He's an administrator in the style of Homer Rice. He's probably the closest thing to Homer Rice alive in College Football today.
In your title i get the drift you are involved with a very structured form of work. I presume that you are governed by strict rules and set times. So i can see your affinity for professoriial style of managment. I quit exxon, a giant engineering company , smallengineering company to start my own company with the first ibm pc 64k personal computer. I am on other end of the spectrum.
I soon found partners and togethrr we creted a struture that could adapt and grow and had internal controls.
I think phillips adding the "academic 3 - smu, cal, stan" is a bad short term move made in reaction to FSU Clem( soon followed by Miami ) saying the bottom feeders like wf scuse duke need to go and rest like gt bc vt need to step up or we demand exit. The adding of excellent academics was made to help a few homeless academics and to buttress the coming trials.
If phillips was homer rice he would be cresting new ways for acc and b12 and other to cooperate to negotiate a superior product to tv market.
Being the acc elite nerd conference has a small nich tv audience. Going back to the 50s will get zero teams into playoffs.
I hope he has a better and more creative plan than congress will do somrthing effective to save the nerd teams and punish the mega p5.