Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will step down from his position in 2024 and be replaced by Pete Bevacqua, chairman of NBC Sports Group, the school announced Thursday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Bevacqua will join the university on July 1 as a special assistant to the president of athletics and will be mentored by Swarbrick before assuming leadership.
- Swarbrick returned to his alma mater Notre Dame in 2008 as athletic director, the only school he has ever held that position for.
- Bevacqua, a 1993 Notre Dame graduate, has been chairman of NBC Sports since 2020. He previously served as president of the broadcasting network, and before he spent six years as CEO of the PGA of America.
- Notre Dame has won four national championships (in women’s basketball, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and men’s lacrosse) in Swarbrick’s tenure. The Fighting Irish football team made one national championship game appearance and two College Football Playoff appearances in that time.
The Athletic’s instant analysis:
What is Swarbrick’s legacy at Notre Dame?
It’s both massive and complicated, as any resume would be stretching into a 16th year leading one of college athletics’ most high-profile departments.
Swarbrick’s biggest accomplishment, without question, was the construction of the Campus Crossroads project that reshaped the Notre Dame campus around Notre Dame Stadium. As prominent trustee Jimmy Dunne once joked, the only thing he didn’t like about the Crossroads project was that fact he didn’t think of it first. That honor went to Swarbrick, who had a knack for seeing around corners in an industry that could often be accused of naval gazing.
Swarbrick was also at the helm for Notre Dame’s football most sustained period of success since the Lou Holtz era, hiring both Brian Kelly and Marcus Freeman as coaches. Football never won a national championship under Swarbrick’s guidance as the sport’s elite seemed to pull away from the pack, but Notre Dame football became a reliable winner after nearly two decades of fringe relevance on the national stage.
Swarbrick was also one of the architects of the incoming College Football Playoff expansion to 12 teams, a project he spent years attempting to implement alongside SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and other administrators. Simply put, Swarbrick positioned Notre Dame to be a party of one, almost acting like a de facto conference commissioner because of Notre Dame’s prestige in the sport. Swarbrick enhanced the school’s power position. — Sampson
Why turn to Bevacqua as the next athletics director?
Swarbrick was an outside hire for Notre Dame when he took the job, but he was inside Notre Dame enough to understand the place as an alumnus. Bevacqua is an outside hire as well, but perhaps less so than Swabrick coming from the legal world. Bevacqua was intimately involved in Notre Dame football both as a former player and the NBC Sports Chairman, a position that’s directly tied to Notre Dame’s ability to remain independent because of its reliance on the network as a broadcast partner.
Bevacqua was a walk-on punter for Lou Holtz and graduated from Notre Dame in 1993.
On the surface, the Bevacqua should all but assure Notre Dame remains in partnership with NBC, a relationship both the network and the school hoped would continue into this new era of college football, both with the CFP expansion and NBC adding Big 10 games to its broadcast package this fall.
Around NBC, Bevacqua is known as a measured and thoughtful executive, with little ego or bluster in his day-to-day approach. At Notre Dame, that management style will require Bevacqua to wear even more hats. He’ll begin at the university on July 1, working side-by-side with Swarbrick until Swarbrick’s retirement date in the first half of next year. — Sampson
What they’re saying
In the school’s announcement, Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins added that Bevacqua will assume the role “sometime in the first quarter of 2024.”
“It has been my privilege to work alongside Jack Swarbrick as he led Notre Dame to unprecedented success over the past 15 years while providing such an influential voice in college athletics, and I’m excited that we have such a talented and experienced leader in Pete Bevacqua to spend some time learning under Jack before assuming new leadership in one of America’s most storied athletic programs,” he said.
Swarbrick applauded the university’s succession plan and ability to draw Bevacqua to the position.
“I have worked closely with Pete throughout his time at NBC and based on that experience, I believe he has the perfect skill set to help Notre Dame navigate the rapidly changing landscape that is college athletics today, and be an important national leader as we look to the future,” Swarbrick said. “I look forward to helping Notre Dame’s student-athletes and coaches achieve their goals in the months ahead while also helping Pete prepare for his tenure as athletics” director.”
Bevacqua said the opportunity is “an unbelievable honor for me and a dream come true.”
“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,” Bevacqua said. “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.”
Required reading
Editor’s note: This story previously mistakingly listed Swarbrick as athletic director at Indiana, Stanford, Ohio State and Arizona State.
(Photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
