There had been rumblings for the past year or so and on late Thursday morning Notre Dame made it official. Long-time athletic director Jack Swarbrick will be stepping down from his role sometime in 2024. The news was first broke by Pat Forde and the university has since released their own statement.
.@SInow exclusive: Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will step down in 2024, and will be succeeded by NBC Sports Group chairman Pete Bevacqua. https://t.co/NpUlgPIou3
— Pat Forde (@ByPatForde) June 8, 2023
Here’s a full release from Notre Dame on Jack Swarbrick’s retirement and incoming athletics director Pete Bevacqua from NBC.https://t.co/DiHCjWQEn5
— Pete Sampson (@PeteSampson_) June 8, 2023
Current NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua has been chosen as Swarbrick’s replacement.
According to Forde’s article, Swarbrick will be stepping down sometime in the first quarter of 2024 which will make Bevacqua’s first full school year 2024-25 aka the C.J. Carr football class. According to the release, “As part of Bevacqua’s transition into the new role, he will start work on campus July 1 as a special assistant for athletics to Notre Dame president Reverend John Jenkins. Swarbrick will still have control over athletics while mentoring Bevacqua for several months.”
Bevacqua released the following statement:
“This is an unbelievable honor for me and a dream come true. With the exception of my family, nothing means more to me than the University of Notre Dame. As a Notre Dame alum, I have a keen understanding and deep appreciation of the lifetime, transformational benefit our student-athletes receive in a Notre Dame education, one that is unique and unlike any other institution in the world. I am so grateful to Father Jenkins, the Board of Trustees and, of course, Jack Swarbrick. Jack has become a true friend over the course of the past several years and I am looking forward to working alongside him and learning as much as I can from the person I admire and respect the most in college athletics.”
There will be plenty of time to assess the tenure of Jack Swarbrick in the coming weeks and months. Notre Dame has featured a few athletic directors who served very long tenures but Swarbrick’s reign since 2008 really spanned a transformational modern era in college sports, and especially throughout college football.
For many of our writers, Swarbrick is the only Fighting Irish athletic director we’ve covered and it’ll be a new frontier having a different person in place by this time next year.
Get used to this face!
With college athletics absolutely swimming in current athletic directors with alumni status or deep connections to Notre Dame, it is a little puzzling to see Bevacqua with no experience stepping into this role. However, choosing someone from NBC Sports, you have to admit, is incredibly on brand for Notre Dame today. Although, it would be fair to say that Bevacqua has had a long and detailed look at the Irish athletic program in his years working for NBC and in general more college athletic administrators are coming from a background in television and media.
You would think this assuredly locks up a new deal with NBC, but we’ll see! From the Forde article: “One of the most significant drivers of Notre Dame’s independent status is its relationship with NBC, which seemingly will grow even stronger in the future with Bevacqua coming onboard. Notre Dame’s contract with the network runs through 2025, which means negotiations for the next agreement are not yet within range.”
“It has been an unbelievable, mutually beneficial relationship for both entities,” Bevacqua says. “I have a strong suspicion that both Notre Dame and NBC would love to see that going forward well into the future.”
The Bevacqua Bio:
- Grew up in Bedford, New York
- 1993 magna cum laude graduate from Notre Dame
- Walk-on punter to the Irish football team
- Law degree from Georgetown
- Corporate law associate in New York City following college
- USGA in-house counsel
- USGA managing director for the U.S. Open
- USGA Chief Business Officer
- CAA Global Head of Golf
- PGA of America CEO
- President of NBC Sports
- NBC Sports Chairman
That is an enormous golf background for Bevacqua. He was coming up on 3 full years as the chairman at NBC Sports where he’s been involved in everything from the Olympics, the new Big Ten deal for television, Major League Baseball, the French Open, NASCAR and Sunday Night Football to the Premier League, Peacock, IndyCar, Tour de France, and the Kentucky Derby.
Maybe we can ditch Under Armour now.
What type of shoes does Pete wear? Any hints from any photos of him as to whether he prefers Nike, UA, or Adidas?
I’ve been trying to ENHANCE many photos.
Hiring an NBC exec as AD? Not exactly subtle there,ND.
WELCOME TO PEACOCK FOOTBALL PRESENTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME
Darkly funny that I just got an email informing me that I will no longer have access to Peacock.
https://youtu.be/RP2mnkRGKH0
just this on a loop for the entirety of the Tennessee state game
I dont know how much of a hornet’s nest this is… but I’m grateful for swarbrick’s tenure. 2008-2023, this Mark’s a turnaround from one of the lowest periods of Notre dame football (1997-2008 big woof) to a period of consistent success, especially 2017 onwards.
