John Swofford: An Officer. And a Gentleman.

Distinguised and friendly, John Swofford had the fire to push relentlessly for things he prioritized.McCardell Photography

John Swofford and John Skipper laugh about it now. Whenever they met for lunch inside Grandover Resort’s DiValletta restaurant — they sat in the same booth with a picturesque view of the golf course — they knew the conversation would eventually turn to the prospects for an ACC Network.

“John really wanted a network and, man, did he let me hear about it,” Skipper said of those lunch meetings just around the corner from the ACC’s headquarters in Greensboro, N.C.

It was inside that familiar booth at DiValletta that Swofford, the ACC’s longtime commissioner, and Skipper, then the ESPN president before he stepped aside in 2017, drew up plans for an ACC Network.

What would the business model look like? Was the conference strong enough competitively to support a 24/7 linear channel? Could ESPN convince the distributors that there was an audience for another conference-branded channel, one that would overlap some of the states where the SEC Network already had a foothold? Could the conference withstand a testy distribution battle in an environment that wasn’t favorable for another regional sports network?

The challenges were plentiful, but the conversations between the fellow University of North Carolina alums were relaxed and easygoing.

“John had grown up in the ACC and gone to Carolina,” Swofford said of Skipper, who grew up in nearby Lexington, N.C., just a half-hour drive from ACC headquarters. “He went into those conversations about a network with an open mind.”

Skipper would often visit his home state to see his mother. The convenient proximity made it easy for Swofford and Skipper to connect at DiValletta for a chopped salad.

“We would have preferred a cheeseburger and fries, but we had to watch our figures,” Skipper said, laughing. 

Swofford proved convincing in those outings. The conference and ESPN eventually decided in 2016 to launch an ACC-branded linear channel three years later that would be owned by ESPN. They agreed to share the profits evenly.

The network, which went live in August 2019, now has about 50 million subscribers, a number that is comparable to the ESPN-owned SEC Network and the Fox-owned Big Ten Network.  

Launching the ACC Network became the denouement in Swofford’s 50-year career in college athletics, a crowning achievement that cemented a legacy forged over 24 years as the ACC’s commissioner and 17 years as athletic director at his alma mater, North Carolina, where he played quarterback and defensive back for the Tar Heels football team.

Years of success earned John Swofford many momentoes for his bookshelves.McCardell Photography

By the time Swofford retired in 2021, he had established himself as one of the most distinguished leaders and influential commissioners across the college landscape.

He guided the ACC from a homespun collection of nine members to a 15-school behemoth during his tenure, while transforming the conference’s profile from a basketball-dominated league to a more balanced collection of football and basketball schools.

“John had the vision to see where football was going,” said Jeff Elliott, the ACC’s longtime chief financial officer under Swofford. “When he first got to the ACC, football was accounting for about half of the total revenue and basketball was the other half. John, going back to the early 2000s, knew that football from a television standpoint was going to be the driver and that led us to our first expansion with Miami and Virginia Tech.”

The ACC Network came with a price, and that price was an interminably long media rights agreement with ESPN that goes out to 2036.

The length of the ACC’s media rights deal has drawn scrutiny in recent months as conference realignment and expansion by the SEC and Big Ten reshuffled the power deck in college athletics. While those conferences are going back to their media partners for another round of revenue increases, the ACC is tied to the long-term 20-year extension through 2036.

What is overlooked, though, is that there wouldn’t be an ACC Network without such a lengthy media rights agreement. It was the cost of doing business at the time.

In fact, ESPN originally fought for the deal to extend out to 2039, but Swofford talked them down three years.

“People are always going to second-guess decisions and ask why they did such a long-term deal,” Skipper said. “It was an exchange of value. John was anxious to have a network, and I was anxious for him to have one. We did very good business with the SEC Network, which was a moneymaking business for us from Day 1. So, we were not reluctant participants in doing another network.

“The distributors did not want any more regional networks, but we knew the ACC was strong enough in its footprint that we knew we could get it distributed over time. And we did.”

The launch of the ACC Network in 2019 was Swofford’s crowning achievement in his time as conference commissioner.getty images

Football revenue grew to account for 80% of the conference’s total revenue, aided by the addition of Syracuse, Boston College, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Miami and Virginia Tech.

Along the way, Swofford convinced the league’s schools to sign a grant of media rights, which is a legal document intended to hold the membership together. If a school decides to leave for another conference, the ACC would retain its media rights until 2036.

“If John had not made those moves back then, I’m convinced that there would be a Power Four instead of a Power Five,” Elliott said. “I really believe the ACC would have been left out if we had listened to the people who wanted to stay at nine schools and not expand.”

During that time from 1997 until his retirement in 2021, Swofford expanded the conference from a modest six-state footprint to its current 10-state region along the Mid-Atlantic. The ACC’s revenue topped $578 million in the 2020-21 academic year, shattering the conference’s previous records despite coping with the impact of COVID-19 on the 2020 football season.

The only two conferences consistently ahead of the ACC, in terms of revenue, are the Big Ten and SEC, conferences that already had networks. 

ESPN’s Burke Magnus, president of programming and original content, credited Swofford’s “presidential” style and “calm and measured” approach with cultivating such deep relationships at ESPN. Whenever Swofford was challenged about putting all of the conference’s rights into one deal with ESPN, Swofford would say that he wanted to be in business with “the worldwide leader.”

“It takes a real diplomat and a real technician to not just keep it on the rails, but to achieve some level of growth and progress, which he did masterfully,” Magnus said. “He could handle the tough conversation; he wasn’t a pushover by any stretch. But he always understood that he was in a collaborative setting and he never came into a situation thinking he could do it all himself.

“John could go down as the last of the old-school commissioners. He was the ultimate professional.”

ADs Gene DeFilippo of Boston College (left) and Ron Wellman of Wake Forest with Swofford as the league expanded. getty images

Swofford, whose quiet demeanor belied his fiercely competitive nature, knew what a network would mean to the conference. The ACC’s growth during Swofford’s tenure wouldn’t have been complete without a conference channel.

With it, the ACC could be considered a proper peer to the other leagues. Without it, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Whenever he saw Skipper, Swofford, realizing what was at stake, put on the full-court press with a side helping of Southern gentleman.

“The network really solidified the league that much more,” Swofford said. “The 24/7 exposure, the exposure for the Olympic sports, the behind-the-scenes programming that comes with having your own network, all of that has contributed.

“It has exceeded expectations.”

Swofford’s legacy extends well beyond the network and expansion.

 He introduced the men’s basketball tournament to a new market at Barclays Center in Brooklyn and found a permanent home for the football championship game in Charlotte.

He made women’s basketball a priority by devoting resources and making associate commissioner for women’s basketball Bernadette McGlade his first hire.

As BCS director, he negotiated the first media deal that put the championship game on cable, when it left Fox Sports for ESPN.

Swofford’s disdain for self-promotion probably caused him to miss out on some accolades that he deserved, such as being one of the most progressive thinkers in college athletics.

“I think he was often under-estimated, particularly in the last 10 years when there have been so many challenging situations to navigate,” Magnus said, calling the most recent era of leadership by former commissioners Jim Delany of the Big Ten, the late Mike Slive of the SEC, Bob Bowlsby of the Big 12 and Swofford “the golden era” of conference commissioners.

“And John went toe-to-toe with all of them.”  

In retirement, John Swofford and his wife, Nora, have built a home on the golf course not far from the ACC’s offices in Greensboro, and he is enjoying having more free time.McCardell Photography