As our fearless leader, Eric, wrote about yesterday, news came down Thursday morning that Jack Swarbrick would step down as athletic director (not surprising given his age and lengthy tenure) and be replaced by NBC Sports Group chair Pete Bevacqua (a fair bit surprising). Like Swarbrick, Bevacqua is a Notre Dame alum.
NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua ’93 has been named Special Assistant to the President for Athletics.
He will assume the position of University Vice President & James E. Rohr Director of Athletics upon Jack Swarbrick’s ’76 departure in 2024.https://t.co/nQxIPcQ9RQ#GoIrish pic.twitter.com/fimF79pCDD
— University of Notre Dame (@NotreDame) June 8, 2023
Swarbrick’s legacy and Bevacqua’s arrival
It’s a natural time for Swarbrick to step aside for three reasons. First, he just made the last of three hires in about three years in the three major sports at ND, in men’s hoops coach Micah Shrewsberry. Shrewsberry joined Niele Ivey (hired in 2020 for women’s hoops) and Marcus Freeman (hired in 2021 for football) under the Golden Dome. (Less newsy but also noteworthy: He also hired Shawn Stiffler in baseball and Salima Rockwell in volleyball within the past year and a half.) Second, the 12-team College Football Playoff he helped devise as part of a working group over the course of a couple of years will come to fruition in 2024. Third, he’s nearing age 70, although he said he’s not retiring and wouldn’t mind playing another role before he does.
Like anyone who has been around as long as Swarbrick has, his tenure has its supporters and detractors. No one would argue, though, that with the possible exception of Moose Krause, he’s the most influential athletic director ever at ND given everything that happened at the school under his watch. Whatever you think about any of them, hiring Brian Kelly (and, 12 years later, Freeman), the most recent football stadium expansion, Compton Family Ice Arena, the ACC deal, the Under Armour deal, his work with the CFP and probably many things I’m forgetting are all things in which Jack played a key role. He’s a massive reason for where the Irish are sitting as an athletic department right now.
The decision to have Bevacqua succeed Swarbrick is interesting. In some ways, it echoes the Freeman hire to replace Kelly. Though Bevacqua is not the spring chicken Freeman was and is (he’s in his early 50s), he’s a relative novice in collegiate athletics with deep affection for ND. (He said yesterday that he “didn’t have a burning desire, necessarily, to be an athletic director. I had a burning desire to be the athletic director at Notre Dame.”) He’s only held his current position since 2020. He’s replacing a man who had a lengthy background in amateur sports prior to taking the ND job. Like Freeman, he’s inheriting an enterprise that is seemingly in a stable position, at least in terms of personnel, due to work done by his predecessor.
Also like Freeman, Bevacqua will be taking his new job at what’s continuing to be a turbulent time in college sports. It’s cliché at this point to write “given the transfer portal and NIL”, but I’m doing it anyway. Even more of an issue for the Irish right now is the SEC and B1G’s collective decision to effectively turn all of college sports into a proxy turf war, which could affect ND’s independence.
Football’s next TV deal
Another factor in that: Notre Dame’s television deal with NBC is set to expire after the 2025 football season, which means it will soon be time to negotiate the next one.
Obviously hiring someone directly from NBC as athletic director signals that the Irish have minimal, if any, interest in straying from NBC for its next media deal. (In any case, it seems to nuke their leverage if they were ever considering doing so, which in all likelihood they weren’t anyway.)
NBC’s recent deal with the B1G was reportedly supported by ND, who viewed the conference as ‘shoulder programming’ that could make NBC more of a factor in the sport and as a result could in turn get ND the big increase in media rights revenue it’s seeking for itself. However, rumors have swirled ever since USC and UCLA took orders from FOX decided to join the B1G that this one, for real this time, might force the Irish into the league themselves. Bevacqua said all the right things about independence in yesterday’s SI story:
“I’m a fan of independence, for sure. It’s another element of what makes Notre Dame different. I think those differentiators for Notre Dame are more important and more valuable today than they’ve ever been.”
But money talks, and if ND can’t negotiate the same kind of threefold increase that the B1G and SEC have been getting for their media rights – and/or if the Irish find their schedule suffers as a result of those leagues’ increasing insularity – Bevacqua might end up having to make a very difficult decision very early in his tenure.
