Report: ACC, Jim Phillips finalizing three-year contract extension amid Big Ten speculation

The ACC is set to finalize a three-year contract extension with commissioner Jim Phillips, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Tuesday. Phillips took the role in 2021 and, once the deal is done, will be with the league through the end of the decade.

Phillips previously served as the athletic director at Northwestern from 2008-21 and was in the conversation to become the Big Ten commissioner before the league named Kevin Warren to the role. His name also came up recently after Warren was announced as the next president of the Chicago Bears and the Big Ten embarked on its search for a new commissioner.

As it turns out, the Big Ten’s potential interest was part of the reason for keeping Phillips with the ACC for the foreseeable future.

“It was the perceived threat of the Big Ten coming after him,” an ACC source told Thamel.

The ACC is in an interesting spot in the college athletics landscape, as well. As the Big Ten and Big 12 signed lucrative media rights deals, the ACC is locked in to its deal until 2035-36. However, Phillips secured a deal with Comcast to bring the ACC Network to 90 million more homes and increase the league’s exposure.

Beyond the media deals, though, the Big Ten is expanding to 16 teams with the additions of USC and UCLA in 2024 while the SEC is adding Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12 that same year. The ACC appears likely to stand pat due to its grant of rights agreement, and the conference was held out of the College Football Playoff this year. However, the league will get a bid once the new-look CFP format takes effect in 2024.

In basketball, though, the ACC was represented in the Final Four as Miami made an impressive run to Houston this past year. It’s the second straight year the Hurricanes made the Elite Eight and this year, the conference only received five bids to the tournament. Plus, on the women’s side, the ACC saw Virginia Tech make the Final Four, making it the only conference to reach the national semifinal in both tournaments.

That’s why Phillips set a goal for coaches and athletic directors across the ACC: Change the narrative.

“We have to portray ourselves in a different way and maybe it’s our scheduling, maybe it’s our providing information back to the committee, but we’re going to be aggressive in how we look at it — but we’re also going to be proactive,” Phillips told ESPN’s Andrea Adelson. “We feel the narrative hasn’t been quite right the last two years. We’re going to try to do something about that in the offseason.”