Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM PRESEASON 2025 9 UNDER THE DOME "I think you read and you hear — and we've been approached with these con- cepts, largely circulated by private eq- uity firms — about the creation of super leagues. I view that as almost the for- mation of a version of an NFL paradigm. "To me, that would spell the end of what makes college football special. If college football tries to imitate or replicate the NFL, it's going to fail. It's going to end up looking more like a minor league sport, a somewhat bastardized version of the NFL. And we're going to lose everything that makes college football special. "These are young men who want to come and be students at Notre Dame and excel on the football field and, hopefully, do their best to excel in the classroom and have that fully integrated student-athlete experience." THE ROAD AHEAD The good news is that Bevacqua jumped into his role, not even a year and a half ago, having an idea of what he was getting himself into. At the very least, he could see the storm clouds in the distance. And not only didn't he flinch, Bevacqua flexed his belief that being the Notre Dame director of athletics isn't just about making Notre Dame football and the 25 other Irish sports programs better. It's about being a custodian of what he thinks college foot- ball and college sports should stand for. "If we move away from [the current Power Four/Group of Six college foot- ball model]," Bevacqua said, "and it be- comes all about, 'Let's get the 30 or so brands that really move the needle and create some version of the NFL,' I think we're going to ruin something that's re- ally, very, very special to this country." And so, he spends a great deal of time talking to legislators in Washington, urg- ing them to bring sanity and stability to the evolutions. And he even played a round of golf and talked about potential solu- tions to college sports' legal tugs-of-war on June 8 with President Donald Trump and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. "We're proponents of the House set- tlement," Bevacqua said. "We believe it could create some great stability, but there has to be teeth to it. … And talking with various senators and members of Con- gress about what we view, what we think is needed in terms of moving forward in this world, post-House settlement — things like these individuals, these young men and women, are student-athletes. "We believe firmly that they're stu- dent-athletes. Everything we try to do here is to create and maintain a truly integrated student-athlete experience, so we believe they're student-athletes and not employees." That's an element of Bevacqua's vi- sion, as Notre Dame's director of athlet- ics, that's non-negotiable, even though it seems to be on the table and perhaps viewed as an inevitable next step to evolve away from for others in similar positions at other schools. "I'd say the most enjoyable part of my job," Bevacqua said, "probably the main reason I'm here, is I love the interac- tion with student-athletes. … When you start to think about the pressures of the current college landscape, the future of college sports, I find that every time I have a discussion with one of our student-athletes, you leave that moti- vated and more committed than ever to what we're trying to do here." ✦