Jack having a hard time giving it up?
by SWPaDem (2024-03-22 12:55:40)
Edited on 2024-03-22 13:00:23
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Jack Swarbrick is leaving his job with Notre Dame in fine shape, and with college sports in chaos.

“I feel so bad about how it’s messed up right now,” the Fighting Irish athletic director told Sportico over Zoom this week, in the waning days before he retires after 15 years on the job. “I hope I can find a path that allows me to still play a role.”

Over his tenure, Swarbick developed the reputation as an unconventional thinker, particularly when it came to matters of college athletes earning money. Last October, for example, Swarbrick made headlines following his testimony before a Congressional committee, when he voiced the “fairly radical notion” that it was time for schools to consider engaging in collective bargaining with college athletes. And he had expressed support, years before many of his counterparts, for the idea that college athletes should be able to earn name, image and likeness (NIL) money. Yet Swarbrick’s rhetoric, while notable, didn’t exactly make him a change agent. Nor does he sound so avant-garde in the face of today’s most pressing questions.

After this week, Swarbrick will continue on with the title of athletic director emeritus through the end of June, after which he will base himself out of Indianapolis—close enough to Notre Dame’s campus in South Bend, Ind., but not too close.

“I don’t want to be one of those former coaches or ADs that just hangs around,” he said. “So I’ll try and make myself scarce unless I’m requested.”





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