NOTRE DAME — With one short, definitive proclamation Jack Swarbrick delivered a clear message of his goals and expectations as Notre Dame's 12th and newest athletic director.

"Don't step on the field if you don't want to win! We want to win!" Swarbrick announced, in his introductory news conference.

"The challenges here are significant, but they're challenges of the best kind. They're challenges born not of problems, not of shortcomings, but of great striving, of high goals."

Swarbrick, a 1976 graduate of Notre Dame, brings a lifetime of achievement in the sports world back with him. An attorney by trade, his involvement in multiple sporting avenues in the Indianapolis area have not gone without success.

His accomplishments include securing rights to host the Big Ten Conference men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in Indianapolis, as well as bringing multiple Final Fours to the area. Thanks in part to his efforts, Indianapolis is now also the home of the NCAA and the
2012 Super Bowl.

It is precisely his success in these endeavors that assures Swarbrick of his own abilities to lead Notre Dame's athletic department.

"I believe that I accept this job on the threshold of extraordinary change in intercollegiate athletics in America. I have my theories about what that change may entail and where the industry is headed. But I think it will be enormous. I think there's much about this industry you won't recognize in 10 years. We must be at the forefront of that. We must participate in leading that change. Notre Dame cannot have that dictated to it. And I love the challenge."

In addition, his love of Notre Dame fuels his desire to return to his alma mater.

"I am thrilled at the notion to try and take those skills and apply them to a community I love so much. But being passionate about Notre Dame doesn't qualify you to be its athletic director. If it did, there wouldn't have been 30 candidates, there would have been 300,000 candidates. But I think, beyond the skills that Notre Dame helped me develop, my career since then has prepared me to lead this extraordinary collection of people who are part of the Notre Dame athletic family. My experiences have run very deep in the sports world."