If you can’t beat them, join them. Or in the case of the ACC, get them to join you.

It’s a simple solution to an image problem so complex, especially when it comes to basketball, that ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is planning to hold a meeting with his coaches and athletic directors to discuss ways of improving the league’s national perception.

And it’s not hiring consultants to devise better branding campaigns, getting Tony Bennett to start being more vocal in extolling the conference’s virtue to the media or imploring its teams to start winning more games.

The ACC already does that when it matters most. 

Even in its current “down” state, the league’s .635 NCAA Tournament winning percentage since 2019 (40-23) is still the best over that period among the Big 12 (40-24, .625), Pac-12 (24-15, .615), SEC (33-27, .550) and the perpetually overrated Big Ten (35-34, .514).

If Phillips is truly interested in changing the narrative surrounding his basketball product, he and his leadership council should follow the playbook of former commissioner John Swofford, raid the Big East again and vote to invite UConn — 2023 national champion UConn — to become the ACC’s 16th member.

ASAP.

It’s a move that makes sense for everyone involved. 

For the Huskies, it would also make dollars. A lot more of them than they’re getting with their current conference affiliation.

You can bad-mouth the ACC’s media deal all you like. Compared to the contracts negotiated by the Big Ten and SEC, it is a miserable deal. 

But at $155 million annually from ESPN, a number that would presumably be increased with the addition of another mouth to feed, it’s still like hitting the PowerBall jackpot in relation to the $40 million a year the current Big East gets from Fox.

Becoming a member of the ACC would also accomplish a less-tangible goal UConn has been chasing since the original Big East imploded during the first round of conference realignment over a decade ago by restoring its status as a Power 5 program.

Don’t think the folks in Storrs are interested?

You might want to check with football coach Jim Mora, who according to numerous published reports last summer, has been telling potential recruits that his goal is getting the Huskies into the ACC “within the next few years.”

While such a move would clearly benefit UConn, what’s in it for the ACC?

For starters, it would allow the conference to claim 5 more men’s basketball national championships as its own – including the one the Huskies earned by crushing San Diego State on Monday night – to go with those it inherited with the earlier addition of Louisville and Syracuse.

It would give the league a blue-blood program that’s back in full bloom to hold down the fort while current brand names North Carolina and Duke work through their respective transitions. And in the person of UConn’s Dan Hurley, it would inject a badly needed shot of name recognition and personality into an ACC coaching roster severely depleted over the past 2 years by the retirements of Hall of Famers Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim.

More important, adding UConn would immediately bolster the ACC’s standing in the NCAA’s NET rankings while increasing its visibility in the media capitals of the Northeast – where many of the league’s most vocal critics are located.

It would seem like a no-brainer.

So then why has the ACC already passed on multiple opportunities to adopt the Huskies into its family?

Explanations have run the gamut from academics – UConn’s basketball program served a 1-year postseason suspension for failing to meet the NCAA’s minimum Academic Progress Rate requirement in 2013 – to objections raised by New England neighbor Boston College.

The real reason is football.

That’s the sport that steers the financial bus in college sports these days and at the time of its previous expansions, the ACC couldn’t afford to water down its already lightly-regarded football product with another program with little-to-no intrinsic value.

But the situation has changed dramatically.

The league’s increased emphasis on football, at least to this point, has failed to produce any positive results. If anything, the league has taken a step back with its 1 marketable asset, Clemson, failing to make the Playoff for the past 2 seasons.

Whether by extension or coincidence, basketball has suffered even more.

Even if it’s only a matter of perception.

Phillips has made it clear that the ACC is intent on finding ways of regaining its claim as the top basketball conference in the country. UConn is just as anxious to raise its stature back to the top of the college sports food chain.

With the Huskies’ football program having made major strides by earning bowl eligibility in Mora’s 1st season, the time might finally be right for a marriage of convenience to be arranged.