Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick in favor of collective bargaining
According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick is in favor of introducing collective bargaining to college sports.
After a Senate hearing on name, image and likeness (NIL) that lasted more than two hours, Swarbrick proposed a model where athletes are not recognized as employees, but are able to negotiate an agreement with schools to, among other things, share revenue.
“It’s a fairly radical notion, but if we could find a way to reach binding agreements with our student-athletes, most of [the problems with NIL go] away,” Swarbrick told Dellenger. “We don’t have a mechanism to [collectively bargain] without them becoming employees. It would require a new mechanism that would recognize the rights of student-athletes to negotiate for the terms and conditions of their participation as athletes without being employees. I think it’s worth considering.”
Swarbrick also stressed the need to collectively bargain with an entity beyond just the schools, because it could de-level the playing field of college athletics too much.
“There is a challenge here,” Swarbrick said. “Are they bargaining with the NCAA or the conference? It can’t be school by school. You need some competitive equity. You couldn’t have one group of student-athletes negotiate for a 10-game season and another a 12-game season.”
Whatever the solution is, the longtime Notre Dame athletics director said, it needs to be enforceable. That’s opposed to the current system, which is very much not.
“There is no disagreement between us and our student-athletes when we talk to them about these things. That’s the frustration here,” Swarbrick said. “All the same things we are talking about here they are concerned about. I’d love to be able to reach an agreement with them and some [entity] say, ‘We’re going to enforce that agreement.’”
Swarbrick is recognized as one of the most influential figures in college sports, and his power is often considered comparable to that of a conference commissioner. Him proposing a solution that he himself acknowledged as “radical” is a big deal.
This will be Swarbrick’s last football season as the Notre Dame athletics director, as he announced in June that he will be stepping down early in 2024. NBC Sports Group chairman Pete Bevacqua will replace Swarbrick, Notre Dame announced in the same release.
In the meantime, leaders in the NCAA and the National College Players Association are in Washington D.C., lobbying for a congressional bill to deal with the “chaos,” as Sen. Lindsey Graham called it, around college football.
More: Will NCAA receive Congressional NIL solution? ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree’
