Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick announces retirement, Pete Bevacqua to join Irish

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced his intention to retire on Thursday. He will stay through 2024 before stepping down and allowing Notre Dame alum and current NBC chairman Pete Bevacqua to succeed him in South Bend.

Swarbrick has been with the Fighting Irish since 2008 as the athletic director. A university alum himself, he was once considered for the role of NCAA president as well as Big 12 Commissioner but ended up spending 15 years with the Fighting Irish.

Per the university’s press release, Bevacqua will join Notre Dame’s staff immediately as Special Assistant to the President for Athletics. He worked in the golf world in the early 2000s as in-house counsel to the USGA and eventually as the CEO of the PGA of America. After negotiating a media rights agreement between NBC and PGA events, Bevacqua moved to NBC, where he served as the president of NBC Sports. He was promoted to the position of chairman for NBC Sports in 2020.

While there, he played a role in Notre Dame’s broadcast relationship with NBC and led negotiations on NBC’s new agreement with the Big Ten. This hire could fuel an already burning fire of rumors that the Irish may be looking to leave the ACC and join the Big Ten.

Notre Dame’s major sports have seen a lot of turnover in recent years — since 2020, the football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball teams have all hired new head coaches.