Why Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick called NIL in college athletics ‘a mess’
Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick is in favor of name, image and likeness (NIL). So much so that he has his own acronym for it: NILI; name, image, likeness and ideas. He wants student-athletes to be creative in the ways they might be monetarily remunerated.
Like to paint? Sell paintings. Compose music? Sell songs. Enjoy casual, comfortable wear? Become an advertising model for clothing companies like Levi’s and Rhoback as Notre Dame junior tight end Michael Mayer has.
The concept isn’t difficult to comprehend.
Swarbrick wants his Fighting Irish student-athletes to be compensated for their interests and talents like any other citizen of society. That wasn’t allowed in the pre-NIL era. But he also wants the process for such compensation to be uniform across the country. The way he sees it, that’s far from reality in 2022.
“It’s a mess,” Swarbrick said in a university live chat Wednesday afternoon. “We as college athletics have completely screwed this up.”
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Swarbrick said Notre Dame was the first university to speak out in favor of NIL. But the shady “pay for play” nature it has taken on was never what he intended.
There is a third-party collective (Friends of the University of Notre Dame) operating independent of the school that supports Notre Dame student-athletes. Most schools have one. Notre Dame’s rewards student-athletes for charitable work, though. The funds aren’t being thrown about at prospective players without any structure.
Swarbrick is strongly pushing back against such activity.
“What we never anticipated is that (NIL) would come online with no regulation,” he said. “And it would come online coupled with the unlimited right to transfer. It has created an untenable situation, frankly, where most of what is going on under name, image and likeness has nothing to do with name, image and likeness.
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“There are no commercial transactions where I am rewarding you for something great you’ve built or the fact you’ve got five million followers on your social media website. There are talent acquisition fees where I am paying you for coming to our school. We have to find a way to get away from that.”
Swarbrick believes a correction is not coming in the near future.
“It’s a little hard to see a way forward where congress isn’t involved,” he said. “The NCAA is so gun-shy about anti-trust lawsuits right now, for good reason. They’ve lost all of them. And so there is a lot of discussion with congress, interest in congress, but we all understand the challenges of getting congressional action these days. It’s tough when your most promising solution is also one that’s also so remote. So I think we’re going to have a couple more years of this absolute mess.”
Swarbrick said Notre Dame’s direction is to treat NIL like the Irish would have if it was implemented the way he envisioned it would be when he spoke out in support of it well over a year ago. More deals with clothing companies. More compensation for folks like sophomore offensive tackle Blake Fisher who regularly volunteers at the YMCA.
Less pay for play.
“If you’re not interested in getting a great education, if you’re not interested in being part of a community where you can meet other students, if you’re only interested in the transactional side of your experience, this isn’t the right place for you,” he said. “We have found the more we stress that distinctiveness, the better off we are.”
