ACC Media Days: Jim Phillips Announces Player Availability Reports Will Be Required In ACC Conference Games

The SEC and the Big Ten are no longer the only conferences that will have player availability reports. During his opening press conference at the 2025 ACC Media Days, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips announced that player availability reports will be required in football, men's and women's basketball, and baseball in conference games. In football, reports will be issued two days before games, with updates one day before and on game day.

"Similarly, in the sports of football, men's and women's basketball, as well as baseball, the ACC will implement a player availability reporting policy for each conference game. In football, an institution will submit an availability report two days before each league game, with updates one day before and on game day. All submitted reports will be publicly available on theACC.com. This decision is directly connected to our ongoing commitment to best protect our student-athletes and our multi-faceted approach to addressing the effects of sports wagering.

In this case, it would alleviate pressure from entities or individuals who are involved in sports wagering that attempt to obtain inside information about availability from players, coaches, and other staff. Safety has always been taken seriously by this league, and I applaud our schools for further enhancing and formalizing these important measures."

When asked a question about how receptive coaches were to this new policy, Phillips had this to say:

"Coaches are hard to change, but when we told them that we were doing it, no one said anything on the call. I don't know what that meant, other than they were accepting it.

It's the right thing. It's the right thing. I understand, and every coach has to do what they have to do in order to get their team ready, and there's always gamesmanship, always. That's been around for a hundred years, and it's going to continue, but it's the right thing.

There's stresses on our student-athletes from individuals that are trying to garner information, and sometimes it's pretty innocent because they just want to know, they're a big fan, but other times it really does trickle and lead yourself to the gambling and sports wagering kind of path.

We haven't come up with a fine policy yet. We're still kind of discussing that. But we'd also like to think that people are going to do what they're asked to do, and we hope that it wouldn't come down to that.

Schools will have to identify who that person is going to be. For football it will be two days before, the day before, and then two hours before kick. For basketball and for baseball, it will be one day before and then two hours before tip-off or first pitch.

It's the right thing. It's, again, the modernization of our conference, the modernization of college sports, and the expectations we should have to protect our student-athletes."