CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In the increasingly transactional world of college athletics, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips remains incurably, unapologetically and, most important, genuinely relational.

Conversations begin, and close, with questions about family. Kids and spouses. School, vacations and weddings.

He guides the conference in the same manner. Relationships are paramount — with staff, university leadership, television partners, corporate sponsors, coaches and athletes.

And while providing memorable competitive experiences for those athletes is a primary focus for the league office, Phillips never forgets the “college” of college sports. He celebrates the ACC membership’s peerless academic standing and laments that “no one talks about it.”

But Phillips’ old-school sensibilities shouldn’t be confused with weakness and/or absence of competitive fire. That was clear last fall when he campaigned publicly and forcefully for Miami’s selection to the College Football Playoff, and it’s been clear this week at the league’s annual football media days.

Breaking ACC protocol, Phillips disclosed the conference’s projected revenue for the just-completed fiscal year — more than $900 million. Why? Because it’s a seventh consecutive year of record earnings for the league and reflects a doubling of corporate sponsorships in the last five years, plus the ACC Network windfall from adding SMU, Cal and Stanford to the membership.

“Our conference is thriving athletically, academically, financially and we are leading nationally during one of the most consequential periods in the history of college sports,” Phillips said during a news conference. “… This is a proud 73-year-old league. I know what matters to the presidents and chancellors at the ACC. It really is still about academics and athletics — in that order. So certain things I think are forever as it relates to the ACC, and that I very much value. But the industry has changed and the league has had to change along with that.”

Toward that end, and certainly motivated by legal pressure exerted by members Clemson and Florida State, Phillips shepherded changes to the ACC’s revenue-distribution formulas that reward competitive success and television viewership, particularly in football.

Indeed, Miami’s run to last season’s CFP championship game earned the Hurricanes more than $25 million through the success and viewership initiatives, likely bumping their 2025-26 share of conference revenue to approximately $70 million.

The average distributions to fully vested Big Ten and SEC members in 2024-25 were $79.9 million and $72.4 million, respectively.

“I think what (schools have) come to understand quickly is that you can create a different destiny for yourself financially based on your investment and what you put forward (competitively),” Phillips said as we relaxed in a hotel conference room. “I do feel there’s positive momentum around what we’re doing, and people are eager to get a greater piece of the pie.”

Count new Virginia Tech athletic director Brian White among them.

“I think the league’s in a great place,” he said. “For us, selfishly, I think about Virginia Tech. I’m intrigued by the fact that the new revenue distribution is tied to the success of a program, and with the investment we’re making in football, we have made in football, and with Coach (James) Franklin in place, I’m intrigued by what Virginia Tech’s piece of that pie could look like, more than the size of the pie, and I’m encouraged that it’s going to look bigger and better in the future.”

The Hokies’ revenue share in 2024-25 was $46.5 million, according to the ACC’s federal tax return.

Phillips and the conference’s senior vice president for football, Michael Strickland, said distributing 60% of television revenue based on viewership has changed scheduling strategies.

Programs are more aggressively lobbying for exclusive broadcast windows on Labor Day weekend and Friday nights throughout the season. They are pursuing more attractive nonconference opponents.

“The changes we have made incentivize good behavior for the conference, for the business, for the sport,” Strickland said. “We’re encouraging people to play games that fans want to watch on TV and/or in-person. It’s also (scheduling) games that players want to play.”

Phillips often boasts that collectively ACC football teams craft the nation’s strongest nonconference schedules, and he’s right. The longstanding partnership by which Notre Dame plays, on average, five ACC opponents per season is an essential asset, and this year is no different.

ACC teams will play more outside games against Power Four peers and Notre Dame, 25, than any other conference. Moreover, three of the five teams nationally that are playing 11 of their 12 regular-season contests versus Power Four peers reside in the ACC: Louisville, Georgia Tech and Boston College.

Such matchups are a primary reason viewership for ACC teams mushroomed by 68% last season, and several of those clashes return in 2026 with Clemson-LSU, Miami-Notre Dame, Florida State-Alabama and North Carolina-Texas Christian, the latter in Dublin, Ireland.

But it was more than revenue generation and TV ratings that animated Phillips this week.

In touting the ACC’s conference-record 36 Olympic sport NCAA championships during the last five years, he deftly leaned into World Cup fever, noting that Cup matches were staged near six conference campuses: Stanford, Cal, SMU, Miami, Georgia Tech and Boston College.

Eight former ACC athletes, more than double any other league, competed in the World Cup, and in the last decade, ACC teams have won 12 soccer national championships, seven women’s and five men’s.

But there is a void.

No ACC school has won a football or men’s basketball national title since Virginia men’s basketball in April 2019, nearly two years before Phillips succeeded John Swofford as commissioner. It’s the longest drought for the conference in more than four decades.

Without specifying near-misses such as Miami’s loss to Indiana in last season’s CFP championship game and Duke’s to Houston in the 2025 Final Four, Phillips said ACC teams have been “a little unlucky.”

“But it’s coming,” he said of marquee championships. “I really believe that. You’re always greedy for more, but that’s a really important one. I would say it really burns heavy in my belly, because I’m so proud of the league, and we’ve accomplished so many things together, and I really want it for the league. I want it for whoever wins it, for that school and those student-athletes, but I want it for the league as well.

“I love this league, it stands for the right things, and I take it seriously about continuing that path.”

As our scheduled time ended, Phillips stepped out of the conference room. His competitive faucet turned off, he greeted a young North Carolina fan, Parker, from the Dream On 3 organization. Phillips knelt beside the boy’s wheelchair, talked sports, posed for photos and promised tickets to a Tar Heels home basketball game next season.

Then it was time for noon mass, a near-daily ritual for Phillips, and as we walked toward St. Peter Catholic Church, the conversation returned to where it started, to the blessings of health, family and friends.

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