ACC commissioner’s new baggage a burden the league didn’t need to shoulder right now
Given the number of lawsuits piling up, it’s hard to imagine Jim Phillips saying any more on Tuesday than he did in his statement at the end of last week, denying that he “condoned or tolerated” the football hazing at Northwestern that has torn that campus apart.
It may not be legally prudent to do otherwise, now that the ACC commissioner has been named as a defendant in at least two civil suits along with disgraced former football coach Pat Fitzgerald and others, but that’s not going to stop his mere presence from overshadowing just about everything else on the first of the three days of the ACC’s annual football kickoff in Charlotte.
The commissioner’s state-of-the-conference address is always the curtain-raiser, and the person in that suit has always been the center of attention as festivities begin, but the spotlight is going to be on Phillips on Tuesday in a way it never was on any of his predecessors. None of them were ever the defendant in multiple civil lawsuits that essentially accuse Phillips of a breach of care in his role overseeing the athletic department.
There’s two ways that can go: Either he knew or he didn’t, and Phillips has already denied any responsibility. “Any allegation that I ever condoned or tolerated inappropriate conduct against student-athletes is absolutely false,” his statement read. “I will vigorously defend myself against any suggestion to the contrary.” Given his track record as someone who has made the welfare and well-being of college athletes his mission, and the parent of several of them, that makes sense.
He’s not a high-pressure salesman like the Big 12’s Brett Yormark or an event promoter like the Pac-12’s George Kliavkoff or a television exec like the Big Ten’s new Tony Petitti or a power broker like the SEC’s Greg Sankey. Phillips has tried to stake out the moral high ground, arguing for the better angels of the nature of college athletics, hard as they may be to find at times, while navigating the NCAA’s Byzantine bureaucracy.
So while we never really know anybody, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would suborn such evil as what has been alleged to have been perpetrated at Northwestern, and he does seem like the kind of person who has let his career be guided by a different set of precepts. For the moment, pending the emergence of new and damning evidence, it’s easy to take that at face value.
Which leads to the other way to go with that: If all this stuff really did happen on Phillips’ watch, how closely was he really watching? That’s the question any athletic director faces when one of their coaches breaks the rules, whether they should have known what they didn’t. It’s their job to make sure the department runs in a way that respects rules and athletes both. Too often, ignorance becomes a defense for poor oversight.
It’s too soon to say whether that applies here, but the ACC’s presidents will certainly be thinking about it with Phillips the same way they would be thinking about it with their own athletic directors. Running a conference isn’t the same as running an athletic department — there’s no direct oversight of coaches or athletes — but this isn’t baggage any commissioner can carry. The sooner Phillips can shed it — if he can — the quicker the ACC can get back to the business of surviving-slash-thriving.
Because, for the ACC, the timing is terrible. The last thing the conference needs is a leadership crisis while facing the gale-force winds of change in college athletics, begging Congress to bail the NCAA out of the hole it dug itself and trying to hold 15 schools together as they assess their options elsewhere with wary eyes. It needs the full and undivided attention of its commissioner, and it needs his mandate to be equally unquestioned.
As long as the lawsuits are pending, the presidents are going to be assessing Phillips’ legitimacy and liability. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t. But that’s also time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere at a time when the ACC’s future remains somewhat uncertain. Whether Phillips ends up being stained by what happened at Northwestern or not, that scandal has landed squarely on the ACC. There will be no way to avoid it on Tuesday.
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This story was originally published July 24, 2023 at 1:07 PM with the headline "ACC commissioner’s new baggage a burden the league didn’t need to shoulder right now."
