As the Notre Dame grad here at The Barking Crow, I don’t write a lot about my school or its teams. Only something like thirty of our nearly six thousand posts over the years have the Notre Dame tag on them, and not all of those are even about sports.
We’re changing that.
This isn’t a definite commitment, and we aren’t overhauling the blog to become a site about Notre Dame. Rather, this is Good Things Shrewing, a once-a-week feature on the Fighting Irish. The name was suggested by my brother, and its meaning is three-pronged:
First, we want to convey the excitement I and others are feeling about the men’s basketball program under new head coach Micah Shrewsberry.
Second, we want to mark this era in time. We’re opening this new channel in our coverage at the same time that Shrewsberry takes over for Mike Brey. We loved Brey, but we’re excited about Shrewsberry, and whether this feature outlives his tenure or his tenure outlives this feature, we will associate this with him because of when we started it.
Third, we want to highlight our loyalties: I am more a Notre Dame men’s basketball fan than I am a Notre Dame football fan. I love both, but I’ve always liked the basketball program more. It’s almost always been more likable. Rather than covering Notre Dame football and other sports, this will cover Notre Dame men’s basketball and other sports. Football will be among those sports and will be a big focus (I’d imagine it will be second, ahead of women’s basketball and the rest), but my favorite team as a child was the Notre Dame men’s basketball team, and that’s going to be what this is about.
For format, our current thought is to do two main sections a week—the headliner and something else standalone—followed by some quick hitters at the bottom and then a rundown of what sports are in action in the week ahead. This is very much subject to change. We won’t be covering every single transfer commitment and recruiting decommitment across any or all sports, but we’ll hit some of it in the quick hitters. We won’t be covering every single game or meet or match played by a team in the blue and gold, but we’ll try to keep at least a high-level view on all sports.
For timing, our current thought is to publish these on Mondays, but again, this is very much subject to change.
We won’t exclusively blog about sports in here. If there are other things regarding Notre Dame we want to talk about, we may include some of those in Good Things Shrewing. Sports will be the focus, though. Sports will be the focus.
Thanks for reading. We’ll see where this goes.
Jack Swarbrick’s Vision of the World
It’s been a week and a half since Fr. Jenkins and Jack Swarbrick published their New York Times op-ed, the one which quickly became the most roundly criticized piece of sports opinion writing in recent memory. Simultaneously with the essay’s publication, Swarbrick appeared on a Sports Illustrated podcast. I listened to the podcast last week.
Some of Swarbrick’s stances were clarified with the context a full podcast provides. Swarbrick and Jenkins’s concerns about student-athletes earning legal classification as employees, for example, seem to rest in part on the notion that if athletes are employees, that means they’re being paid to go to class, and if they’re being paid to both go to class and play a sport, they are working some long, long hours. Of course, this is exactly what’s happening, but if classification as employees puts college sports in violation of labor laws, the risk of some college sports being eliminated might be real, and nobody wants that outcome. Does that mean college athletes shouldn’t be classified as employees? Not necessarily. But Swarbrick clarified his concerns.
Other stances were more convoluted. In the op-ed, the call upon Congress to do something was loud. On the podcast, Swarbrick emphasized that there’s a lot the NCAA can do when it comes to straightening out NIL. Multiple times, he said this isn’t all about Congress. That doesn’t exactly mesh with how I, at least, read the op-ed.
Overall, I came away from the podcast the most concerned about Jack Swarbrick’s leadership that I’ve ever been. That isn’t saying much. I’ve long thought Swarbrick is among the best athletic directors in the country. But I’m concerned about him for the first time.
For one thing, pieces of the arguments are brutally disingenuous. For example: If the purpose of limiting NIL is to maintain “competitive equity” but the education athletes receive is considered a benefit, there is no competitive equity in a world where the educations are inequal. Which they are. If a Notre Dame education is worth $250,000 and in-state tuition costs less than $50,000 over four years at Indiana, then any argument about NIL limitations for the sake of competitive equity must be accompanied by an insistence that high-cost schools like Notre Dame see their scholarships limited as well. Swarbrick, I would assume, knows this is a dishonest approach to the argument. If you’re going to argue using the basis of right vs. wrong, making your proposals so obviously self-serving is a great way to imply you aren’t serious.
For another, Swarbrick’s vision seems intentionally incompatible with the current state of college sports. To some extent, this is subjective. There are multiple ways to view college sports, and Swarbrick’s is an outlier, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right or wrong. The problems are that Swarbrick describes the ideological debate as binary, with no middle ground, and that Swarbrick’s opposition to the transfer portal and NIL hampers Notre Dame’s ability to compete. The transfer portal piece of that is perfectly fine. Swarbrick’s insistence that a true college experience requires students to be on one campus for four years is odd, and other pieces of that discussion were gross in how they treated players (joking about athletes’ families’ medical situations isn’t a great look), but if Notre Dame wants to maintain strict academic limitations on which transfers it accepts, I’m fine with that. I’m fine with a school focusing on being a school. On the NIL side, though, Notre Dame is losing recruits—recruits it would admit—solely because of an ideological opposition to specific ways in which college kids can make money. Do things go wrong with these pay-to-play NIL deals? Sometimes, sure. But there is a middle ground between what Florida did with Jaden Rashada and what Notre Dame’s doing with its approach to NIL, and in that middle ground, players can capitalize on their value and Notre Dame can recruit better players. It’s complicated, yes, and it must be done right, but Notre Dame can do it right, and it takes nothing from the school to try. It’s more about getting out of the way than it is about the athletic department doing this themselves. Taking Swarbrick’s comments at face value, he seems to prefer to be in the way.
