The waters in South Bend have been anything but placid in the last few weeks, as a veritable revolving cast of characters have either just arrived, returned home, or packed up and headed off to their next career. In this first post of a two-part series, we'll look at the shakeups in the Athletic Department over the offseason. Later this week, we'll look at the roster turnover, which has been fairly extensive, especially recently.Athletic Department:
Out: Kevin White, Steve Orsini
While the radical fringe of Notre Dame fans (like over at NDNation.com) have been burning Athletic Director Kevin White's image in effigy for many years now thanks to his inept scheduling, his shameless whoring of the Notre Dame Brand, his spineless negotiation skills with Adidas and the BCS that literally left millions of dollars sitting on the table, his sidelong protesting of the Tyrone Willingham fire, and of course his invention of the phrase "Sunday through Friday" (to just name a few reasons), it looks like his poor performance finally caught the attention of the top brass. As these things often work out within the polite society of upper-crust academia, an arrangement was made to have White leave on his own terms and accept the job as AD at Duke (a team whose football program he will be literally unable to devalue, try as he may), and everyone walked away with minimum of feather ruffling.
As the replacement search quietly hummed along, the crosshairs seemed to be focusing on SMU's Athletic Director Steve Orsini, but he just recently pulled out of consideration for the job.
As the replacement search quietly hummed along, the crosshairs seemed to be focusing on SMU's Athletic Director Steve Orsini, but he just recently pulled out of consideration for the job.
In: Jack Swarbick, Chris Zorich
Right on the heels of the Orsini announcement, Notre Dame officially hired an Indianapolis attorney named Jack Swarbrick to take over as Athletic Director. Although he has never been an athletic director at the collegiate level, he does have quite a few impressive bonafides in the sports world, such as spearheading the (successful) campaign to bring the 2012 Super Bowl to Indianapolis (he obviously is a hell of salesman... Indianapolis?), heading the committee that moved the NCAA's offices to Indy, and generally being the driving force in why some (no offense to Indianapolins out there) not-so-glamorous town in central Indiana is now the very center of the amateur athletics world. Curiously, he has finished second place for many high-profile athletic jobs, notably for Miles Brand's NCAA Commissioner job, and the AD jobs at Ohio State and Arizona State. We'll have to wait and see if this is a good hire, but at this rate just about anybody is an upgrade.
Joining him in the athletic office is former Irish legend Chris Zorich, who is coming back to campus as an administrator for student-athletes. It's always great to get an all-American in the front office, and it's clear that it has been a big goal for Charlie Weis since day one.
Joining him in the athletic office is former Irish legend Chris Zorich, who is coming back to campus as an administrator for student-athletes. It's always great to get an all-American in the front office, and it's clear that it has been a big goal for Charlie Weis since day one.
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