Jim Phillips addresses concerns about NIL, expresses confidence in ACC closing revenue gap

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is not a supporter of turning student-athletes into employees, and delivered his passionate case against such an act at ACC Media Days this week.

During his time at the podium, one reporter asked Phillips about the employee issue when it comes to NCAA athletes, and also questioned the future of NIL for ACC teams who may not be able to compete with the best of the SEC and Big Ten.

“A couple things. I want to just talk about student versus employee, and a couple reasons why I don’t believe that’s necessary,” Phillips said to begin his answer. “I’m against it.”

Phillips went on to note taxation and termination as primary reasons why he believes employee status wouldn’t benefit the athletes.

“Taxation, I don’t think parents and families want to be taxed on scholarship, room and board, book, tuition, travel, equipment, health, medical, all of those benefits, right?” Phillips continued. “Termination. You’re an employee. There’s something called termination of employment. I don’t think student-athletes should have to face that, right?”

The employee issue could be especially troubling for foreign student-athletes as well, Phillips points out.

“We have nearly 25,000 international students that are on visas,” he continued. “There’s a direct conflict as it relates to them working in the United States and being declared employees.”

Phillips just wants to look out for the athletes, at the end of the day, and is yet to see how employee status offers more than student-athlete status.

“Ultimately, we want to continue to provide student-athletes with benefits. You see the evolution. The Alston Awards, cost of attendance, name, image and likeness, now the House settlement case. It’s really a good time to be a student-athlete from a benefits standpoint.”

Employment could be just another burden stacked on top of the many already facing these student-athletes.

“I think there’s a lot of pressures,” added Phillips. “I think they have a lot of burdens, pressures, expectations. Social media is really difficult. But that’s the employment piece of it.”

Phillips on how ACC ‘can close that gap’

Next, Phillips moved on to discuss the second part of the reporter’s question, addressing the revenue gap between the ACC and other major leagues.

“As it relates to — How do you close the gap? How do you be competitive? — the ACC has never been a league that’s led in revenue generation and distribution. We just haven’t. But we’ve had an incredible span of success.”

Jim Phillips with a blunt assessment there, but that fact doesn’t dissuade him from believing the ACC can find a way to stay as competitive as anyone else, especially with the recent court rulings.

“This will be about creativity and innovation for our schools and for our league. I tried to go over some of the things we’re trying to help the league with and our member schools. I know we’ll be able to do it,” Phillips added. “The good thing about this is these will be local decisions, decisions made by our 18 schools about how much they want to participate in that 22% of what will be, we think, the House settlement.”

In this new era, featuring four power conferences now, Jim Phillips likes where the ACC sits, and believes the league could be in for a financial flourish.

“That’s a good place for us to be. The more money we can generate, obviously the more money that goes back to the schools,” Phillips said. “It’s not the ACC’s dollars, it’s really the schools’ dollars. I’m confident in our schools. I’m confident in our direction and plans about creativity and innovation helping us to close that gap.”