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The importance of Notre Dame Football’s independence has been something which has been talked about, argued about, and reported about for decades. While it’s sometimes hard to imagine the complete college football narrative during the pre-internet world, Irish independence wasn’t remotely as hot of a subject back then as it is now.
It did, however, really start heating up when Notre Dame made its historical television deal with NBC.
But this story doesn’t need such a deep preamble — not for those that really care. We’re here to talk about Jack Swarbrick and how he took the derogatory moniker of “Savvy Jack” and made it honorable.
In 2010 the college football world descended into a state of mass hysteria when it comes to conference realignment. It’s funny to think about the reasons so many schools decided to make a move to a different conference when so many of those reasons were either overblown (i.e. recruiting footprint) or now outdated (i.e. television media market).
Through all of the hysteria, we were told countless times that “this is it,” the Irish finally HAVE to join a conference. Moves were made by the Big 10, for example, to try and strongarm the Irish into their fold — and yet it never happened.
Under the leadership of Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame moved all of its athletic programs from the Big East to the ACC and locked in 5 ACC games a year as part of the price. The move wasn’t the most popular with many of the Notre Dame alumni and fans, but it gave plenty of stability to a football program that was just starting to find a little stability with Brian Kelly as its head coach after almost two decades of incompetence.
As the BCS system started to teeter, Jack Swarbrick and the conference commissioners of the power five conferences devised a four team playoff system which…
Source link : https://www.onefootdown.com/2025/5/23/24435710/notre-dames-jack-swarbrick-was-always-the-smartest-person-in-the-room-college-football-nd-news-irish
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Publish date : 2025-05-23 11:14:00
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