Jim Phillips on ACC decision to play Friday games, compete with high school football: 'There's no sacred dates anymore'

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips wasn’t shy about college football scheduling and how it’ll overlap with other events. Namely, Friday night games competing directly with high school football.

The natural order of things used to be Friday night for high school, Saturday for college  and Sunday for the NFL. But of course, that has drastically changed over the last decade-plus, if not basically this entire quarter-century.

Phillips wanted his own conference to take advantage of competitive TV windows to draw attention to the ACC and its quality football. If Friday night gives them that, they’ll take it because it’s a whole new world.

“The compression of Saturdays is as difficult as it’s ever been,” Phillips said on ACC Network.
“We have great teams, great players, great coaches. We need to showcase them. So for us, Friday night just makes a lot of sense. I am very sensitive to high school football and getting ahead of that schedule. I hope there’s, you know, some things that maybe we can do to help the local high schools of wherever school is hosting a Friday night ACC game is, but that’s just where college football has gone, right? 

“We played a CFP game last year on a Friday night. There’s no sacred dates anymore. You play when you have a chance to. Prime time on a Friday night, with people so excited about the weekend games is a great spot for us. We’ll have 12 of our teams that will play through the course of those 12 games on Friday nights. And again, I want us to lead in those types of moments. We’ll still be on Saturday afternoons, and we’ll still be on Saturday night prime time. But Friday night is a really nice spot for us to carve out.”

While the ACC is in action on Saturday, August 23 with Stanford at Hawaii, the full slated action begins the following week. Phillips referred to a schedule that spans Thursday the 28th through Monday, September 1st.

Depending upon the state, high school football starts that weekend too, with games across the weekend. So that’s one thing.

But it’s the following weeks throughout the season since the ACC claimed 12 Friday night games this season. If that’s a regular thing, it’ll surely interfere with high school football, particularly in the areas of ACC schools.

Is it fair? Not necessarily. But as Phillips mentioned, no date is sacred anymore with college football and the NFL trying to dominate the sports calendar in-season.