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David Hale
THERE ARE TWO ways of looking at the situation the ACC faces entering Saturday’s championship game in which Duke, a 7-5 team with multiple losses outside the Power 4, could win the conference and, in doing so, keep the league out of the College Football Playoff altogether.
The first is that it’s simply a quirk of modern college football — sprawling conferences with limited crossover between teams inevitably leading to a scenario where esoteric tiebreakers come into play. The ACC’s system isn’t much different than other conferences, the policy was approved by coaches and ADs, and Duke, for all its flaws, went 6-2 in league play.
The other perspective, however, is that the ACC — for reasons rational, coincidental and, perhaps, metaphysical — attracts the unusual.
The latter philosophy might be a charming quirk of the conference if the stakes weren’t so high. The ACC’s Wheel of Destiny, «Coastal Chaos» and the social media stalwart #goacc have been fundamental to the league’s identity for nearly two decades. But as the business of college football has gotten bigger, the rewards of success richer, and the battles for conference supremacy more intense, the ACC’s role as college football’s most colorful band of swashbuckling misfits isn’t so fun for the coaches whose careers hang in the balance and the programs desperate to keep pace in a rapidly evolving landscape in which the ACC often feels woefully behind.
Virginia, 8 p.m. ET on ABC) is a result of a five-way tie for second place in the league, but also, according to a dozen current and former ACC coaches and administrators who spoke to ESPN, a symptom of longstanding problems — issues some coaches and ADs saw coming more than a decade ago — that have put the conference in increasingly difficult circumstances.
The responses varied from relative optimism: «It’s cyclical,» one current coach said. «The portal and NIL definitely were a problem, but revenue sharing will level that back out in the coming years»
To pessimism: «It’s resources,» another current coach said. «The SEC and Big Ten have more to spend on football, and they have big collectives to supplement their cap.»
To frustration: «The league has a basketball-first mentality,» one administrator said. «And it drives me fricking crazy.»
To exhaustion: «How much time have you got?» another coach added.
Clemson and Florida State — filed suit against the league in hopes of nullifying its grant of rights. Leaders of numerous schools have complained about a TV contract that puts the ACC well behind the Big Ten and SEC financially. A 2-11 bowl season last year — including two losses in the opening round of the playoff — offered ample evidence of the league’s shortcomings. Miami, the ACC’s clear-cut best team in 2025, might get left out of the playoff because, among other reasons, the Hurricanes didn’t reach the ACC championship game.
Even if the narrative is exaggerated, the reality still feels bleak.
«We were asleep at the wheel for years,» said one administrator, who included his own school as a culprit. «We watched investments, negotiations, people positioning for the future being done while we just sat there and looked around. We weren’t investing in football as a league, when everybody else knew that was the future. And we’re still not.»
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Many of the coaches and ADs who spoke with ESPN praised Phillips’ efforts to modernize the conference but said the culture that led the ACC to fall behind in the past remains embedded into the league’s DNA for too many schools. For all of Phillips’ efforts to push the ACC toward a more aggressive plan of action, he works for university presidents, who’ve too often been out of step with the modern college football landscape, according to nearly everyone who spoke with ESPN.
The league’s cultural identity as a basketball conference was a common complaint among coaches and ADs who spoke with ESPN, and an engrained philosophy of doing more with less convinced even bigger schools that investment wasn’t necessary. After all, if Frank Beamer, Bobby Bowden and a host of Miami coaches had won big without throwing millions of dollars at players and building massive football operations buildings, why couldn’t the new cast of coaches?
The ACC’s three biggest brands — Clemson, Miami and Florida State — each won at least eight games in 2013, 2015 and 2016. Since then, there has not been a single year in which they all finished with eight or more wins. It’s a problem Phillips has noted often. If the signature teams don’t win, the storylines move elsewhere. Unlike the rise of programs like Indiana and Vanderbilt, when teams like SMU or Virginia have success, the national perspective often suggests it’s the result of a down league, because the ACC’s signature brands haven’t met expectations.
Meanwhile, the SEC’s big three (Alabama, Georgia, LSU) and the Big Ten’s (Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan) have each hit the eight-win mark together six times since the ACC last did.
The reason, one coach who has worked across multiple Power 5 leagues said, is the arrivals of Nick Saban at Alabama and Urban Meyer at Ohio State.
«All colleges suffer from inertia,» the coach said, «but Saban came in and wrecked things.»
Saban and Meyer wielded massive influence and forced huge investments that dwarfed their competition. As a result, the competition — particularly at the top of both leagues — followed suit in an effort to keep up.
It took years before the results of those investments became obvious, but the SEC and Big Ten got a head start.
The ACC is just recently coming to the same conclusion.
North Carolina job last year, and Virginia Tech used a promised $249 million increase in athletics spending this fall to land James Franklin.
