Jim Phillips shares how ACC can benefit from 'fair piece' of new CFP revenue model

This summer, the effects of a groundbreaking round of conference realignment will officially be felt across college football. The moves made last year will be formalized, meaning an Autonomous Four will replace the Power Five conference model.

In the long run, though, the game of musical chairs will impact the College Football Playoff. That’s why there’s a new revenue sharing model that would see the Big Ten and SEC as the big winners with 29% apiece. The Big 12 will get 17.1% and the ACC will get 14.7%, leaving 9% for the G5 conferences, 1% for Notre Dame and less than 1% for UConn, Oregon State and Washington State.

At the league’s spring meetings this week, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips spoke about those discussions and pointed out his conference’s position. But there’s an important part of the new revenue agreement that could come into play if the ACC can maximize the opportunity of the 12-team College Football Playoff.

“It was an ongoing conversation,” Phillips told SiriusXM College. “It was respectful, and certainly, past performance had a play in the final decision. At the end of the day, you get to a position and you negotiate back and forth, and you get to a level. But what I appreciate in it is there’s a look-in in there, as well, after three years. And if the ACC performs at a higher standard – which I fully expect, with a 12-team Playoff – we’ll receive more distribution moving forward. I think that’s a fair piece of it.

“I don’t love it, where it ended, but it was about where we had participated, percentage-wise. But we have a chance to do something of that in the expanded Playoff.”

How many teams ACC can place in the expanded CFP?

The ACC was shut out of the CFP this past season even though Florida State put together a 13-0 season and won the conference championship over Louisville. In order to avoid future snubs, the AP’s Ralph Russo pointed to the importance of strength of schedule.

According to ESPN, Florida State had the fifth-best strength of record in college football while Louisville ranked No. 21. However, FSU ranked No. 36 in strength of schedule, which was second in the league only to Georgia Tech.

With so many different schedule combinations, coupled with realignment shaking up the national picture, Russo said scheduling is becoming that much more important. But the conversation could then get murky when it comes time to compare records.

“This is why I’m saying that schedule conversation is not just going to be a conference vs. conference. … The fact of the matter is, not all the schedules are going to be created equal in these conferences,” Russo told Andy Staples. “The more you put teams into these conferences, you’re going to create not just imbalance from SEC to Big Ten to Big 12 to ACC, but imbalance within the conference.

“So if I’m a 9-3 team in the ACC with Clemson’s schedule, and I’m 10-2 team in the ACC with Virginia Tech or maybe Miami’s schedule, if I’m Clemson I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we doing here? …. Even if we lose to Georgia, I can say, ‘It was 24-10, and that’s pretty good if you look at that Georgia team.’ Or maybe it was 24-17. ‘I understand we lost, but you’re comparing our 9-3 and that’s one of the three.’ that conversation is going to be much deeper and also, frankly, I think eventually it might lead to changes with the selection process.”