what credit does Jack Swarbrick deserve?
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Football Message Board...
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Good point.... Wimbush has the opportunity to redeem himself by leading the Irish to a win against Michigan.... another poor performance would make 5 in a row... that trumps potential, athleticism etc. every day of the week... September ends with Stanford at home... needs that in the win column also... Can't wait...
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I am not anti-Swarbrick by any means but what did Jack do that enabled these teams to excel?
He didn't hired the the coaches in Women's bball or men's hockey.
Fencing has been a power since 1977 when it won it's first of 10 titles. Gia, current fencing coach, was already an assistant coach on staff as were the three guys who were head coaches before Gia. The fencing facility, one of the best of it's kind in the country, is more a credit to their success than anything Swarbrick did to champion it.
After all, once the decision to hire a coach is made, the AD's contributions and management of the sports programs ends.
If the fuck-ups in football are his fault, which many seem to feel (perhaps with some validity), is it not consistent to also give him credit for successes where they occur? Didn't we build the men's hockey facility under him, and doesn't it seem to be paying off? He didn't bring in Muffet the great, obviously, but he clearly has been able to put together contracts that keep her here. The fencing program, really, I nothing about, but it also appears to have flourished under the guy. Just saying - if what goes wrong in football is his fault, is not what goes right in other programs his credit?
Of course he gets some of the credit. Ignore most of what you read on here
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Obviously, I care about football about 100x more than all the others put together. But if his job is to oversee all ND intercollegiate athletics, not just football, there are in fact a number of successes to point out.
Every executive has a different management style and many prefer to let the results accomplished by their employees reflect their managerial skills. As a result it is often hard to judge effectiveness without some fair amount of inside information (hopefully less rather than more fake news).
Agree with your assessment as a former student who has followed ND sports from the 50s actually paying at least passing attention to the ones other than FB, BB, and hockey. For whatever reason the overall sports program has become much better over time with a lot of visible actions since JS took over in July 2008
This report this government required 2016 has a lot of puffery but does detail the state of the ND athletic program at that point and has a lot of history what led up to those results. Seems like a lot of major initiatives were planned before JS but he got them implemented (includes new "digs" for the fencing and hockey teams plus a renovated BB facility). BTW the PDF file at the top of the report has a lot of stats about specific programs.
http://www.und.com/ot/eada-report-12.html
Also realize that to many the only job of the athletic director in the current way ND is organized is to have not just a winning (aka "good") FB program but to have a BCS contender every year whereas think it is much more about maintaining and ideally increasing the FB revenue stream - seems like JS as done that fairly well but again without inside info ...