Pete Thamel is reporting the ACC will replace John Swofford ,who's retiring, with Jim Phillips, the current Northwestern AD.
Why should we care? We should care because one of the things on his plate will be renegotaiating the TV deal with ESPN. And we care about that because the deal is lopsided in favor of ESPN. This could mean that in order to grab more money on that contract, the ACC may need to add 2 teams. One of those teams is likely some form of Notre Dame in football. The ND/ NBC contract runs through 2025 but it wouldn't surprise me if ND decided to finally join a conference after that deal is up since they are effectively sharing football revenue with the ACC this season anyway.
That leaves an opening for Team 16 in all sports to balance the divisions and that needs to be UC.
I personally have never met Dr. Pinto and from my perspective it's hard to get a read on him regarding sports in relation to academics but I hope we don't have to poke him with a stick and wake him up.
