THIS topic is about whether Jack Swarbrick was fired or not. And whether the BOT at ND are finally waking up to the mediocrity and are going to start making moves to bring championship football back to ND.
I went off topic by responding to another poster about the hypocrisy of ND having a $100+ M/year revenue generating cash cow (nobody actually knows precisely what those figures are, and you didn't provide any resources just said you looked something up). But it's silly to think that the **ND football program** isn't bringing in MASSIVE profit, and then on top of this extremely lucrative football business, have silly PR about college football being a student-first mission or whatever.
The hypocrisy of "hey we're a student first mission" while the ND football program is a billion-dollar business (off the backs of past and current athletes) and then hiring a NBC exec to run the athletic department to negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing, apparel, TV, etc. deals. This is an entirely different topic. And THIS is a topic I'd LOVE to get into a debate with you on but in a separate thread.
I hope I don’t veer off topic with this. It’s NOT my intention.
Your question:
WAS JACK SWARBRICK FIRED OR NOT?
What would be the CRITERIA in determining whether or not he DESERVED firing. In other words, what determines success as an AD at ND? Does anyone actually know?
Regardless of what Swarbrick has done or not,
HE HASN’T FULLY RESURRECTED THE FOOTBALL PROGRAM to what it was under Dick Rosenthal. And for WHATEVER reason.
So, would THAT be grounds for firing him – given ND’s LUKEWARM approach to pursuing an NC as compared to those teams that actually ATTAIN one via willingness to take the REQUISITE STEPS?
Or might the opposite be true? That winning an NC at ND was
NOT A PRIORITY-MISSION and/or something he was expected, let alone required, to do.
From where I sit – and it’s A HUGE DISTANCE FROM ALL OF THIS – Swarbrick looked to me like a guy who was essentially THE KING’S MINISTER and towing the PARTY LINE.
In fact, one could “ALMOST” make the case that by winning an NC at ND – or worse, a number of them – Swarbrick’s job might have been "MORE IN JEOPARDY," given how poorly Lou Holtz was treated for the SINS of
his own success.
But was the AD's job EVEN IN JEOPARDY?
To me, Jack Swarbrick looked like the
QUINTESSENCE OF ND 2.0:
- Give it the old college try;
- Play the student-athlete card;
- Add GRAVITAS to the ACC;
- Look every inch the shrewd lawyer/consigliere;
- Hire a multiracial coach from a nominally disadvantaged sector of MINORITY SOCIETY – a very SHREWD MOVE, by the way, given ND’s other disadvantages;
- AND ABOVE ALL ELSE . . . MAINTAIN ND’S POSITION AS A CREDIBLE LEGACY BRAND, even though its admin is unwilling to do what’s necessary to allow its football team to perform at the level it once did, given the school’s SOMETIMES-REAL/SOMETIMES-PUTATIVE COMMITMENT to its ACADEMIC MISSION.
I mean, have you ever seen a MORE PERFECT FIT?
