Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM AUGUST 2023 17 on the verge of bringing that storied program back to the Final Four, it would without a doubt be the tumult nation- ally. Not the national title drought. It is the NIL piece that seriously strikes a nerve with Swarbrick, who for so long — like so many others — never saw anything like it in college athletics, for better or worse. "We love name, image and like- ness and students benefiting from it," Swarbrick said. "We've been clear about that since 2015. I wish that was going on. Too much of it isn't. Most of the rest of the country is doing something else." Notre Dame has notoriously kept its hands completely clean in the NIL era. Swarbrick's messaging has much to do with that, even though at the end of the day what goes on between boosters and student-athletes, prospective and cur- rent, behind Swarbrick's back is none of his doing. Consistency across the board is much more likely to occur at a standup place like Notre Dame than an SEC school. Look at the recruiting violations Ten- nessee and Ole Miss have gotten them- selves into in the last decade, for in- stance. Those programs both have progressive NIL collectives nickeling and diming to raise every penny they can for their schools' football players. That's not happening at Notre Dame. Swarbrick likes it that way. He doesn't want to be remembered as the AD who turned a blind eye to "pay for play" infractions. He'd much rather be remembered as the AD who saw his programs rack up a total of 10 national championships — six in fencing, one in women's basketball, one each in men's and women's soccer and one in men's lacrosse — under his watch, even if none of them occurred in the sport that makes the world go round. Notre Dame's inability to win it all on the gridiron doesn't fall squarely on Swarbrick's shoulders. For a dozen years, he employed a coach many thought could get it done. That guy, Brian Kelly, is now at LSU, where he might finally get over the hump. The last three LSU football coaches have done so. Notre Dame simply faces more unique obstacles and hurdles than any other athletics program of comparable stat- ure, and Swarbrick navigated them as best he could for a decade and a half. "It has been my privilege to work alongside Jack Swarbrick as he led Notre Dame to unprecedented success over the past 15 years while providing such an influential voice in college athletics," Jenkins said. "Throughout his tenure as director of athletics, Jack Swarbrick has dem- onstrated an unwavering commitment to academic integrity and academic ex- cellence, and he has been a steadfast partner to the Notre Dame faculty in ensuring that our student-athletes can succeed in the classroom and on the field," added Patricia Bellia, the O'Neill Professor of Law, Faculty Athletics Rep- resentative and chair of Notre Dame's Faculty Board on Athletics. Swarbrick oversaw the first-ever string of five consecutive 10-plus win seasons for the Notre Dame football team from 2017-21. He paired up Notre Dame's other sports with spots in the Atlantic Coast Conference in a block- buster, head-turning, jaw-dropping agreement in 2012 — all while maintain- ing coveted independence in football. When Notre Dame's ability to main- tain a viable football schedule in 2020 was compromised due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he brokered the unique ar- rangement that enabled the team to play a full slate of ACC games that season. All the Irish did was run the table and win the ACC regular-season champion- ship. That 10-0 spurt included a thrill- ing win versus No. 1 Clemson at Notre Dame Stadium. There have been numerous pushes in the last two years since Texas and Okla- homa announced departures from the Big 12 to the SEC, and USC and UCLA proudly proclaimed future admission into the Big Ten to get Notre Dame to join one of those two super conferences. Swarbrick hasn't budged. He's confident Notre Dame will soon land lucrative enough deals with an ap- parel supplier and a broadcast rights holder to keep the Fighting Irish inde- pendent at a time when everyone else cannot stay satisfyingly afloat without the help of other big-name programs in a conglomerate. While it's Notre Dame this and Notre Dame that on the outside, all is well on the South Bend front. Swarbrick de- serves his due for that. " I 've j u s t b e e n reve l i n g i n i t ," Swarbrick said. "It's great. Everybody is talking about us. Our independence has never been more valuable than it is right now. Nothing has occurred in the past year that has caused me to reevaluate. It's been just the opposite. "Every one of these stories is about us. 'What's Notre Dame going to do?' It's reinforcing our positioning. The en- tire year, the dynamic of all that stuff, has served to reinforce where we are and the value of what we're doing." Of course, an athletics director has much to do with that. Swarbrick has constantly been on the offensive for Notre Dame. The College Football Play- off is going to a 12-team format in 2024 thanks in large part to Swarbrick, who was a part of a four-man architectural band who designed the expanded lay- out. Without Notre Dame playing in a conference championship at the end of the year, it's the more, the merrier in the CFP for ND. Swarbrick helped make that happen. A new football facility will be built after Swarbrick resigns. That'll be the equivalent to Heisman Trophy win- ner Tim Brown graduating from Notre Dame the year before the Irish won Swarbrick hired the winningest Notre Dame football coach of all time in Brian Kelly, who won 113 games from 2010-21. PHOTO BY BILL PANZICA