At ACC meetings this week, what’s on the agenda? Normalcy, for one thing
A year ago, the ACC flocked to Amelia Island as it does every spring, less a gathering of equals than the reunion of a splintered family on the verge of dissolution.
The dissension that bubbled up a year earlier had boiled over into open revolt. Clemson and Florida State were in open legal warfare with the league, trying to sue their way out of it while the ACC sued back.
Five more schools were watching closely, planning their own moves. The state of Florida was not only hosting the event, but suing the ACC as well. And three new arrivals attended knowing their admission had been anything but unanimous.
You couldn’t scrub your hands with the Himalayan salt in the bathrooms at the Ritz-Carlton without hearing the word “dysfunction.” The beach was gorgeous but the vibes were terrible.
Instead, after two full years of upheaval and uncertainty, the league meetings arrive again Monday and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips can proclaim “peace in our time,” after settling the lawsuits in March and securing the membership of the league through 2031, if not beyond — enough time to wait out the latest upheaval in college athletics as the end of the league’s deal with ESPN approaches in 2036.
NCAA future discussed
It’s fair to expect everyone who’s here these three days will be here in 2026, a statement that could not be made with any certainty a year ago. When NCAA president Charlie Baker speaks to the assembled group on Monday afternoon about the future of NCAA governance, it’s his organization that’s now most at risk of imploding, not the ACC.
Not only does there figure to be a lack of back-hallway politics, there may not be very many contentious topics for discussion. The men’s and women’s basketball tournaments have been booked through 2029 and 2027 respectively, the broad strokes on the new 18-game basketball schedule format are settled and the interminable battle over how revenue is distributed was settled by the settlement with the would-be breakaway schools.
Each group of coaches in attendance — football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball — will get briefings from in-house counsel on the implications of the potential House settlement as well as representatives from Deloitte, which has been tasked with creating the mechanism to enforce its provisions.
Everyone will debrief the first season of West Coast travel, while football will deliberate on what the ACC’s position should be regarding the new CFP format and women’s basketball will have a session on the new NCAA tournament units allocated in that sport.
Belichick talking football? Or...
It’s unlikely the three days will go by without Florida State finding something to complain about, if history is any guide, but for the moment detente is holding. And there will be the now-unavoidable question of whether North Carolina football coach Bill Belichick will be there alone or encumbered by significant other, although one imagines his first meeting with his new peers would be the kind of environment — 17 football coaches talkin’ some ball — where he’s utterly in his element.
His presence has already been noted: ESPN will broadcast SportsCenter live from the Ritz on Tuesday, with Belichick one of three coaches requested for an appearance, along with Duke men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer and Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey. Representatives from ESPN will also have their usual meeting with the ACC’s media committee, with ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer offering on the agenda.
For the most part, though, this figures to be more happy hobbyist convention than back-stabbing political convention, a throwback to the more collegial old days of the ACC when the money was rolling in and everybody was reasonably happy with their share, when the ACC was broadly nationally competitive in football and men’s basketball, when college athletics was not yet a multibillion dollar business and athletes were making money hand over fist for everyone but themselves.
Athletes voices largely missing
And if anyone’s missing from this gathering, it’s the athletes who increasingly will determine the shape of college sports going forward, no matter what Phillips or the NCAA or Congress or the president thinks. There are always representatives from the Student-Athlete Advisory Councils present, but enough testimony in enough lawsuits has shown that despite their best intentions, those are too often co-opted by athletic departments for their own purposes, sometimes over the objections of the SAAC members themselves.
True representation would be in the form of an athlete-organized, athlete-driven group, perhaps one that could even represent athletes in collective bargaining with the ACC. We’ll get there eventually, but not yet.
For the moment, it’s enough that the ACC is coming together at a time when it seems unlikely to fall apart at any second, a chance to get back to the mundane business of running an athletic conference. That wasn’t true a year ago. It’s true now.
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This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
