CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB) — The message that Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips delivered at the league's media Kickoff day was aspirational. It was idealistic. It was noble.
"If we take that path that it's only going to be about football and basketball, shame on all of us," Phillips said while speaking for nearly 29 minutes before taking any questions.
"I understand, I understand the criticism that comes with that."
Here is the criticism: The message that Phillips dropped was also flat, uninspiring, timid and likely a colossal loser.
Let's just say that I'm less encouraged about the future of the ACC today than I was before I arrived at the Westin Hotel in downtown Charlotte for the commissioner's session Wednesday morning.
Major college sports is the ultimate Darwinian shark tank. The Southeastern and Big Ten conference are rabidly pursuing world domination. They've never hid their ambitions.
Those leagues are not saying that only football and a splash of basketball matter. But that's how they are behaving in the accelerated drive to separate themselves from everybody else in the world of revenue, television markets, bowl arrangements, name/image/likeness deals and everything else that pays the bills. The financial gap between those two leagues and the competition is great -- and getting greater.
Being inspirational, idealistic and noble might get Phillips polite applause in the worlds of Olympic sports and academia. It will also get the ACC run over and pushed into the cheap seats, no matter how many national titles the league wins in swimming, lacrosse or soccer.
Or to use Phillips' talking point of the day, the Cards and other members of the ACC will have a residence on the outside of what Phillips called one of college athletics' "gated communities."
"All neighborhoods need to be healthy," Phillips said. "It's not good for college athletics if they are not … we are not the professional ranks. This is not the NFL or NBA-lite. We all remain competitive with one another. This is not and should not be a winner take all or zero-sum structure."
Truth be told, I recognize Phillips for confessing his old-fashioned idealism. I loved the Big Ten when it was actually, you know, 10 schools in a comfortable geographic footprint. I thought the SEC was also a nice, tidy 10-team package.
Nebraska and Oklahoma should have been forever in the Big 8.
USC and UCLA belong in a league with Stanford, Oregon and Washington, not with Rutgers, Iowa and Indiana. Sis-boom-bah!
But in 2024 Rutgers, Iowa and Indiana will be playing USC and UCLA. And in 2025 Oklahoma and Texas will be playing Kentucky, Florida and Alabama.
And pay phones have disappeared from street corners and automobiles can run without gasoline and University of Louisville quarterback Malik Cunningham is making enough money from NIL deals that he could easily afford to purchase a $900 pair of Prada sneakers than he proudly displayed at ACC Kickoff.
Super conferences are coming no matter how much Phillips enjoyed telling his story about how much he learned on his career path while moving from Notre Dame to a Mid-American Conference school early in his journey.
Maybe there isn't anything Phillips can do, other than continue to try to sweet-talk Notre Dame into making a full-time plunge into the ACC. Maybe Phillips didn't want to tip his hand on a possible arrangement with the leftover members of the Big 12 and Pac-12.
But the job of a commissioner is to show strength. Phillips sounded weak and behind the current culture in his remarks and answers to questions. It was not the message two other major commissioners focused on while preparing their fans for the start of the 2022 football season.
At Big 12 Media Day last week, new commissioner Brett Yormark said the league was "open for business."
To kickoff the four-day media extravaganza in Atlanta this week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said, "We are a super league … this is a super league. The Southeastern Conference is stronger now than at any other point in our history."
Phillips talked stiffly from a written script, not a teleprompter, and said things like:
"This is no time to be waving the white flag on (the collegiate model)," Phillips said. "I'm not trying to be Pollyanna-ish about it. I live in the real world and the real times like all of us do.
"For us to ignore the affordability and access, opportunity it provides to young people — I think that would be a huge mistake."
Those words might sing off the pages of a 1970s textbook about the philosophy of where college sports fit inside an academic institution. They would draw a standing ovation on a sleepy Division III campus.
But in a world where the ACC is at risk of getting steam-rolled and left behind by the SEC and Big Ten, they sounded like, well, a huge mistake.
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