CHARLOTTE – ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips was asked about the possibility of moving to a nine-game football conference schedule at ACC Football Kickoff on Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C.

The question came after SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey announced he was in favor of shifting to nine games of conference-play at SEC Media Days last week, with hopes of pushing the Big Ten conference to vote for a 5+11 model in the College Football Playoff. 

“We have discussed nine,” Phillips said in his Commissioner’s Forum at the Hilton Uptown in Charlotte. “The group has always felt that, at the end of the day, those nonconference games have really been good for the league and we have really scheduled well… If you go to nine, if the SEC ends up going to nine and maybe we end up going to nine, I think there’s a few challenges.

“Those rivalry games that we really enjoy, I think that the fans really enjoy, I think some of those go away, and it now focuses on everybody’s conference schedule than it is a mix of conference schedule and non-conference.”

The concept of the SEC switching to nine conference games started over 20 years ago, but gained new relevancy when the Big Ten announced that they would only agree to a 5+11 model if the SEC, and in turn, the ACC, adopted the same nine-conference game schedule the Big Ten has played for decades.

However, this could result in losing a non-conference matchup every year for ACC teams. While Phillips clarified that rivalry games, such as the Clemson and South Carolina matchup each November, would be retained in the new model, games like the season-opener against LSU may not be possible.

The ACC also faces an additional challenge with a 17-member league, which was increased when SMU and California joined last season.

“I think it’s a challenge for us with an odd number of schools at 17 and how you exactly work that out,” Phillips said. “That in itself, there’s some difficulty there. I continue to talk to Greg (Sankey), and I talk to Tony (Pettiti) and Brett (Yormack) all the time. We have frequent conversations. I mean, no one’s kind of moving in a vacuum on this. We’re exchanging thoughts there. We’ll see.”

The deadline to decide on a format for the 2026 season, for every major conference, is the start of the 2025 football season. This means that CFB negotiations could extend into the fall.

For now, Phillips is satisfied with the state of the ACC ahead of the 2025 season.

“At the end of the day, I like where our league is,” he said in closing about potential schedule changes. “I like where we’re at in eight games because we’re playing the type of caliber that I described, 26 really good nonconference games, but we’ll adjust if we have to. I think all of this remains a work in progress.”

–photo by Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images