Jack Swarbrick predicts college football, basketball players will be school employees

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will retire in 2024. He won’t be a figure in college athletics who works to figure out its future the way he has to this point. However, he does have a lot of thoughts about the future of college athletics.

One of the most notable changes that Swarbrick still expects to see in college athletics is that he thinks student-athletes in football and basketball will soon become employees of the schools.

“It’s likely within the next year, either in an action involving USC, or federal case in Pennsylvania, student-athletes — football and basketball players — will be declared employees,” Jack Swarbrick said on the Dan Patrick Show.

Interestingly, Swarbrick’s prediction is for football and basketball players and not all student-athletes. That means Olympic sport athletes wouldn’t be employees in his vision of the future. He was unclear about why he drew this distinction but it divides the line between revenue sports and non-revenue sports.

Jack Swarbrick also made it clear that he doesn’t like this vision of the future that he’s laid out.

“I don’t. It’s not about not supporting them and making sure there are ample benefits available. We were the first school in the country to advocate for name image and likeness, back in 2015. But I don’t think they need to be employees. We still want them to be part of the student body and involved in a lot of the same experiences as the normal student has.”

This comes after another massive round of conference realignment that has shaken college athletics. According to Swarbrick, it’s a disaster and everybody working in the industry is responsible.

“Complete disaster…I wish I knew. And listen, I’m not — everybody in the industry has to take responsibility here. I’m not excluding myself from that,” Jack Swarbrick said. “I think the decision-making lost its way in terms of the focus on the student-athlete and what’s primarily best for them.”

Jack Swarbrick is pushing for Cal and Stanford to join ACC

Jack Swarbrick made it clear that he thinks the Pac-12 is dying. Of the four Pac-12 schools remaining he wants to send a lifeboat out to Stanford and Cal.

“We are where we are, and we have to try and make it work,” Swarbrick said. “I mean, we’ve been pretty vocal in the past month about, we need to find a home for Stanford and Cal. You can’t have two of the great academic institutions in the world, not have a place to play.”

At that point, Dan Patrick asked what the solution is going to be, and Jack Swarbrick said, “We’re working on it?”

It has been reported that Swarbrick is pushing for the ACC to add those schools. However, there need to be 12 of 15 votes to add them to the conference, and as of now, they only have 11.

“Well, there’s still consideration of the ACC as a home for those schools,” Swarbrick said before confirming Notre Dame would be supportive of that.

In recent days, it appears that the ACC schools are becoming more likely to add Stanford, Cal, and SMU with some major concessions. Those include financial concessions from the schools being added. However, it’s unlikely a vote will occur until a 12-vote majority can be assured.