Jim Phillips breaks down how the ACC turned revenue distribution concerns into a positive

The offseason started off a wild one in the ACC, when revenue distribution concerns at the league’s spring meetings started off a firestorm of potential realignment talks yet again.

Some of the ACC’s power players were less than pleased at the league’s Grant of Rights and looking for ways to sweeten the pot for themselves in a bid to keep up with the ever-increasing revenue distribution pulled in by Big Ten and SEC programs.

Things ended with a rough stalemate, as the ACC’s “ironclad” Grant of Rights limited options. But ACC commissioner Jim Phillips believes the fun merry-go-round also provided some benefits for the league membership.

“I really believe it helped us. I do,” Phillips said. “It was painful to go through. Nobody liked it, but it really started to develop this honesty and candor. Not that it hasn’t been an honest group before, but more candor than anything else about, ‘Hey, here are the issues we have,’ or, ‘Here is what we’re concerned about.'”

It’s unclear where the ACC revenue distribution concerns will end up long-term, as movement and consolidation still seems possible in both the Pac-12 and Big 12. You’d have to assume any such moves would be met by similar option exploring in the ACC as it attempts to hold serve.

Perhaps with the more functional relationship between league members — as optimistic and rosy as that outlook may be versus reality — the ACC can command a bit more and squeeze that out of its TV partners via the ACC revenue distribution.

Phillips thinks the added level of communication in the conference is a net positive.

“I think that’s healthy. I think that’s healthy in any organization,” he said. “You can maybe have it at the coach level or at the AD level, but when it’s at the CEO level with our presidents and chancellors, I think that has helped us come together and understand these are some of the things that we have to address.”

The other thing the ACC has done is step up its level of communication. Phillips, for his part, doesn’t want to be caught with his pants down in the event there’s a sudden shot of realignment news out of another Power 5 conference.

So he and the league’s power brokers are staying in touch quite a bit of late, ready to tackle ACC revenue distribution or anything else that might pop up.

“As I mentioned a little bit ago, I think the frequency of us now getting together, we meet once a week now,” Phillips said. “Sometimes more. Then if we don’t have anything to go over, we can cancel the meeting, but it’s on our CEO’s schedule, and even throughout the summer we’ve had to me more meetings than my first two summers with the league by far. I think double even combined the first two years.

“They’re attentive. They’re aware. There’s lots of discussion going on. At the end of the day, I think you turn a tough situation into a positive one.”