Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Moving Forward After a year of monumental decisions, Notre Dame and athletics director Jack Swarbrick are looking to the future J By Dan Murphy ack Swarbrick leaned back, legs crossed and at ease, in the plush leather chair inside his secondfloor Joyce Center office. He had a large glass of iced tea at his side, and the top button of his shirt remained open beneath the early makings of a silver beard. Notre Dame's athletics director looked very much like a man who had found summer. Swarbrick admitted that his world was moving at a slightly more breathable pace than a year ago. Then, in the public eye, he had spent the months of June and July juggling his role on a committee that was reshaping college football's postseason, while also making behind-the-scenes moves that would land Notre Dame's sports teams in a new and secure conference. This summer and the year that will soon follow are geared more toward pushing those plans into reality and looking ahead once again to a less immediate future. Next on the horizon for Swarbrick is renovating and repurposing the school's 80,000-seat football stadium in a way that makes it the center of the evolving campus. "We've got a number of projects," he said during an hour-long interview covering the current state of all Fighting Irish sports. "In terms of magnitude and significance, that's the biggest." Facilities In May, the athletic department released conceptual images of plans for a renewed Notre Dame Stadium. The plans showed room for luxury viewing boxes and a new media center, but more significantly classrooms and meeting space intended for the entire university. Swarbrick said the university's vision is to make better use of the valuable real estate during the 359 days of the year it isn't hosting football games. The new look, he said, was surprisingly well received. "It's been uniformly positive, more than I could have anticipated and al-