RALEIGH, N.C. _ John Swofford saved the ACC. That's not an exaggeration. That's not hyperbole. Were it not for his intervention, the ACC might be the AAC right now, a gap of far more than a single letter.
And yet, after what will be 25 years when he steps aside next June, there's no question it's time for someone else to take charge. That much was clear in Greensboro in March, when Swofford's usual attempts to govern by consensus left the ACC slow to react in the wake of an unprecedented situation.
Swofford got things this far. He ensured the league's survival. He pushed the network through, finally, in the summer of 2016. He still has plenty of work left do to over the next year. But it's time for someone else to build on the platform of stability Swofford painfully and successfully constructed, starting in the crazy, mixed-up summer of 2003.
He was six years into his tenure when he pushed _ and there were some schools that needed pushing _ to poach the Big East and give the ACC enough schools to hold a football championship game. Duke and North Carolina both voted against expansion during that crazy summer; Virginia threatened to block the whole process if Virginia Tech wasn't included.
Swofford, throughout the process, insisted it was necessary for the ACC's survival. And he was right. Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech probably haven't done, collectively, what was expected of them in football _ we still haven't had that Florida State-Miami title game after 15 years _ but their addition to the ACC made it clear that the conference was adding, not subtracting.
The ACC thrived. The Big East withered. Swofford was right all along.
"That was very necessary in order to keep the league as one of the country's most prominent ones during a very challenging change in the landscape of college athletics," Swofford told the News & Observer on Thursday. "It could have been even more extreme than it was."
While the ACC Network, finally launched last August, will be Swofford's legacy, his lasting contribution to the league, it wasn't his finest moment. He saw the waves of change in college athletics coming before anyone else. He saw that football TV revenue was going to drive the bus in the 21st Century. He jumped ahead of the curve, and stayed ahead of it by adding Pittsburgh and Syracuse, and beat the Big Ten to the punch with his half-pregnant arrangement for Notre Dame that ensured if the Irish ever do join a conference in football, it'll be the ACC.
Maryland's departure was an embarrassment, but Swofford acted quickly to add Louisville, bring Notre Dame into the fold and ensure no one else could ever leave of their own accord.
Debbie Yow, in her time as an athletic director at Maryland and N.C. State, didn't always see eye-to-eye with Swofford. They had their share of disputes, arguments and differences of opinion.
"Of course we did," Yow said Thursday. "I'm going to defend and protect my school."
But she said through all that, she always knew exactly what she was going to get from Swofford. She respected his consistency _ and his longevity, which is not to be overlooked.
"I salute him on actually having survived quite nicely for a quarter century in a dynamic enterprise that seems to change every year," Yow said.
So the conference that arrived in Greensboro for the abortive 2020 basketball tournament was stable, prosperous and filling airtime on its own network, all thanks to Swofford's works.
Over those four days, though, for the first time there were gaps in Swofford's seamless visage, scratches in the ACC's polished facade. Perhaps no one could have deftly navigated the unprecedented roiled waters of a fast-moving pandemic, but the ACC was constantly behind the curve as COVID-19 swept across sports.
When the decision was made to close the doors to fans on Thursday, no announcement was made at the end of Wednesday's games. Swofford took to the ACC Network to insist the games would be played Thursday morning while other conferences were in the process of canceling. In a press conference that morning, after his TV appearance, he was asked if it would have been a mistake to play if someone tested positive. He admitted it would be, already second-guessing himself.
The search for consensus, a hallmark of Swofford's entire tenure, left the ACC equivocating until Duke made the decision for Swofford. Duke president Vincent Price showed the kind of decisive leadership in a crisis the ACC lacked, telling Swofford that Duke was shutting down athletics whether the ACC did or not. Were it not for Price, Florida State and Clemson might have tipped off Thursday like the Big East, only to have to pull the plug at halftime. Price saved Swofford that potential embarrassment.
In presenting the trophy to Florida State, Swofford gave a lengthy, emotional and rambling speech to the two teams and assembled media and onlookers, the stands empty of all but a few people, referring to the Seminoles as the "Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball champions 2020 for the Atlantic Coast Conference." Swofford looked tired. He acknowledged today he had been considering when to step aside. Maybe he knew then it was time.
Let that take nothing away from what Swofford accomplished in the previous 24 years. The conference literally would not exist as it does now without him. His successor, whomever that may be a year from now, will inherit not only a network but a stable, thriving league that has the potential to be a thought leader in college athletics.
However tumultuous Swofford's tenure was, what comes next figures to be even more disruptive. Swofford knew as well as anyone it was time for someone else to figure it out, as ever with a keen eye for the best interests of the ACC.
