Clemson Football: ACC completely whiffed on commissioner search

Clemson football fans aren’t going to be happy with ‘lead candidate’ for ACC Commissioner

Clemson football fans have watched from a distance as the Atlantic Coastal Conference has conducted its search for a new commissioner.

At one point, Clemson President Jim Clements was seemingly becoming a top candidate for the position, but he eventually turned the job down as he wanted to stay in Tiger Town for the foreseeable future.

Now, the ACC reportedly has its candidate to replace John Swofford.

According to reports by ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, the ACC is closing in on hiring Northwestern AD Jim Phillips to take over the new role.

Phillips has had success at Northwestern, spearheading several key projects including a $270 million project for athletic facilities, and he was the pick among Big Ten athletic directors to become the next commissioner of the conference before presidents and chancellors stepped in and hired Kevin Warren instead- talk about another bad decision by those university leaders.

It’s not that Phillips is a bad hire from the Clemson football perspective, it’s just a major whiff from the ACC as a whole

Phillips has no ties to the ACC.

As a matter of fact, the only relative tie to the conference is that he was once an associate athletic director at Notre Dame before the university had any kind of partnership with the conference.

How the ACC couldn’t find anyone with ties to the conference already who the majority of schools could get behind from the get-go is what makes this a whiff.

You’re talking about a league with member schools who have high academic standards and competitive athletics across the board and bringing in a name from the Big Ten (the conference that has made bad decision after bad decision since March)- even if it wasn’t Phillip’s fault- doesn’t seem like something you’d want to do right now.

Hopefully he will bring new life and a breath of fresh air to the conference in a good way, but you just can’t help but wonder why names like Dan Radakovich, Amy Yakola and even Jack Swarbrick weren’t pursued a little harder.