​The vibe around the ACC’s annual summer kickoff event is very different than last year. The best way to describe the 2025 ACC Kickoff was “all Belichick all the time.” The rooms in Charlotte were teeming with anticipation over the Super Bowl winner’s arrival into college football, and it created arguably the largest press conference the event has seen when he spoke for the first time.Of course having a disastrous interview with a Sunday morning TV show, constantly being in the gossip columns for your domestic situation, and then being the subject of a widely quoted podcast that still is being referenced by some of the parties in that circle will help create the attention.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThis year, though, the ACC is likely happy that the focus is on more mundane things—tiebreakers, having a team defend their national runner up run, how many playoff teams should there be, a new schedule size, and begging Congress to save college sports from itself.UNC will speak to the media later in the week, and it’ll be interesting to see just how different the two conferences are as there is no juice with the Tar Heels this year. Folks have mostly moved on to the new shiny object of James Franklin at Virginia Tech, and the product on the field last year quickly devolved into some of the worst football seen in Chapel Hill since before the Mack Brown 2.0 Era. That’s great value for ten million a year!Anyway, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips stepped to the podium on Wednesday in Charlotte to give an annual “State of ACC Football” press conference to kick of the three days of availability from the various teams.You gotta love he’s promoting NCAA titles when college football—isn’t an NCAA title event.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHere are a few highlights of the discussion:Before the questions began—and besides the usual platitudes—Phillips did make some news by coming out in favor of the Protect College Sports Act. He painted a rather dire picture of Congress isn’t able to pass the bill, which would start to dial back some of the craziness that college sports has experienced in the past decade. The Big 12 is also in favor, but notably the SEC and Big 10 are not. From that alone you can probably tell who the bill would hurt and help. His biggest line about why legislation is needed and why teams still need a structure around the sports: “Self-governance to me means no governance.”He introduced the new ACC Tiebreaker, which Tar Heel Blog writer Matt Ferenchick will dive more into a little later this afternoon.Phillips reiterated that his preference would be for the College Football Playoff to expand all the way to 24 teams, effectively meaning if you are a top 25 team you get in. He reminded us all that if it were to change for next year it has to be done by December 1st of this year.He talked of his support for the “five-in-five” rule and expressed disappointment as to why some folks are against it