Commissioner Jim Phillips Makes A Ludicrous Claim About How Exciting ACC Football Is

When you think of which conferences in college football boast the best collection of teams, which one comes to mind?

For me, I think of the Big 10 because I’m a Michigan Wolverines fan. Go ahead, make all your "cheaters" remarks and all your Connor Stallions jokes. But my cousin plays for them, and I’m proud of him and the contributions he’s made to a national championship program.

I think of not just the Wolverines, but I think of Ohio State (sorry, "That Team Down South"), Penn State, and the high-profile newcomers to the conference (Oregon, USC, Washington). That’s a loaded conference if I ever saw one.Then there’s the SEC, home of many of the most recent national champions: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, LSU, Auburn - the list goes on (not to mention Oklahoma and Texas, who just joined this year). Even the mediocre teams in this conference could beat a lot of teams at the DI level.

But apparently, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips thinks that his conference is the most exciting. No, seriously.

"We have elite coaching leadership, six ACC head coaches named to the 2024 Dodd Trophy pre-season watch list. No conference has more. Two of the three active coaches in the country to win a national title reside here in the ACC: Mack Brown and Dabo Swinney," Phillips said. The combination of our proven veteran coaches combined with our dynamic young coaches is incredibly powerful."

He also added that the ACC is the only conference to have two teams finish in the Top 25 in each of the past seven years.

While both of those things may be true (he also had some other stats that were a pretty desperate attempt to hype up his conference), I don’t think there’s many college football fans who would say the ACC could touch what the Big 10 and SEC can offer. 

Sure, Clemson and Florida State have each won titles in the CFP era, but after that, there aren’t many marquee programs. Louisville and North Carolina are solid, but I think most college fans would rather see Florida and Auburn play over Florida State and North Carolina.

Now, my counterargument could be proven wrong this year. Maybe the ACC teams surprise us all and the SEC and Big 10 both have an off year.

But I find that as likely as Kirby Smart finding a good solution to stop the driving arrests rocking his program. The ACC just doesn’t have more excitement around it compared to the other leagues.