University of Notre Dame
Football Media Conference
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
South Bend, Indiana, USA
Jack Swarbrick
Director of Athletics
Press Conference
JACK SWARBRICK: Thank you all for being here. I
appreciate you gathering with us this morning.
A year ago this week, I was involved in -- I'm sorry, 12
years ago this week I was involved in a search for a new
coach at the University of Notre Dame to lead its football
program, and 12 years later I find myself in that role again.
The circumstances could not be more different. Then I
was in the process of trying to find someone to fix a very
broken program, and in a circumstance where frankly a lot
of people didn't think this was a place they wanted to be
because they didn't think Notre Dame was committed or
able to produce championship football teams.
I couldn't be more pleased with the difference I see today
as I embark on another search. In my 14 years, this
program has never been in better shape. We have never
been in a better position to take the next step in building
this program into a consistent contender for National
Championships, and I am excited with the opportunity to
attract the next leader to do that.
We are in that position in significant part thanks to Coach
Kelly, who did a marvelous job of helping to restore the
program at the University of Notre Dame. I am thankful to
him and Paqui for all they contributed to this university and
to the football program and will be ever indebted for the
contributions that they made.
Similarly, we are in that position because of a great
coaching staff and administrative staff. I think we have
arguably the best staff in college football, and it's a
testament to why we're in the position we're in today.
But most importantly, I am in an envious position as I go
out now and search for the next leader because of our
student-athletes. We have 118 of the best young men in
America who are at the core of our program.
I met with them this morning, and I was reminded of that
and reminded of the fact that the culture built in this
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program isn't Jack Swarbrick's culture, it's not Brian Kelly's
culture, it is the culture built by those young men and
especially the leaders of that team.
I am most indebted to them for what they've built, and they
have my commitment that I will ensure that nothing that
they've built will be diminished or lost as we move this
program forward in the weeks, months and years ahead.
With that, I am happy to take questions.
Q. Who is going to be your interim coach as you go
through the search, and any chance that person could
end up being the permanent head coach?
JACK SWARBRICK: Yeah, we haven't made a decision
on an interim yet, and frankly I think we may approach it a
little bit differently. This staff is so well-structured and the
responsibilities are so well-understood, I feel less of a need
to have a designated interim.
But as the search progresses, if we feel a need to put
somebody in that position, they would not be a candidate
for the job.
Q. You mentioned you felt like Notre Dame was in a
really good place; what do you need to do or what are
the next steps you need to do in terms of timetable, in
terms of recruits to make sure there's not kind of a
half-step back here as you're looking for new
leadership?
JACK SWARBRICK: First and foremost it's getting the
right leader, and so yeah, I recognize the external factors,
if you will, the recruiting calendar and transfer portals, but
none of that is a reason not to make sure that we run a
process that gets the very best person to lead this program
forward, so that will be our focus.
Q. You mentioned the players; players have a voice in
a lot of things now. Will you invite their voice in the
selection process?
JACK SWARBRICK: Not with regard to specific
candidates, but absolutely with regard to characteristics
and criteria. Every search I've conducted here in every
sport I've had a group of student-athletes help advise me,
and I'll look to the captains of this football team to play that
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role.
Q. Seems like Brian had at least one or more
conversations with USC and then very obviously had
one or more conversations to get to this point with
LSU. Did he discuss those conversations with you?
Did you get the sense there was something he was
looking for that either he didn't believe he could find at
Notre Dame or that Notre Dame could not deliver to
him?
JACK SWARBRICK: Yes, he did not discuss with me the
conversations he had with other universities. We always
are talking about the program's needs and how to improve
it, and there was not anything identified at any time that
was something we could not accommodate or meet. We
just didn't have those things come up.
Q. Did he give you any opportunity to try to convince
him to stay or to match LSU's offer, and what are some
of the defining characteristics that you will look for as
you go through this process, and will you use a search
firm?
JACK SWARBRICK: We will conduct the search, the
University of Notre Dame, and I will lead that search. If we
use any outside resources, it'll be for administrative
purposes, background checks, maybe booking my travel
under a different name, all the things that try and mislead
you guys a little bit, keep you off my tail. But no, we will
take the lead on the search.
No, Brian did not come to me, which frankly I appreciated,
with some opportunity to match the offer. When we talked,
he indicated that he was resigning to take another position.
He thanked me for the opportunity the university had
provided to him, thanked me for our friendship, which I very
much appreciated, and I wished him all the best, and we
talked a little bit about how today would work.
Q. When did you have that conversation with Brian
Kelly, and to what extent were you surprised that that's
what he wanted to talk to you about?
JACK SWARBRICK: It was sometime last night, and I
can't give you the exact time. I was not surprised. There
had been enough in the weeks leading up that gave me a
pretty strong sense that there might be other things that
were attracting Brian, and then of course social media got
very active during the day yesterday.
Between the two things, I was not surprised.
Q. You've discussed with us in the past that for not
just this position but all of your head coaching
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positions that you kind of always keep an ongoing list
of what direction you might turn in case you need a
replacement, and I don't anticipate you're willing to
share that list with us today, but as you look at who
would be on your list, how would you characterize
those people? Are you looking for someone with head
coaching experience? Are you looking for someone in
the college ranks? Just curious how you weigh those
factors.
JACK SWARBRICK: Yeah, first of all, sometimes I think
I'm the only AD in the country but I don't keep a list of
people because my experience has been every search has
its own dynamic and its own characteristics, so last time
we did a football search, we built a list of characteristics, I
can't remember now, I think it was 11 or 12, that we built
first, and then we screened candidates against that list,
and high on that list was rebuilding a program.
Now, rebuilding a program doesn't even show up on the list
this year, and so a different focus takes you in different
directions. That's where I'm pleased to say we are today.
I forgot to address the characteristics question that was
asked earlier so I'm glad you brought it back up.
Fit at Notre Dame is number one. This is a unique place,
and it is important that you understand and appreciate the
uniqueness. That's a critical element of this.
Increasingly the role of college football head coaches is a
CEO role, and so clearly understanding your approach to
building and managing staff becomes very important.
Next, what's your approach to playing the game? What's
your style? How do you achieve victory on the football
field?
And then a whole list of things that relate to attracting and
developing great student-athletes, and especially the
development part of it. I am really pleased with where our
recruiting is today and the improvements we've made in it,
the resources we've put into it, but I still want to be a great
development program, so what are your ideas on
developing young men to be great players, great
champions and great parts of our community.
Q. As it relates to your head coach being CEO-like,
will you entertain someone that's not been a head
coach before?
JACK SWARBRICK: I don't want to answer it as a
hypothetical. We're going to take those characteristics,
and we're going to find the best person. I don't want to set
any individual criteria as part of that.
Page 2 of 5

