Tag: John Swofford

Andy Staples: Jim Phillips Must Have Notre Dame Join ACC Full-Time

Jim Phillips won’t succeed John Swofford as ACC commissioner until later this year.

Jim Phillips won’t succeed John Swofford as ACC commissioner until later this year. Still, he’s already getting pressure from outsiders to take drastic steps after he takes over. The latest proposal comes from Andy Staples of The Athletic. Only subscribers to the site can read this, but Staples wants Phillips to talk Notre Dame, for which he once was an associate athletic director, into making itself a full-time ACC member.

Frankly, Mr. Staples, we don’t care to hear about such a scatterbrained idea, and we doubt Jack Swarbrick does, either. The ACC needs Notre Dame more than Notre Dame needs it, and it should be fortunate to have the Irish involved at all. Having worked in South Bend before, Phillips, of all people, should know this and definitely would think twice before picking up the phone to submit this idea to Swarbrick.

Irish fans were pleased to hear last week that Notre Dame will resume its football independence during this upcoming season. Apparently, Staples couldn’t give them too long to relish in at least this type of normalcy in 2021. If Michigan hadn’t been so desperate to block the Irish from admission to the Big Ten a century ago, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Now, we’ve reached a point where old habits die hard, and there’s enough money pouring in already, so return this idea to the back burner where it belongs.

The ACC is close to finding their new commissioner

The ACC has zeroed in on Northwestern’s athletic director Jim Phillips as their top candidate to replace John Swofford as commissioner.

Late last night Twitter was set ablaze with the rumor that current Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips will be offered the ACC commissioner job in the near future.

This would be a massive coup for the ACC, as Phillips is extremely highly regarded as an administrator. What he has accomplished at Northwestern is impressive, leading them to break their program long Men’s NCAA tournament drought in 2017 while the football program has reached new heights in winning the West division two of the last three years.

Phillips was one of the final candidates to take over the Big Ten when former commissioner Jim Delaney retired, but wasn’t selected as they opted for Kevin Warren.

Although a formal offer has yet to be given to Phillips to take over for John Swofford, but except him to oversee the ACC for years to come.

The Rev. John Jenkins Will Co-Chair Search for New ACC Commissioner

On Thursday, the ACC announced that it has launched a search for its next commissioner.

On Thursday, the ACC announced that it has launched a search for its next commissioner. Current commissioner John Swofford announced his pending retirement in June. The conference’s board of directors will direct what will be a national search in hopes of having Swofford’s successor in place by next summer.

Heading the search advisory committee will be the Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, and Wake Forest president Nathan Hatch. The committee will collect feedback and information from its schools. A variety of representatives from within the conference will serve on the committee.

Obviously, Jenkins will be impartial in helping Hatch head this committee. After all, this new commissioner will be beneficial to all conference members and not only Notre Dame. At the same time, Jenkins will need to find a leader that will be easy to work with should his university undergo some sort of seismic change, say, become a full-time ACC member for football. Best of luck to him as he assists with this decision.

ESPN: How does the Big Ten’s decision impact Notre Dame

A look at what could be ahead for Notre Dame in the 2020 season after the Big Ten decided to play a conference only schedule.

After yesterday’s huge news that the Big Ten will only play conference games in the 2020 season and the potential for other conferences to follow is something worth tracking for Notre Dame faithful. ESPN’s Heather Dinich and Mark Schlabach looked into the conundrum the Irish could be facing in this season.

With just one game schedule against the Big Ten this year, against Wisconsin, this may not seem like a massive deal, but it is. Dinich and Schlabach view it like this, “For the independent outlier, this is a predicament, but there is a solution. First, losing the Wisconsin game is significant, but the Fighting Irish could overcome that alone. The problem comes if the Pac-12 does follow suit, because then Notre Dame would lose two additional games, in Stanford and USC. The most likely and expected scenario there would be for Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and ACC commissioner John Swofford to extend their partnership and have the Irish fill the rest of their schedule with ACC games.”

This does seem like the most logical solution, already half of the Irish’s previously scheduled opponents reside in the ACC. Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, Duke, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Louisville would most likely stay on the docket, but who would the Irish add? It completely depends on what Swofford and other AD’s decide to do. There are rumors the Big Ten could play 10 conference games, but at the moment nothing is set in stone. If the ACC goes to conference only and plays 8 games, I would love to see the Irish add NC State, Florida State, North Carolina or Boston College. If the Irish join the ACC for the 2020 season, which opponents would you like to see them face?