Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick earned $2.7 million in total compensation in 2021, the most recent year on record, according to documents obtained by USA Today.
As a private institution, Notre Dame is not subject to open-records laws under the Freedom of Information Act, but its financials are publicly available through tax filings.
Those filings show Swarbrick, Notre Dame's AD since 2008, earned $2.3 million in salary and $400,000 in deferred compensation.
The number makes him among the highest-paid athletics directors in the nation. Texas's Chris Del Conte earns $2.42 million, while Ohio State's Gene Smith is just over $2 million. Alabama's Greg Byrne and LSU's Scott Woodward are just below the $2 million mark.
The 2021 calendar year was a busy one for Swarbrick on the football front. In January, he oversaw the hiring of Marcus Freeman as the Irish's defensive coordinator.
Brian Kelly left for LSU on Nov. 30 of that year, and Swarbrick promoted Freeman to head coach three days later, and 11 months to the day after Freeman joined the program.
Long-term, Swarbrick's most important work was done in the summer. Swarbrick was part of a 4-person team that proposed a 12-team bracket for the College Football Playoff. That group opted for a format that reserved spots for the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-larges, thereby securing Notre Dame's path to the Playoff as an independent.
The 12-team format was formally proposed on June 10, 2021 and finally approved on Sept. 2, 2022. It goes into effect with the 2024 season.
Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick credited w/ just over $2.7 million in total pay in 2021, school's new tax docs show. Total includes $400K in deferred comp reported in prior yrs, so net was just over $2.3M.
— Steve Berkowitz (@ByBerkowitz) May 16, 2023
Over roughly same time frame, Texas AD Chris Del Conte made $2.42 millon.
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