SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mike Tirico golfed with his boss last February in Arizona around the rollicking Waste Management Open, a who’s who event staged in a place everybody wants to be in mid-winter.
For the Chairman of NBC Sports to get in a round with the network’s top talent wasn’t all that telling, considering Pete Bevacqua’s passions of family, classic movies, golf and Notre Dame, not necessarily in that order. The former head of the PGA of America and future Notre Dame athletic director knows his way around courses. He knows how they present the opportunity to build relationships. Bevacqua’s bond with Tirico was professional but also personal, something the announcer savored before the first tee.
Advertisement
“If you asked me who are four or five people that you’d love to sit and have dinner with, whether he was my boss or not, Pete Bevacqua was on that list,” Tirico said. “Makes every table better. Makes every room warmer. Really has a great comfort around him that you’re with Pete for an hour and you feel like you’ve been with him for days.”
Still, the ability to network is hardly the reason why Bevacqua will succeed Jack Swarbrick, learning under him starting next month and taking over in full next year. Bevacqua attracts affection, for sure, but it’s the ability to command respect that may make him the ideal athletic director for Notre Dame at a most turbulent time.
GO DEEPER
Sampson: What new Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua can take from Jack Swarbrick's tenure
On the day of that round with Tirico in Arizona, Bevacqua was spotted about the course by Rory McIlroy. The world famous golfer didn’t just seek Bevacqua out to touch base, he listened to what the television executive with a background in golf thought about the sport’s trajectory. One of golf’s brightest ambassadors didn’t need Bevacqua’s take on the sport, but McIlroy wanted it.
“Rory’s hanging on everything Pete’s saying for 20 minutes,” Tirico said. “We’re talking like the biggest names in sports right now. Pete’s been in the room with them, if not at a negotiating table with many of them. To then deal with the commissioner of the league, or sell athletic directors or university presidents in the ACC, Pete’s gonna feel right at the table without taking a back seat to anyone at the table.
“Grand slam hire.”
If Swarbrick was an out-of-the box appointment 15 years ago, a Notre Dame alumnus with a law degree and experience in amateur sports on regional and national levels, Bevacqua may represent the next iteration of that appointment. He’s got the Notre Dame diploma and the high-end law degree. He’s also led NBC Sports in agreements with the NFL, Major League Baseball and English Premier League, on top of NBC’s broadcast of the Olympic Games, Kentucky Derby and major golf tournaments.
Advertisement
On the surface, leading Notre Dame athletics reads like a step down for Bevacqua after nearly five years at NBC Sports as Chairman and President. Yet, it doesn’t take much digging to understand why he’d trade running an entire network’s sports division for returning to his alma mater, where he was once a walk-on punter for Lou Holtz.
“I’ve known since the day I met him, this is probably a dream job for him,” said producer Rob Hyland, who led Notre Dame’s broadcast on NBC before moving up to Sunday Night Football. “This is a calling. I know he’s not going to become a priest in South Bend. But I truly believe for him, this is a calling to come back to South Bend.”
Hyland said Bevacqua rarely went five minutes before mentioning Notre Dame in most conversations. If there was a football story or recruiting development with the Irish, Bevacqua knew about it. He’d stop by the production trucks underneath Notre Dame Stadium on game day and sat in on production meetings. If broadcasting Notre Dame football was a business for a NBC, it was a passion project for Bevacqua.
And yet, how Bevacqua showed that passion may preview his leadership style when he assumes the athletic director role in full. When Bevacqua came to NBC in 2018, he did so with limited experience in sports programming. He was a dealmaker and negotiator, not an announcer or producer. He wasn’t going to make suggestions on how to broadcast a football game simply because he was a consumer of the sport on television.
“Somebody who doesn’t say, ‘Hey, I know everything. I have every answer here.’” Tirico said. “Allowed the people who had been in television for 25 years to lead their areas. And that doesn’t mean that Pete’s guidance and leadership and voice and decision-making intelligence was not a part of what they did on a regular basis.
Advertisement
“I have the ultimate respect for the guy who can be the smartest person in the room without letting you know. There’s a lot of that in Pete.”
The department Bevacqua will inherit should be stable at the head coaching posts, or at least be poised to let Marcus Freeman, Niele Ivey and Micah Shrewsberry grow into positions they’ve held for a combined five full seasons. Men’s lacrosse is coming off a national championship under Kevin Corrigan. The men’s soccer program made the Final Four under Chad Riley two years ago. Women’s soccer was a No. 1 seed under Nate Norman last year. Fencing is coming off three consecutive national titles.
But that’s all different than the tumult facing college athletics with name, image and likeness, the transfer portal and a sport looking for congressional oversight. There’s a new NCAA president, a new College Football Playoff coming and new conference realignment inbound, possibly turning the Big Ten and SEC into the sport’s two super conferences.
That means Bevacqua will have riddles to solve or threats to thwart from his first day on the job. But the fact he can do so having already negotiated with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell may put collegiate challenges facing Bevacqua on a different scale.
Tirico noted his alma mater, Syracuse, hired its current athletic director John Wildhack directly from ESPN, his former employer. Tirico, who is on the Board of Trustees at Syracuse, believes that maneuver has positioned the school as well as possible in a turbulent ACC. For Bevacqua, it’s about making sure Notre Dame fits nationally and remains a fit for the league at the same time. It also means building on how Swarbrick has turned the Notre Dame athletic director post into a commissioner-of-one position, putting him on like terms with SEC and ACC commissioners Greg Sankey and Jim Phillips.
“The power that comes with being the Director of Athletics at Notre Dame should have shrunk (in the last decade). It didn’t,” Tirico said. “It didn’t singularly because Jack is a force who understands how to operate in the ecosystem. And the fact that he’s going to help hand off to Pete here just doubles down on that.
“Notre Dame is lucky to have somebody like Pete available right now given what the next five to 10 years will look like in intercollegiate athletics. This thing is a mess. It becomes incumbent to have really strong voices to help guide what this next decade is going to turn college athletics into. To have someone who not only has the broad business acumen and experience but also the passion for the institution, especially with this institution, this is the greatest fit possible at Notre Dame in 2023.”
Advertisement
Tirico said the only downside to the move was personal, that he was losing a top boss at NBC. The same goes for Hyland, who talked with Bevacqua and Swarbrick on the day the news of Notre Dame’s succession plan came out.
“I don’t think you need to be the loudest voice in the room to command respect, and that’s definitely not Pete,” Hyland said. “The type of leader that people respect has changed. And I think Pete is sort of the new era of leadership in terms of sort of a calm, reserved presence, but he’s gonna speak up and say what he feels and what he thinks when it matters.”
And when it comes to Bevacqua, Notre Dame matters a lot.
“His love for the school and the place is as genuine as you could imagine,” Tirico said. “And I think after the incredible run that Jack has had, it’s great to turn it over to somebody who will take the stewardship of the athletic program and manage it from their soul. And that’s what Pete will do.”
(Photo of Pete Bevacqua and Lou Holtz: Gerardo Mora / Getty Images for SiriusXM)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k29nb3BlbnxzfJFsZmluX2aBcLrOrameZZSWuqZ5z56rnmWSmsOir9CumGacmaeypMDOq2ShoaKafA%3D%3D