He hired kelly, and I’m going to give credit for pushing kelly 2.0 kelly 3.0 as I have no clue where else that would come from. Also, handling the post kelly 72 hours, that was pretty damn squirrley, and we came out with HCMF.
I also think a large effort for modernization occured in his time, the gug(?) Campus crossroads, projects like that.
While 0 national titles and cresting to elite program status remain elusive, its decidedly more enjoyable being an ND fan now than 15 years ago, albeit, not having to pay $800 to see a home game would be rad.
Maybe this new guy can push for HOMER home game announcers #BringQuinn2NBC!!!
Swarbrick keeping us out of the B1G in the 2011-2013 conference realignment was a major, major achievement.
I think he would have been in a better position for that in his last job.
The important question: where was this guy when they implemented Sideline Skycam, and was he in favor of it?
(Never forgive and never forget.)
Be careful, it’s watching.
Watching an overhead view of the sidelines and not the field of play, but watching nonetheless.
And making me queasy.
That was seriously the single-most straightforwardly dumb idea in the Swarbrick era of ND football other than maybe the Freekbass video. I get trying it out during the spring game, but it was so awful there that it was a legitimate failure on the part of everyone to have it in any games the following fall. And it was games, plural! How did they not pull the plug on it immediately???
(Seriously I will never forgive and never forget)
Yup, there will never be an excuse for the Freakbass video
He wasn’t chair yet. It looks like he was more involved in golf at that time. So he’s not to blame. There’s that, at least.
Accomplished lawyer, ND alum, in the sports realm, getting like 8 months of otj training, checks a lot of boxes.
Does seem a little surprising that for the vast network of AD’s around the country coming from the Notre Dame umbrella that they choose someone outside of the collegiate ranks, no? Not saying that’s a plus or minus but certainly interesting.
Maybe they like the lawyer background (ala Swarbrick). Swarbrick also had no previous AD experience, but was involved with sports at various levels.
The NBC connection strikes me as a pretty blatant conflict of interest, if not legally, then practically speaking.
Otherwise, I like his resume.
Yes, you definitely have to believe he has an Idea of what ND can get out of NBC in the next round of negotiation.
Well…no, my point is that he’s not going to approach it like that. ND won’t get anything out of NBC, ND will just do whatever NBC wants.
That is an interesting point, but I have to believe it would go the other way, he has all the inside knowledge of NBC sports, he knows what each game of the BIG 10 deal and each game ND brings is worth to NBC. I can’t imgaine that he would “bite the hand that feeds him”. Plus on the video linked above, he stated that ND is second most important thing to him after his family, and that was filmed pre-COVID. I think if anyone is sweating his NBC background, it is NBC.
That isn’t how people actually behave, though. Why would you expect an NBC guy to suddenly take an aggressive negotiating posture against NBC? He’s going to be “negotiating” against his friends and former coworkers. And this hire all but confirms that ND will never shop the TV contract, i.e., that NBC faces no competition.
I think ND feels loyalty to NBC for sticking with us through three straight bad coaches and some really dire seasons, especially 2007-2011. I get that, but I really don’t think we should be ceding control to NBC.
Ah, you think he’ll give NBC the friends and family discount. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. I know the 75 Million per year was thrown out there, if we use that as a baseline to gauge the next contract against, we will see where he ends up.
Yes, that’s exactly what ND’s relationship with NBC is. Swarbrick’s daughter works there and we’ve got Collinsworth’s kid attempting to call our games.
Look if he can get Tirico to call the games again all is forgiven.
I saw like $60m range but we’ll see. The conflict of interest is obvious, but even without this hire from all accounts both ND and NBC wanted to continue working together and extend the deal. I highly doubt the new AD changes much in the big scheme of things, considering the extension will be coming regardless. Whether or not it’s the best deal possible for the University is up to them and the AD doesn’t care as much about the announcers or skycams so much as the 90 seconds of PSA time they get and other elements that the average fan doesn’t care about.
At the end, it’ll probably be a pretty fair deal for the school no matter what, and what they would have done anyways.
Thanks, I hate it
I’m sure this is the norm for high profile jobs, but how does the interview process work if you announce the replacement on the same day you announce the job opening? Is there a secret AD listserv? I imagine it involves a search committee.
I don’t think there technically was a job opening, at least based on the Swarbrick/Jenkins telling of the process. They had some talks the last few months about a transition and presumably felt Bevacqua was the right person for the job and the one that they wanted to slide in and take over. But they might have conveniently omitted other aspects of the process too.
Its not what you know, its who you know.