The trend in hiring commissioners for college football seem to be in hiring from these non-traditional backgrounds often with media management and operational experience. New Big 10 Commissioner, Tony Petitti’s background included work with ABC Sports, CBS and the MLB Network and was former COO of Major League Baseball. He said in acceptance “At this important and transformational time in collegiate athletics, it is truly my great honor to be chosen…”
Former Big Commish, Kevin Warren, came from the NFL (and has a law degree from ND and was on the Law School Board as an aside). George Kliavkoff, who was hired by the Pac 12, was president of entertainment and sports for MGM Resorts. Brett Yormark, who was hired by the Big 12 was operating officer from Jay-Z’s talent agency, Jay-Z’s talent agency Roc Nation. He met Jay-Z while working in rhe NBA. He also worked in high positions with other media organizations, and NASCAR. Only ACC’s hire was more traditional – the AD from Northwestern.
With Jack staying another nine months, the media deal while be done. Working with Bevacqua with the NBC experience plus is an alumni, we can expect him to continue the same path as this “transformational” time as the new Playoff is instituted and realignment continues. Unlike the others, he is an AD in waiting and not much of an outsider and appreciative of all ND athletics. Whether the ACC media contract can be re-negotiated with ESPN is another matter.
The more I think about it, the more I think Swarbrick and NBC had a loose agreement in place for what the next NBC deal would look like with some of the details to be ironed out. I don’t think NBC would go into bidding on the BIG if they didn’t have some type of assurance that ND would enter back into an agreement with them. Bevacqua would have been on the other side of those negotiations. To ACS’s point yesterday, it makes me a bit more worried that ND will get the shaft in the finer points of the contract. After all Bevacqua was in the negotiations on the NBC side. His existing allies are inside the NBC organization and I don’t know how much rapport he establishes at ND prior to getting down to the Nitty Gritty of the contract details. It will be interesting to see it play out.
Bevacqua was at NBC for 3 years, we all probably have socks older than his stint there. Hell, he has already been at Notre Dame longer in his life, so I think OCI that he will be so loyal to a network and former employee is getting a little overblown- but it’s fun to rant and rave and connect dots about nepotism and conflicts of interest, so I get it.
I do def agree that the NBC/ND relationship is very solid and this is an obvious and clear indicator that relationship will continue. But that really shouldn’t have been breaking any news or terribly shocking to anyone paying attention. NBC should be expected to pay (and presumably from the Sports Business Journal reports earlier this spring) a very competitive rate that will increase broadcast money 2x or 3x from ND’s last NBC deal. Sounds good to me. I don’t see why not to expect a fair and manageable deal that both parties will be satisfied with.
Here are some things I’ll be interested to see with the new NBC deal beyond just the total contract value:
-How many ND games will be on Peacock?
-Will ND be pushed to play Friday games or more neutral site games?
-Will ND be pushed to move games to complement the B1G schedule, such as when the B1G has a weak slate early in the season?
-Will ND continue to be a laboratory for NBC to experiment with new techniques (sideline cam) and new announcers?
Maybe we get a kick-off game every year with Michigan. Home and home. Helps the ND slate and the BigX slate.
Hopefully, we are not forced to open every year with USC.
If they hire A team announcers and give them exclusively to the Big Ten/non-ND games, that will be a really bad sign.
I don’t see why Bevacqua would sign a deal that helps the company he is leaving at the detriment of the company he is joining. That would directly hinder his own ability to succeed at his new job. More money for ND means more money for himself and/or his budget.
If anything, it seems more likely that he would use his knowledge of NBC to help himself at his new job, i.e. get a better deal for ND at the expense of NBC. That is very common in corporate America. It is very uncommon to see someone more loyal to his or her former employer than to him/herself and current company.
Swarbrick was a good strategic thinker right when we needed one. When he took over, the football program was headed for a Nebraska-like fate – knee-jerk firing and hiring coaches with no overall plan, and probably being forced into B1G membership with terrible schedules and no ability to protect our own interests. I give Swarbrick a lot of credit for getting ND off that timeline, and I think about 90%+ of ADs would have done worse.
My biggest issue with Swarbrick is how comfortable he is with nepotism, both literal and professional. Bevacqua’s hire strikes me as falling into that category. We’ll see, maybe he’s exactly the right person to lead the athletic department in the megaconference/NIL era given how much TV money drives everything. But I’m worried about the football program becoming a closed loop of Our Guys™. ND needs outside voices in positions of leadership.