Q. Have you guys reached out to anyone yet just to
begin gauging interest?
JACK SWARBRICK: No, although I've had a lot of
outreach. I'm going to spend the day starting to reply to
that outreach.
Q. Is there a timetable that you're working under as
you move forward with this?
JACK SWARBRICK: No. Every search process has its
own rhythm. You want to do the best job you can, not the
fastest job you can. We're going to do the best job we can
to find the right person to lead Notre Dame.
Q. In terms of communication with assistant coaches,
do you meet with all of them? How will that process
go?
JACK SWARBRICK: Well, the first decision I made last
night was to keep them on the road because Notre Dame
is in a great place, and I don't want anybody to think we're
not moving forward full steam, and so our coaches have
remained out on the road. Because of that I can't convene
them as a group, so we've communicated via email, and
I've had calls with several of them. I haven't gotten to all of
them yet.
Q. Have you been made aware of any assistant
coaches that will definitely be going with Brian Kelly to
LSU?
JACK SWARBRICK: No.
Q. What happens if you make the playoff? Do you
allow Brian Kelly to coach, or who coaches for you?
JACK SWARBRICK: No, we will have our current
coaching staff, I hope, largely intact, and we'll designate
the person who has to make the jump-ball calls, like how to
use time-outs and the coin flip, but we've got a great staff.
We've got great coordinators, and so I have every
confidence that we will be fully prepared for what I hope is
a CFP game, but if not I'm certain there will be a great New
Year's Six game, and Brian will not be part of that for us.
Q. What does it say about just the landscape of
college football right now in that we've had in about
36-hour span two of the most significant high-profile
coaching moves for $100 plus million in contract over
the last couple days? What does it say about where
college football is right now?
JACK SWARBRICK: Oh, I probably need more time to
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process that. Obviously it has -- you've seen a significant
shift, right? You've seen a shift in mobility and a shift in
compensation.
I think your question is the right one. I don't have the
answer. But I think we'd better be asking it. We'd better
be asking what we want college football to be and how we
make sure it still fits inside a university environment.
Q. Going off of that, when you look at the timing of
this with departure from a major program that's still in
the mix for a CFP berth, how do you process that and
how surprised are you that it happened when it did
with you guys still in the mix?
JACK SWARBRICK: Oh, you know, the timing is always
going to be this, right? Two things have happened. One is
schools have accelerated their decisions to relieve
coaches, and you saw that this year.
But coaches are going to make the decisions this time of
year because if you get further you're probably not going to
-- don't have attractive options available to you. So nothing
surprises me about the timing or that it occurs in a year
where we have had an exceptional year and are
well-positioned for postseason.
You know, that's a little bit of the dynamic now. Look, 12
years is a really long time at Notre Dame. We were
incredibly well-served to have Brian here for that period of
time. But it's a long time.
I have contemplated for some period of time that there had
to be an end point coming. We hadn't talked specifically
about when that was, but -- in both a long-term perspective
and the near term, this wasn't a surprise, and I think this
place is perfectly prepared to move forward.
Q. In terms of infrastructure and facilities, what does
Notre Dame need next from your point of view to
compete for a National Championship to take sort of
the next final step?
JACK SWARBRICK: Well, the first thing is to note how
pleased I am with what we've accomplished with facilities
in recent years. I think we have the best indoor athletic
center or indoor football facility in the country, and most of
the NFL scouts that come in make that same observation.
So that was a major investment we've made. We've made
investments in our other practice fields. We've made
investments in the building itself. We redid all of the offices
last year.
So it's a matter of continued investment. We'll always be
updating the weight room. We'll always be updating the
Page 3 of 5
locker room.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, we need to
figure out how to most effectively either expand or change
the footprint for the football operations building.
Q. You mentioned that schools have accelerated their
process with changing coaches; do you think that's a
good development, or is it just kind of the nature of the
beast? Is that going to be the way things are done
from now on?
JACK SWARBRICK: You know, I suppose it's hard to
generalize because every circumstance is a little different,
but I hope it doesn't become too much of a trend. I think
the experience for the student-athletes is generally better
when they have continuity through their season. I hope we
won't see it as a trend.
Q. Are there other areas that Brian Kelly may have
expressed any desire for Notre Dame to have flexibility
on, whether it is admissions, whether it's housing,
whether it's NIL, anything like that?
JACK SWARBRICK: No. We just didn't have those. We
always have personnel discussions about do we need
another X or Y on the staff, and we've always been
prepared to support those, and we talk about facilities, but
one of the things I appreciated about Brian and why he
was successful here was maybe after a little initial
resistance, he came to appreciate the things that define
Notre Dame like its residentiality policy, like its admissions
standards, like its unique eligibility standards.
It had been a long, long time since we had had
conversations about any of those.
Q. I had a question that's a little less specific about
what things on campus Brian Kelly might have taken
issue with, but did you get the sense that he felt he
had reached a ceiling at Notre Dame in terms of what
he could accomplish? Obviously incredible seasons
and success and making the College Football Playoff
but never really getting the monkey off its back of
getting past the first round.
JACK SWARBRICK: Yeah, I don't want to speak for Brian.
He can answer that question. I think it's fair for me to
share that he told the team today that it was just about
another opportunity and the right time for his family to take
on another opportunity and have another experience. It
struck me how much it sort of was similar to the comments
made by Lincoln the day before. I think there's an element
of that.
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There's no sense in which I think it was motivated by a
belief that we couldn't take the next step here. Brian has
consistently reinforced to the team that we are positioned
to take that next step, and I believe that passionately.
Q. You mentioned the patience you will use in this
process. I'm curious given the playoff and big
postseason games, are you willing to wait until after
that with a potential coaching candidate, or do you
guys likely have to get someone in place before at
least the end of the calendar year?
JACK SWARBRICK: It's about the right candidate. When
we find the person we think is the right one to lead this
program and have the right conversations with him, that's
all that matters. If that happens tomorrow or weeks from
now, that's fine. This is about getting the right person.
Q. What do you think is still separating Notre Dame
from winning a National Championship, because Brian
was always very up front that that is the only goal that
matters. Where is the gap? What has to be closed
there in your mind?
JACK SWARBRICK: When I look at the team that played
the last half of the season, I don't see a gap. I think this
team is really well-positioned. I believe we're one of the
top four teams in the country.
The cumulative results of our last four or five games I think
are compelling. I think we can play with anybody in the
country right now.
Can we get better? Always. Every team can. But a lot of
the things that we chased for a while, we've put ourselves
in a much different position: Youth, depth, development
have all put us in a really strong place.
Q. You said earlier Brian did not discuss
conversations with other schools with you and you
also said you were not surprised when you ultimately
received that call from him last night. Why is that, and
why do you think he ultimately left Notre Dame?
JACK SWARBRICK: Well, I'll have to let Brian answer the
question of why he ultimately left Notre Dame. I can't
answer that.
There's just a sense you get when you work closely with
somebody for 12 years that there's a certain restlessness,
and I could sense that. I could sense that in some
conversations.
There was a Freudian slip or two along the way that sort of
grabbed my attention, and whether that was intentional or
Page 4 of 5
not, you just felt like -- it feels a little bit like somebody who
might be open to a different opportunity.