«Virginia Tech has money. Miami found the money. Schools didn’t have the wherewithal,» the coach said. «They were fooling themselves or didn’t have the urgency to compete on that stage.»
The question is whether it’s too little, too late.
In the early years of the NIL era, the ACC was woefully behind, with a number of schools late to develop and fund collectives, and many boosters at elite academic institutions reluctant to supplement what they viewed as a top-tier degree.
Even in the revenue-sharing era, which began in July 2025 and allowed ACC schools to spend directly on player acquisition, the ACC remains behind. SEC and Big Ten schools are able to supplement the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap through collectives and other NIL avenues, while a few ACC schools aren’t even fully funding their revenue share opportunities.
Coaches who’ve spoken with ESPN on the subject repeated a similar mantra: The best recruits increasingly see the SEC and Big Ten, with more money to spend on facilities, coaching staffs and player acquisition, as the «big leagues,» and the ACC isn’t viewed on the same plane.
«We lose to them all the time because of their brand,» one coach said.
That sets up an obvious catch-22: The league with less money to spend then needs to overpay to lure talent.
«Everything’s about money right now,» the coach said. «If you have more money, you can buy better players. If you have better players, you have a better product. If you have a better product, the narrative changes.»
The data tends to bear this out.
For the 2013-14 fiscal year — which included Florida State’s national title — the ACC distributed roughly the same amount to its membership on average ($20.8 million), according to financial reports, as the SEC ($20.9). By 2018, the SEC was distributing about $25 million per team more than the ACC. Similar trends hold for the ACC’s relative financial position against the Big Ten. For the 2023-24 fiscal year (the most recent data available), the ACC distributed $45 million per team on average, more than double what it delivered to membership 10 years earlier, but still nearly $20 million annually behind the Big Ten, and those disparities only figure to grow.
Tennessee’s failed hire of Jeremy Pruitt in 2018. As bad as it went on the field, he said, «They were still drawing 100,000 at Neyland [Tennessee’s stadium].» In other words, the revenue stream from ticket sales didn’t plummet and put the Volunteers into a downward spiral. In the ACC, the reward is almost never worth the risk, because a bad hire can set a program back years financially (see Willie Taggart and Florida State) which in turn means potentially missing the next big thing.
SO WHERE IS this all heading? Would a Duke win Saturday be another nail in the ACC’s coffin?
Revenue sharing has helped. While ADs are still scavenging to find money to meet budget needs, the ability to spend directly — rather than asking donors to fund collectives — has evened the playing field some. But coaches repeatedly said new regulations from the House settlement offer only minimal impediments for schools looking to go above and beyond. Because House rules didn’t go into effect until July 2025, many schools around the country front-loaded NIL contracts, too. Several coaches pointed to Texas Tech and its reported $30 million football roster, as a prime example of turning spending into results. The fear, they said, is the Red Raiders become the new blueprint, and the ACC will be once again chasing the market.
Without more money, there’s no sustainable way to keep pace.
«There needs to be a creative way to generate money,» a coach said. «We need more money. It’s all about money. It’s not for a lack of doing the right thing, and Jim has increased our revenue. But compared to those other two leagues, it’s not enough.»
The ACC does seem to be taking notice. Virginia Tech’s investment is encouraging, several coaches said. Cal and Boston College, two schools widely critiqued for underfunding their programs, have promised renewed spending. There’s hope the House settlement will result in more parity, a chance for ACC schools to compete on a somewhat level playing field. The lawsuits filed by Clemson and FSU were settled, the ACC agreed to a new revenue distribution that will shift more money to its most-watched schools, along with success initiatives that incentivize postseason play. The conference has also hired a new chief revenue officer and marketing leadership, sold new sponsorships for its championship games and was widely praised for offering new insider access to replay decisions during games this year.
But the ACC’s TV deal is set until 2036. Part of the settlement with FSU and Clemson was a drastically reduced financial penalty should a school decide to leave the conference in search of greener pastures. Regulation of NIL benefits has, thus far, been a mixed bag at best.
There is a path forward, but it’s a perilous one. No school, one administrator said, can manage it with a half-hearted approach to success.
Is the ACC ready for what it requires to win at the highest levels in modern college football?
Ironically for a league criticized as too focused on basketball, one administrator pointed to increased investment in that sport as a potential harbinger of better times ahead. In the past few seasons, the ACC’s hoops pedigree waned, as a bevy of Hall of Fame coaches exited for retirement. New blood was needed, but also new money. After the league didn’t see the type of success it traditionally has in 2024-25, a number of schools ponied up.
So far, the results have been better.
That can happen for football, too, the administrator said, if the same investments follow, only on a broader scale.
It’s a big «if» for a league that has spent much of the past decade short on cash and buried under a mountain of failures, missteps and jokes.
«‘It just means more’ is the slogan in the SEC,» a former coach said. «I can’t even remember what our slogan is.»
