Few people in the country were likely happier to see the calendar turn to 2025 than ACC commissioner Dr. Jim Phillips. The ACC says goodbye to an abysmal 2024 and not a moment too soon.
The conference spent much of the Spring and Summer in courtrooms in three states. A time that is usually spent recapping conference-wide successes was instead spent, with attorneys defending the very existence of the ACC. By the time we got to the Fall, there was little relief in sight as established conference leaders struggled. And by Old Man Winter’s arrival, the conference had a meltdown of epic proportions.
The ACC Says Goodbye to an Abysmal 2024
ACC In Court
The lawsuits were exactly what we thought they would be. The schools made efforts to unencumber themselves from the conference’s Grant of Rights that goes through 2036. By the ACC’s contention, the schools are free to pay the proscribed exit fee, (currently around $140 million), and then go on their way. But not with their broadcast rights in the moving van. Once it was clear that the Marylands and Rutgers of the world would make twice as much as FSU and Clemson, the legal system came into play. And with the Big Ten and SEC media rights deals up for renewal before the ACC’s version, that gap will likely increase.
We barely got through the preliminary filings before we hit the appellate courts in all three states.
The fact that Florida State included some legal incongruities in its filings (the contract from six years ago shouldn’t count because the wrong person signed it), made the school easy fodder for the regional media outlets that rely on being ACC advocates in order to maintain access to the commissioner’s office. It was easy to ignore that despite the tightness of the contracts, the lawsuits by both schools were not without legal merit.
ACC F0ootball Season, Such As It Was
And then we got to the football season. Florida State got lambasted weekly. The Seminoles went from defending conference champion in 2023 to bottom feeder in 2024. FSU went 2-10 overall and 1-7 in ACC play. Somewhere in the commissioner’s office, there had to be uncomfortable chuckles. A school suing the conference was falling flat on its face. But it was also a national headline that a marquee program for the ACC was awful.
To add to the irony, SMU was sitting on top of the conference standings for much of the football season. This was one of three schools (Cal and Stanford being the other two), that FSU said, in its legal filings, would drag down the conference with the new membership.
SMU would eventually fall to Clemson on a late field goal in the conference championship game. That would set up more conversation about the ACC on a national level. Clemson would get the automatic playoff bid, having gotten up off the mat to win the ACC. But then did the conference even deserve a second team? The answer was, of course, SMU belonged in the playoffs. But the fact that it was even debated anywhere beyond the SEC-obligated offices of ESPN was humbling for the ACC. Did one of the four Power 4 conferences even warrant a second team over traditional powerhouses from the SEC?
ACC’s Painful Postseason
Once we got to the postseason, the news got worse for the ACC. Thirteen of the conference’s 17 schools made the playoffs or bowls, (imagine being one of the four that did not). The conference representatives then proceeded to go 2-11 in the postseason. The ACC went 0-5 before they even got a win from Syracuse over depleted Washington State in the Holiday Bowl. Ironically, just days before the game, the Washington State coach would be moving to the ACC as the new head coach of Wake Forest.
The second win came on New Year’s Eve in the Sun Bowl with Louisville getting a one-point win over Washington.
And the conference champion Clemson Tigers and second-place SMU Mustangs? They got beat in the first round of the playoffs by a combined 42 points.
The post-season results had ACC teams losing to SEC schools, Big Ten schools, teams from the MAC, the Big 12, the Mountain West, the AAC, and even an independent not named Notre Dame.
The Other Stuff
At least early-season basketball would provide some much-needed good news, right? Yeah, not so much. In the two days of the ACC-SEC Challenge, the preeminent basketball conference, (that would theoretically be the ACC), went 2-14.
There were plenty of side stories along the way in 2024. A college football hall-of-famer was unceremoniously fired from his head coaching job at North Carolina. Well-established football and basketball coaches stepped down at Wake Forest and Miami respectively because the college sports system was no longer tenable for them. Officiating in three football games, all involving a team in South Florida, that made headlines for blatantly wrong or missed calls.
There were probably few people in the country more anxious to ring in a New Year than Phillips. Oh, and the appellate process for a few of the lawsuits begins in a couple of months. Happy New Year, ACC.
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