CHARLOTTE – ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips surely knew questions about his league’s future were coming today.

Taking center stage at the ACC Tipoff, Phillips offered his state of the league address and then took questions, and it didn’t take long for the future of the conference to come up.

In a multi-pronged question, the very first one for Phillips, the focus was on the health of the conference, tying in summer additions of Stanford, California, and SMU, and that it wasn’t a unanimous vote. North Carolina, Clemson, and Florida State did not vote in favor of expanding with those three schools.

In addition, the question was also about adding out of fear the league might lose some schools, notably the three dissenters.

“I cannot control individual decisions on campus, and we can't,” Phillips replied. “We have absolutely listened. I've tried to be a really good listener. It hasn't fallen on deaf ears. We've been proactive. The distribution of dollars with success initiative is part of what I'm hearing, and maybe a majority of what I'm hearing from some of the schools that have been vocal about it.

“Getting to 18 protects the ACC, now and into the future. Schools will ultimately make the decisions that they want.”

The ACC is currently at 15 members, and for it to maintain the current television contract with ESPN, which should pay each school just above $40 million this athletic year, the conference mustn’t go below 15 members.

So, the natural assumption by those with a glass half-empty view of the league is the additions were to protect the deal in case some of the aforementioned money schools leave for other conferences. Of course, that in and of itself is a whole other issue, one that so far does not appear possible without paying a massive financial penalty while also granting the ACC all of its TV revenue through 2036, which is the duration of the Grant of Rights that is holding the conference together.

“What I keep hearing from them is they like being in the ACC, and we are making progress, and we have addressed some of the things that they've talked about,” Phillips said.

Phillips cited the 2004 expansion adding Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech, in that it also did not receive a unanimous vote.

Cal, Stanford, and SMU will formally join the conference next summer, and begin league play for the 2024-25 academic year. Scheduling models are being looked at that can satisfy equality with respect to travel and competitive balance for all sports, notably the revenue ones football and basketball.

Currently, SMU is 5-2 overall and 3-0 in the American Athletic Conference, Stanford is 2-5 and 1-4 in the Pac-12, and Cal is 3-4 and 1-3 in the Pac-12.

In basketball, SMU has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2015, when Larry Brown was its coach, and it has just that one NCAA appearance since 1993. Cal hasn’t been to the NCAA’s since 2016, and has lost 20 or more games in five of the last six seasons, including a 3-29 mark last season. Stanford hasn’t been to the big dance since 2014, just once since 2008, and has averaged 14.3 losses per season over the last eight years.

None of that deters Phillips’ confidence in the move and overall health of the conference moving into its 18-team conglomerate next summer.

“I've never been more confident in the league than what we just went through over the last three or four months,” he said. “Let me articulate it a little bit further. First, we talked about having a different distribution of revenue success initiatives that we made a public statement about in the spring, in May, after the board meeting. We have moved quickly on that and will distribute dollars differently for the first time. We listened to the membership on that.

“Secondly… we've needed to modernize and forward face our ACC brand. We've had the expansion piece, and we've moved to Charlotte…

Academically, there's no one that can tell me or anyone else that those aren't three really good schools that fit the ACC. Athletically, two of them have led the Sears Director's Cup. One has dominated it, the other has been involved in it. Funnel more student-athletes from those two schools than any other, and also have had good history in a variety of other sports. They bring two new markets to us: San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Dallas-Fort Worth. We are a national conference.”

And, Phillips says, the ACC is a unified conference.

“We move forward,” he said. “We move forward together. I don't feel any hangover by any of the schools that may not have been in favor of the expansion piece of it. Zero.”