Where Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick stands on conference realignment
Common sense would tell anybody who follows college football that the past year of Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick‘s life has been spent on the phone with commissioners and their subordinates about whether the future of Notre Dame football involves full-time residency in a Power Five conference. Common sense isn’t always as sensible as it seems.
Because, well, that just hasn’t been the case.
“I haven’t given two seconds of thought to it because I’ve just been reveling in it,” Swarbrick said. “It’s great. Everybody is talking about us.”
Outside of name, image and likeness (NIL), conference realignment has been the most popular talking point in college football in the last two years. Texas and Oklahoma announced a switch from the Big 12 to the SEC in 2021, and USC and UCLA announced departures from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten around this time last summer. The complete remodeling of the landscape is in vogue.
So is Notre Dame.
Everyone wants to know if Notre Dame can survive the current climate of NIL without a collective that throws money at prospective players, which is occurring at the four aforementioned schools as well as at the powerhouses of the leagues they are joining. Everyone also wants to know if Notre Dame can survive in the sport in this era without being attached to a super conference like the SEC or Big Ten.
Swarbrick answered the latter rather emphatically in an exclusive interview with BlueandGold.com.
“Our independence has never been more valuable than it is right now,” Swarbrick said. “Nothing has occurred in the past year that has caused me to reevaluate. It’s been just the opposite.”
Why? How? Huh?
“Every one of those stories is about us,” Swarbrick said. “What’s Notre Dame going to do? It’s reinforcing our positioning. The entire year, the dynamic of all that stuff, has served to reinforce where we are and the value of what we’re doing.”
In the end, it comes down to money. Dollar signs. Dinero. Texas and Oklahoma joining the SEC were prime examples of the rich getting richer — on both ends of the deal. The Longhorns and Sooners are fattening their pocket books, and the rest of the league members are, too, just by having their new adversaries around. It may look weird to see the burnt orange up against a lighter hue of the same color in Austin and Gainesville in a conference bout, but optics don’t outweigh capital.
It would also look weird for Notre Dame to face Michigan or Ohio State in a game that counts on both sides’ Big Ten ledgers, but the Wolverines and Buckeyes would still be all for it. So would Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti. Imagine if he was the one credited with luring Notre Dame to a conference after over 100 years of independence outside of the 2020 COVID campaign? He’d be a hero.
It’s not happening in the first year of his tenure and the last of that of Swarbrick, though. Swarbrick likes Notre Dame football right where it finds itself at the moment. The Irish are on the verge of receiving extremely large paydays in the form of new apparel contract and a TV media rights agreement. The former will come before the latter, likely as soon as this month, but rest assured they’re both on the way. As long as Notre Dame’s annual payout remains competitive with that of the top dogs in the major conferences, the Irish won’t join a conference.
Swarbrick still knows it’s not all quiet on the South Bend front, though. As much as he enjoys sitting back and watching the world bring up Notre Dame in every college football conversation, happenstances that do affect the Irish’s positioning could arise at any moment. The College Football Playoff keeps restructuring, for instance, and the moment a format is passed that adversely affects Notre Dame the Irish will have a serious problem. Notre Dame already cannot receive a first-round bye in the 12-team format that begins in 2024. The highest seed the Irish can earn is the No. 5 spot. If that trends further in the negative direction, Swarbrick will have some things to think about. And even possibly hop on the phone with those commissioners everyone thinks he’s been in nonstop contact with since last summer.
That’s just the reality of the ever-changing environment.
“The rate of change in this industry is accelerating,” Swarbrick said. “I have no idea what it will look like in two years much less 10. I don’t spend any time trying to predict that future other than the things I’m certain will occur. We want to be involved in shaping that future. We focus on that as much as anything. Notre Dame should help lead. We get the opportunity to do that. As long as we’re in that position, we’ll manage.”
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