Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, entering his 14th season, said it's been a good run, but he's looking for more.
"Obviously, we've been consistent. 11 postseasons, and I hope that they remember the relationships that we've built in the community and amongst the donor base," Doeren said. "It's been a great ride. There's a lot more left in the tank. A lot of fuel, a lot of hunger, and a lot of goals, so I hope this story's nowhere near the end."
With quarterback CJ Bailey coming back for a third season with the Pack, optimism is high.
"I knew I wanted to be at NC State," Bailey said in Charlotte, sporting a tailored red suit. "I told (the coaches) I wanted to be here, so don't even worry about it."
Miami hopes Duke QB transfer Mensah can keep 'Canes rolling
The Miami Hurricanes are back on the national scene in college football in large part because of the acquisition of two high-profile transfer quarterbacks the past two years.
They're counting on a third, Darian Mensah from Duke, to keep them in the conversation.
The junior redshirt quarterback said Wednesday he made the move to Miami largely because of the success Cam Ward and Carson Beck experienced after joining the Hurricanes through the transfer portal. Ward became the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL draft, and Beck took Miami to the College Football Playoff championship game last season and was selected in Round 3.
Mensah said after watching Ward and Beck perform he believes Miami gives him a chance to win a national title, while simultaneously best utilizing his skill set to improve his NFL draft stock.
"Seeing what the last two quarterbacks did at Miami was a huge factor," Mensah said at the ACC Kickoff. "Seeing the freedom that (offensive coordinator Shannon) Dawson lets the quarterback play with within his offense was also something that was attractive to me."
Mensah's arrival in Miami followed a tension-filled offseason legal fight between Duke and its elite QB, who had signed a two-year contract in 2025 that included name, image and likeness money. The end result was a settlement that allowed Mensah to move on after the school had attempted to block his departure.
Mensah said the transition to Miami has been "seamless" and that his new teammates have been welcoming even while talk swirls around his reported $10 million NIL deal.
"I feel like I'm at home here in Miami and you couldn't ask for more," he said.
Mensah said he remains friends with his former Duke teammates but that "business is business."
Mensah said he briefly considered joining the NFL draft but decided he needed to show more to scouts.
"I feel like I lost my team some games last year with just having the ball loose," Mensah said. "And so I think that was a big thing for me and then just taking what the defense gives me and just being better with that, and not pressing."
ACC revamps tiebreakers for conference title game
The ACC is revamping the tiebreaker format for its football championship game following a controversial finish last season that allowed a five-loss Duke team to get in over then-No. 10-ranked Miami - a situation that put the Hurricanes at risk of missing the expanded College Football Playoff.
Miami, which had been the ACC's most dominant team during the regular season, wound up being selected for the playoff and went on to reach the national title game, where it fell short to No. 1 Indiana 27-21.
Duke beat No. 20 Virginia in the ACC championship game last year for its first outright ACC title since 1962 but was not selected for the CFP, much to the dismay of Blue Devils coach Manny Diaz.
The new football championship tiebreaker policy will take effect beginning with the 2026 season, reflecting the league's transition to a nine-game conference schedule and ensuring a fair and equitable process for determining participants in the ACC championship game, the league said.
The updated tiebreaking procedure is built on three guiding principles:
- Head-to-head results always will matter most.
- No team will be overly rewarded or penalized based on the number of conference games it played.
- When head-to-head competition cannot separate tied teams, the team with the strongest overall body of work will earn the opportunity to compete for the ACC championship and the conference's automatic qualifier to the College Football Playoff.
"Our game will feature the two most deserving teams," ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said at ACC Kickoff on Wednesday in Charlotte.
Phillips said the third tier of that tiebreaker will be based on a SportSource Analytics metric used by the CFP.
The updated policy was developed to reward head-to-head results and account for the league's teams playing an alternate number of conference games while also identifying the two most deserving teams to compete for the ACC championship and the conference's automatic berth into the CFP.
Virginia names starting quarterback
Virginia coach Tony Elliott on Wednesday named Missouri transfer Beau Pribula the team's starting quarterback to open the 2026 season.
The Cavaliers open the season at home on Aug. 29 against NC State.
Pribula completed 67.4% of his passes last season for 1,941 yards for the Tigers with 11 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He also ran for 297 yards and six TDs.
He played his first two seasons at Penn State. He has played in 34 college games during his last three seasons with 20 TDs and 10 INTs.
"He's a competitor and he has a ton of leadership and a lot of moxie," Elliott said. "He's extremely intelligent as a quarterback and he has an awareness of the areas that he wants to improve upon and has attacked those with tenacity this offseason. I'm excited about the potential that he has."
Pribula said that vote of confidence from Elliott was reassuring heading into the summer workouts.
"You know, you can kind of get a head start in terms of communication with my guys and see the things that I'm comfortable with," Pribula said. "That makes it kind of easier from my perspective to take a bigger leadership role."
Commissioner pushing corporate sponsorships
Jim Phillips has spent his five-plus-year tenure as Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner trying to generate more revenue for a league facing financial pressures even with yearly record hauls.
For his league - and across the national landscape in the revenue-sharing era, for that matter - that has included more emphasis on corporate sponsorships.
Finding event sponsors for naming rights. Securing deals for advertisements on conference TV networks. It's all about looking for ways to sell those options and supplement the media rights payouts and earnings from postseason success that stand as core engines of the college financial system.
And stacking every bit helps in a time when schools are allowed to pay athletes directly.
"I don't know if it's pressure, but it's the reality," Phillips said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press during the league's preseason football media days. "To me it's the reality of this role and it's reality of our league. We have to continue to find incremental dollars each and every year that continue to grow."
ACC's revenue grows while trailing the Big Ten and SEC
That's been a particular focus for Phillips, too, in dealing with a significant revenue gap behind the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference since his spring 2021 arrival.
The league reported about $826.5 million in total revenue in tax filings covering the 2024-25 sports season, with schools earning a full distribution share getting an average of $47.1 million.
That continued the ACC's upward trajectory; the league reported $617 million for 2021-22 in Phillips' first full season, good for a full-share average of $39.4 million. And Phillips said Wednesday during his annual forum that the league would crack $900 million in total revenue for the just-completed 2025-26 season.
By comparison, the Big Ten and SEC both crossed the $1 billion mark in total revenue in their 2024-25 filings, with the Big Ten paying an average of nearly $79.9 million to full-share members while the SEC came in at nearly $72.4 million.
The biggest way to move the needle for a league looking to change its financial picture typically is media rights contracts. The ACC is locked into a deal with ESPN - both for its base TV rights and the August 2019 launch of the ACC Network - through the 2035-36 season. The TV revenue continues to increase, but Phillips said at least some gains have come through corporate sponsorships, such as investment management firm T. Rowe Price putting its name on the tradition-rich men's basketball tournament.
The ACC has doubled its list of corporate sponsorships to nine in the past five years, a list that includes Apple, Dr Pepper, Gatorade and Allstate. On Wednesday, the league announced a deal with AI cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest, which includes advertising through ESPN, ESPN parent company Disney and the ACC Network.
That goes with other adjustments such as changes to the league's revenue-distribution model to reward programs that generate higher TV viewership and the "success initiative" that allows schools to keep money generated by their own postseason success.
"You can't wait around, you can't just kind of sit on your hands as it relates to some of these other areas and not fully explore and commit to finding those additional dollars," Phillips told the AP. "All of that stuff adds up incrementally."
- ABC11's Travon Miles and The Associated Press contributed.