In the best case, Swarbrick is trying to game the system. He’s lobbying those in power to change rules in ways that favor Notre Dame. He’s being dishonest, he’s being disingenuous, but he’s trying to win. Unfortunately, that is the best case.
In the worst case, Swarbrick is trying to impose the vision of a few people at Notre Dame upon the whole of college sports, and truly believes what he’s saying about the possibility of Notre Dame departing the most competitive level of college sports over a subjective ideological disagreement. In the worst case, Swarbrick doesn’t believe that time and practice can work these real issues out, and that high-value players can earn extra money in college while low-value players—the fencers, the runners, the swimmers, the special teams guys—continue on as traditional college athletes. In the worst case, Swarbrick’s implication that there is no middle ground is indicative of how Notre Dame’s full administration views the situation at hand.
The real situation is probably a mix of these two cases, as all things are. It’s unfathomable that Notre Dame would actually throw up its hands and stop trying to win national championships, and the potential national development which could prompt this is still a long way off. If it happens—if we do get competing college football national championships—it will happen after Jack Swarbrick’s time at the helm. But it’s difficult to win a title when your administration doesn’t want to, and again: It would be one thing if this was just about academics. As we’ve said, it is great if a school wants to focus on being a school. The Ivy League mostly does that, and more than half the Ivy was better than Notre Dame at men’s hoops this year. It’s not about academics, though. It’s about ideology, and either Swarbrick and Jenkins are having a hard time communicating that ideology or the ideology isn’t particularly sound. Semi-professionalism can work. It can work at Notre Dame.
Quick Hitters
Men’s basketball recruiting/transfers:
- Micah Shrewsberry’s son, Braeden, is coming to Notre Dame, per his dad, Micah Shrewsberry. Three-star guard.
- Zionsville’s Logan Imes, another three-star guard, has decommitted from Penn State and is rumored to have visited Notre Dame.
- Carey Booth, a four-star top 100 forward, has also decommitted from Penn State and is expected by many to come to Notre Dame.
- Markus Burton, a three-star point guard and a Penn High School product, has said he’s excited to play for Shrewsberry despite having committed under Brey.
- Robby Carmody committed to play for Mercer today. Dom Campbell announced his commitment to Howard last week. JJ Starling announced his commitment to Syracuse a few weeks ago.
At the moment, this leaves six scholarship players rostered for next year at the moment and another two—Imes and Booth—potentially joining them. Would imagine there will be some grad transfers, but it’s looking like a big rebuilding year right now. All former three-stars and four-stars among those eight, but there are reasons Matt Zona and Tony Sanders and J.R. Konieczny didn’t get a lot of run this year. Those three and Ven-Allen Lubin are the only ones returning, and the impression doesn’t seem to be that Cormac Ryan will join them (the rest of last year’s roster can’t).
On the women’s side, we don’t know exactly what happened to Olivia Miles’s knee, but we know surgery is necessary and we aren’t sure whether it’s happened yet. Niele Ivey said last weekend that Miles could rejoin the team this summer, but it’s unclear what that means. Hopefully, it means in full capacity.
Reports from spring football practice seem positive. I haven’t seen any big concerns, but it’s possible I’m missing some.
This Week
The baseball team avoided a sweep yesterday at home against UNC, leaving them 5–7 in the ACC and tied for fourth place in the seven-team Atlantic Division. They’ll host Northwestern tomorrow and visit Pitt this coming weekend.
The softball team also avoided a sweep yesterday at home, splitting a doubleheader with Pitt. They’re 5–6–1 in conference play, good for seventh in the 13-team ACC. This week, they host Ball State for one and visit Louisville for three.
The men’s lacrosse team, ranked second or third in the country, beat Syracuse on Saturday to keep it at just one loss so far on the year. They host top-ranked Duke on Saturday afternoon. The game will be on ESPNU.
The women’s lacrosse team, ranked eighth or ninth in the country, beat previously third-ranked UNC on Saturday to keep it to just three losses so far on the year. They host top-seven Boston College on Saturday, also on ESPNU.
Jadin O’Brien won the heptathlon at the Texas Relays, taking over the top ranking in the country. Most of the Track and Field athletes were at Indiana State for a meet, where the 15th-ranked women placed first among non-host schools and the men placed third. They’ll be up in Kalamazoo for an invitational this weekend.
The women’s tennis team, ranked 22nd in the country, beat Louisville on Friday at home to climb to 4–5 in the ACC. They’ll visit Florida State and 11th-ranked Miami later this week.
The men’s tennis team swept Boston College and Butler on Saturday, earning its second conference win in the BC match. They’ll go to Clemson and Georgia Tech this weekend.
The men’s golf team finished 12th out of 15 teams at an invitational in Georgia this weekend. They’re idle this week. The women’s golf team is in progress at an event in Chattanooga. They are also idle this week.
The rowing team’s second varsity four won gold at the San Diego Crew Classic. I’m having a hard time parsing the rowing results, but it appears the first varsity four finished fifth out of twelve boats in its competition, the first varsity eight finished eighth out of nine, and the second varsity eight finished eighth out of eleven. No meet this weekend.