Q. When you do recognize those Freudian slips in the

moment, what's your approach to that as far as trying
to keep him happy, trying to keep him here, or
recognizing that that ship may have already sailed and
you both need to move in other directions?

JACK SWARBRICK: You know, we never had a

conversation along those lines, which is why I think this
was fundamentally a decision by Brian and his family. This
wasn't a matter of saying, gosh, I need X or Y to remain at
Notre Dame. There just weren't any of those
conversations.

I would not have resisted to enter into those conversations.

Let me stress, we've always talking about improvements in
the program, constantly, and we have a capital
improvement plan that spans the next three years. So it's
not about not doing things to get better. It's just that we
talked about what those would be and what those would
look like, and there wasn't distance between us.

Q. I just wanted to clarify a response regarding the

lack of interim head coach; did you say there would
not possibly be a promotion from within when you
mentioned there might not be an interim head coach
for this month?

JACK SWARBRICK: First of all, I don't see interim head

coach as a promotion. It's somebody to make some
decisions that need to be made in that capacity.

All I was saying was my confidence level in this staff gives

me some time to deal with that issue, and if I think
operationally we need somebody to play that role, we'll put
somebody in that role, but I asked the players today to give
me a little time on that one because I just want to see how
we operate for a little while here. We've got a really
talented staff who's working very hard for Notre Dame right
now.

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