FILE - ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips speaks at an NCAA college basketball media day, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jim Phillips stood in the same spot Tuesday morning that he did exactly one year earlier as he officially opened the Atlantic Coast Conference’s preseason football media days.

Only now, the message and tone is far different.

The league has successfully quelled a rebellion in the form of the lawsuits by member schools Clemson and Florida State, which represented a threat fueling doomsayers’ chatter about the league’s long-term stability. Instead, the settlement that ended the legal fight spawned a new revenue-distribution model set to benefit the league’s biggest brands. There was also ESPN’s extension on its long-running partnership with the league.

And that sends the ACC into the 2025-26 sports season with the closest thing to peace as a college landscape churning with constant change can muster.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Phillips described recent months as “the restabilization of a great league that went through a very bumpy period.” He also talked about working to “make this a league that teams want to be in, not have to be in” at the start of the revenue-sharing era.

“We’re as healthy of a league as we’ve ever been based on having to go through some really tough moments,” Phillips told the AP.

“I give our presidents/board credit for it, and I give our ADs a ton of credit for it as well. … So we’ve moved away from some of the legal issues that we’ve had and now we’ve been able to work on things that I think have been put on the backburner.”

A summer earlier, FSU, Clemson and the league were entangled in a crossfire of lawsuits over the ACC’s ability to charge hundreds of millions of dollars in exit fees for schools that leave for another league.

That came amid the backdrop of the ACC’s financial conundrum. The league annually posts record revenue hauls ($711.4 million for 2023-24, with football-playing members receiving nearly $45 million). It also keeps lagging behind the Big Ten ($928.1 million revenue, $63.1 million payout) and Southeastern Conference ($839 million, $52.6 million), though it ranks firmly third among the Power Four leagues ahead of the Big 12 ($493.8 million, $39.5 million).

Had the Clemson or FSU lawsuits proceeded, there was potential a ruling might defang the league’s exit fees. Or its grant-of-rights deal, signed by all ACC schools to give the conference control of their media rights — and the TV money that comes with them — as a deterrent to moving elsewhere.