With NCAA Embroiled in Chaos, Notre Dame’s Swarbrick Calls Division I Breakup ‘Inevitable’

 The chaos that has was started years ago is boiling if not raging.  Everything the ACC avoided dealing with is here and staring us in the face.  This interview clearly shows the mess that failed leadership in the ACC, NCAA, etc has brought.

Don't think this ends well.  What amazes me is not a single conference commissioner has ever proposed a solution.  Even if it is shot down, nobody seems willing to try.  The ACC especially just seems insistent on two things 

A)  Ignore the problem (which has been the case most of the last 10 years.  Everything this site has indicated will happen has and the ACC and their fan base just REFUSED to even try to see it.  now it's here.  

B)  Refuse to see the urgency and react accordingly.  It just won't do it.  The ACC solution is just suck the blood out of the few $ producers in the conference as long as it can get away with it.  That is it.

When the ACC dies, it will be a death that needed to happen.  It has failed at every level, refused to look at reality, and refused to react to what reality is presenting.

With NCAA Embroiled in Chaos, Notre Dame’s Swarbrick Calls Division I Breakup ‘Inevitable’

In a wide-ranging interview with SI, the only athletic director who is part of the College Football Playoff Management Committee said the fracture lines within the 130-member FBS could leave two disparate approaches: schools that still operate athletics within a traditional educational structure, and those who tie sports to the university in name only.

“There’s always been sort of a spectrum—and I want to stress that everything along the spectrum is valid; it’s not a criticism,” Swarbrick said. “On one end of the spectrum, you license the school name and run an independent business that’s engaged in sports. The other end of the spectrum, you’re integrated into the university in terms of decision making and requirements, and some follow that.

And when those contractual obligations begin to run out, that’s when big changes could occur.

“Absent a national standard, which I don’t see coming, I think it’s inevitable,” Swarbrick said. “Mid-30s would be the logical time.”

The Southeastern Conference media rights deal runs through 2033–34. The Atlantic Coast goes through 2035–36. The Big Ten is in its negotiation window now, with Fox Sports positioned to be the major stakeholder. The Pac-12 and Big 12 are next on the clock.

Should the schism come, Notre Dame would be among those that still tied its athletics to the educational mission of the school and answered to its president and academic administration. Others could essentially be spun off while retaining the school name and branding. A theoretical example (not proffered by Swarbrick): Oregon Ducks Athletics, Inc.

Where the 130 schools fall along that spectrum would be up to individual institutional choice.

The expectation is that the Big Ten and SEC will continue to leave the rest of the Power Five conferences behind in terms of revenue. The widening gap will place more stress on the current landscape, leading some schools to move away from their existing conference affiliations—and possibly leading some leagues to boot longtime members that don’t bring as much to the revenue trough.

“We’re going to have these two conferences that have so distanced themselves from anyone else financially,” Swarbrick said. “That’s where I see it starting to break down. There are so many schools trying to get out of their current conference, and they can’t get there.”

Asked which schools could be looking to move, Swarbrick answered, “None that I’d share.”

The SEC’s destabilizing acquisition of Texas and Oklahoma played a role in halting progress toward a 12-team College Football Playoff, a concept Swarbrick helped bring to the table last June. He, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby formed the subcommittee that came up with the plan.

After initially being hailed as a welcome expansion in many circles, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 eventually expressed concerns and dug in as unified opposition. That led to a series of unproductive CFP meetings that Swarbrick described as, “the single oddest thing I’ve ever been through.”

The market forces of conference realignment—triggered anew by the stunning agreement last summer for Texas and Oklahoma to leave the Big 12 for the SEC in 2025 at the latest—plus unprecedented player compensation and movement leave college sports at a crossroads. Amid unprecedented instability and change, Swarbrick and others are searching for the best path forward.

“I’ve been toying with a whole bunch of concepts, most of which probably don’t work,” said the 68-year-old Swarbrick, who has been the AD at Notre Dame since 2008. “But we’ve got to get something advanced that people will react to.

“My goal was to steer this to a safe harbor—that may be a pipe dream. Especially take the word safe out of it. I’d like to take a real shot at trying to facilitate something people will at least consider nationally. See if we can make any progress. I’d hate to leave without trying.”

Swarbrick offered no specifics on his potential plan for how college athletics should proceed. But he did identify several areas of acute need.

Asked if the current Name, Image and Likeness landscape is sustainable, the answer was a blunt no. Recruiting inducements were not the original idea, but that’s what NIL has become in many instances.

Does Swarbrick see NCAA Enforcement having any chance of reining it in?

“No. I hate to be so pessimistic, but it’s been a lot of years of not seeing them have any,” he said. “I can see a lot of that [rules compliance and enforcement] being transferred to the conferences.”

Swarbrick predicts that the current NIL marketplace will severely damage Olympic sports, as investments and donations continue to tilt toward revenue-producing sports.

“I hate to see that,” he said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how the federal government approaches it. If all of this revenue is disproportionately coming to men, even if you didn’t set it up, how does Title IX analyze that?”

With the NCAA looking increasingly to Congress to create uniform NIL legislation, Swarbrick would like to see the politicians work through the already existing framework of the 1978 Amateur Sports Act.

“The Olympic system then was every bit as broken as collegiate sports is now,” Swarbrick said. “Use that bill as the vehicle. Just amend it to address some of the key issues here, and by doing so protect the Olympic sports.”

But the lawmakers Swarbrick has spoken to aren’t overly receptive to the idea, and some of them seem less hopeful than NCAA members that Congress will perform an intervention.

“I was talking to a Republican senator and he said to me, ‘I keep reading that you all say we’ll finally be able to get something done when Republicans get control of the house and the senate and the presidency,’ “ Swarbrick said. “But it’s going to be a much more Libertarian Congress. They’re going to be unwilling to participate just on anti-regulatory grounds.

“We’re not getting [reform leadership] from the NCAA. It’s going to have to come from elsewhere. It’s interesting to see how challenging it is to get the university presidents to work together. It’s not that they’re resistant to it. They’ve just got too many things going on.”