AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — The ACC, according to its leader, is stronger than ever. With football ratings spiking and a lawsuit from two of its members largely in the rearview, commissioner Jim Phillips was sunny about the league’s future.
“The league is strong. The league is well positioned,” Phillips said to open the conference’s spring meetings. “The league is healthy. It’s thriving, it’s flourishing. I’ve been here five years, and to me, this is the healthiest that we’ve been in my tenure.”
Phillips touted as evidence the fact that the conference doubled its number of corporate sponsorships in the past three years, as well as ratings wins in football and basketball. (ACC football viewership was up 68% over last year, men’s basketball viewership up 41%.)
And after only four ACC schools made the men’s NCAA basketball tournament in 2025, eight made it this spring, the most in nearly a decade. And Miami played in the football national championship.
Here were three topics that had the Amelia Island Ritz-Carlton buzzing.
