Jim Phillips has come to a halt. For 30 minutes, his hectic professional life has been paused for piety. Hands clasped in front of him, posture perfect and body absolutely still, it is time to pray.
The commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference has fled the bustle of men’s basketball media day in October, briskly walked three blocks through downtown Charlotte, pulled the handle on a heavy wooden door and taken his place in a pew for the 12:10 p.m. mass at St. Peter Catholic Church. This is his daily routine.
He’s not just a regular here. He’s a devout regular, an active participant. When the priest asks for prayer requests from the congregation, Phillips raises his voice: “Let us pray for those who don’t have anyone else praying for them.”
Striped tie cinched tight and white shirt crisply starched, Phillips could be described as an emphatic Catholic—from first genuflection to last, and with every sign of the cross in between, he is punctilious in the practice of worship. He does not fidget. His eyes do not wander. He does not reach for the phone in his pocket.
“You have to shut out the world when you go into church,” Phillips says later over lunch across the street at Famous Toastery, where, as a regular, he fist-bumps the staff upon arrival. “It’s 30 minutes every day when it’s not about anything other than that. I’m not the commissioner of the ACC. I’m one of God’s children, like everybody else. It’s helped me.”
Phillips’s True Believer worldview expands beyond religion—it’s how he sees college athletics as well. He’s an idealist in an increasingly cynical space, a consensus builder in a predatory environment, a preacher of unity to a fractured congregation. He’s trying to hold together a cathedral of a conference as the winds of change threaten to blow it away.
The ACC’s spring meetings begin Monday in Amelia Island, Fla. Since the last spring meetings, when simmering dissension reached an open boil, two schools have sued the league with an intent to leave. Amid ongoing conference instability, the ACC is the latest one in jeopardy of fracturing.
Formed in 1953, the ACC has evolved like every other league in major-college athletics, expanding far beyond its basketball-centric roots as an eight-school conference in the mid-Atlantic region. It remains among the four richest and most powerful leagues, along with the Big Ten, SEC and Big 12, but its future is murky and identity up for grabs.
The Big Ten and SEC are distancing themselves from everyone else monetarily, threatening to further narrow who can win in the revenue sports. As the once-great Pac-12 was picked apart last summer, the Big 12 was lauded for proactively adding four of its schools. The ACC later grabbed two from that league (Stanford Cardinal and California Golden Bears) and one mid-major striver (SMU Mustangs) to reach 18 members for the 2024–25 academic year. But in the process, the ACC and Phillips were criticized by many who believe that won’t improve the conference’s football product—or the bottom line.
The climate has only gotten stormier since then. In December, the ACC football power Florida State Seminoles sued the league and has been sued by it in return. Then, the Clemson Tigers joined in, filing their own lawsuit in March against the only conference they have known in the last 70 years. The two most powerful football programs in the conference have gone to war.
Frustrated by a long contract with ESPN that was agreed upon in 2016 under previous commissioner John Swofford, the Seminoles and Tigers are exploring their options to break the ACC grant of media rights, which ostensibly ties members to the league until ’36. An exit could cost a half-billion dollars, unless Florida State and Clemson find a legal escape hatch. Six other ACC schools acknowledged last spring having held preliminary talks about leaving, but haven’t yet taken the next step of actively trying to leave.
Florida State’s lawsuit claims the ACC’s deal with ESPN actually has a potential out clause—ESPN, the suit says, has a unilateral option in 2027 to extend the pact to its conclusion in ’36, and that option must be exercised by February ’25. Although the grant of rights is separate from the television contract, the two clearly are interdependent. If ESPN ends the deal, it might unlock the grant of rights—or result in more legal crossfire.
This is the fractious flock that Phillips tends. The burning question for the ACC is whether an idealist can guide it through today’s cutthroat landscape of college athletics.
“He’s a team player,” says legendary former Duke Blue Devils men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, who has known Phillips for decades. “His values as a leader are needed. But it’s a really tough time. People [in the ACC] have not been forthright in expressing their agendas. They have hidden agendas. Fans would be amazed by all the stuff that is secretly happening in our conference. It finally came to fruition with Florida State, but Florida State’s not the only one looking at different things.
“It’s a hell of a job right now. It’s a ‘wow’ time. Not a ‘wow’ like ‘great.’ It’s a ‘wow’ like ‘What the hell are we going to do?’”