, I love the choices we have as we look at future championships, not only in the basketballs, but also in our Olympic sports.

Q. I wonder how much the league had contact with ESPN given what they’re going through before the decision to expand, and if you could shed some light on the pro rata agreement and how the financials are going to work with the three new members.

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: We had constant conversations through the membership. I had a chance to talk to ESPN. They were completely listeners in it, but they’re our partner. They’re our network partner and our very important partner, I would underscore.

As it relates to the financial piece of it, we’re still working on some of that. But as has been stated, we’re going to use some dollars for the success initiative pool. We’re going to use some of the new CFP dollars for the success initiative pool.

We’re still working through a few of those things, but it has benefit for our entire membership for certain.

Q. When you look at this realignment and everything that’s gone on over the last few years, we had the balloon conferences in the past and they got too big and they broke away. Did you see that this was going to happen again, the mega conference, getting to 18, some maybe looking at 20? Did you kind of envision that it was going to go this way, and how do we make sure it’s successful this time as opposed to what happened before?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: I would say I think all signs pointed to that, when Texas and Oklahoma left to go to the SEC and you had multiple conferences granted rights and media contracts come open. That historically has been the time when schools have moved.

Even though Texas and Oklahoma made that announcement two summers ago, they’ve stayed in the Big 12 until their grant of rights has come to a conclusion, which will be this summer.

We feel good about 18. We’ll be at 18. The Big Ten will be at 18. The SEC and the Big 12 will be at 16. That’s where super conferences are right now, or mega conferences or Power Four, whatever you want to describe. We are right where we should be.

I think we’ll learn some things from history. And it won’t be perfect. Travel won’t be perfect. Scheduling won’t be perfect. But being proactive and making sure that we have set this ACC up for now and into the future, the ability to have success, I don’t think there’s any question about that.

Q. On the note of the conference tournament, how many models are being considered for the format of that tournament once the three schools join, and related to scheduling with football, how would you characterize the challenges presented with adding the three schools for the timeliness of the football schedule having to be released for next year?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: We’ll unveil the football schedule first because that’s most pressing, fall sports, not only football but soccer and field hockey, et cetera. We want to get those across the finish line. We’re nearing that.

We’ve worked closely with ESPN, our partner, and closely with our three new schools and our campuses. We’ve had too many iterations to name the number of, but I feel really good about that, while also protecting some very important rivalry games and some rivalry games that we have with other conferences.

It’s been the ultimate jigsaw puzzle, but feel very, very good about that.

As it relates to our other championships and where will they be in the future, I think that remains to be determined. And as it relates to the scheduling part like for basketball, it varies a little bit because we’re playing 18 games on the women’s side, 20 games on the men’s side, so that all kind of factors into ultimately — I don’t know that we would invite 18 teams to an ACC men’s or women’s basketball championship.

I’m not sure we’re going to do — we’ll do what the membership wants. I don’t feel like that’s something that we should do. I’ve told them that. I’m not speaking out of turn.

I think you’ve got to earn your way to play in I think the most prestigious postseason basketball tournaments in the country, and if you don’t get to a certain threshold, then you just don’t make it that year.

We’ll see.

It’s also — Tuesday through Saturday or Wednesday through Sunday, that’s been a nice flow. It’s been a nice flow I think for the media. It’s been a nice flow for our teams, for fans, our staff.

I’m not overly interested in adding one additional day. But we’ll listen to the membership and see what they have to say.

Q. At the risk of being crazy blunt, is it a bug or a feature that the three schools you’re adding are not very good at football, and two of them in California aren’t very interested in supporting football?

JAMES J. PHILLIPS: I would just say this: Those two schools have had success in football in the past. David Shaw did an amazing job. They’re going through a transition there.

Cal has had good football, as well, and SMU is really good. They may be at the G5 level, but you’ll see them I think immediately perform well in our league.

Again, you can look at a moment in time. I appreciate it very much and I understand that. But in totality, I feel really good about what they can do in the ACC, and so does the membership.

Photo by Nell Redmond/theACC.com