The ACC Football Kickoff began Tuesday in Charlotte and opened with remarks from league Commissioner Jim Phillips.
Phillips touched on a number of issues facing the conference, both through his prepared remarks and by answering questions from the media. Here are some of the more noteworthy comments made by Phillips, who is in his fourth year running the conference.
Comments on new policy for court and field storming
“Our conference has elevated its expectations around court and field safety. Members are required to continue developing event security plans, which will now include a review by a third-party independently, and to ensure that only participants, coaches, officials and authorized personnel are allowed in the competition area before, during and at the conclusion of any competition.
“The plan may allow spectators to access the competition area following a contest, but only after the visiting team and officials have safely exited the area.
“With the elevated safety expectations, there’s critical importance to ensure that adequate time for all members of the visiting team to safely leave the field of play. In addition to these elevated expectations, there’s a corresponding fine structure in place should a school have a breach in this new policy.”
Phillips was asked to elaborate on the new policy:
“It’s $50,000, $100,000 and $200,000. Those will accumulate through two seasons in football and basketball. Maybe there’s another sport that has an issue. Those will be compiled and will go to the Postgraduate Scholarship fund, and that’s where those dollars will be deposited.
“I think paying closer attention, there is something that we’ve done privately. We haven’t been as public about it. It’s time. We’re seeing more and more of that happen. I’m seeing it more and more. We’re seeing it more and more in basketball. It seems to happen a lot to Duke and North Carolina. We have to protect those student-athletes across all of our 18 programs.
“That, along with an independent third party that reviews our safety protocols, I think is an important step for the league.”
Comments on how ACC will now require an injury report ahead of games
“In the sports of football, men’s and women’s basketball, as well as baseball, the ACC will implement a player availability reporting policy for each conference game. In football, an institution will submit an availability report two days before each league game with updates one day before and on game day. All submitted reports will be publicly available on theACC.com. This decision is directly connected to our ongoing commitment to best protect our student-athletes and our multi-faceted approach to addressing the effects of sports wagering.
“In this case, it would alleviate pressure from entities or individuals who are involved in sports wagering that attempt to obtain inside information about availability from players, coaches, and other staff. Safety has always been taken seriously by this league, and I applaud our schools for further enhancing and formalizing these important measures.”
Comments on if the ACC could move to a nine-game conference schedule in football
“We have discussed nine. We discussed nine several times in my five years as commissioner. The group has always felt that, at the end of the day, those non-conference games have really been good for the league and we have really scheduled well. It isn’t as if our league has just kind of looked aside about strength of schedule. They have.
“If you go to nine, if the SEC ends up going to nine and maybe we end up going to nine, I think there’s a few challenges. Those rivalry games that we really enjoy, I think that the fans really enjoy, I think some of those go away, and it now focuses on everybody’s conference schedule than it is a mix of conference schedule and non-conference.
“Also, I think it’s a challenge for us with an odd number of schools at 17 and how you exactly work that out. That in itself, there’s some difficulty there. I continue to talk to (SEC commissioner) Greg (Sankey), and I talk to (Big Ten commissioner) Tony (Petitti) and (Big 12 commissioner Brett (Yormark) all the time. We have frequent conversations. I mean, no one’s kind of moving in a vacuum on this. We’re exchanging thoughts there. We’ll see.
“At the end of the day, I like where our league is. I like where we’re at in eight games because we’re playing the type of caliber that I described, 26 really good non-conference games, but we’ll adjust if we have to. I think all of this remains a work in progress.”
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