Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick believes that there is "currently a 'cultural divide' in college athletics" and collegiate pressures "may make it inevitable for a semi-pro division of college athletics to emerge," according to Dennis Dodd of CBSSPORTS.com. Swarbrick said, "There's going to be Congressional intervention (in college athletics) or there's going to be more than one intercollegiate athletic association. ... You don't like these set of rules? Go play in that association." He added, “Forget the economics, the cultural divide in college athletics is getting too big. Any business association requires commonality of interests to hold together. The Oregon and Stanford economic models are similar. Their approach to sports couldn't be more different." Dodd noted in Swarbrick's "future vision, they would be affiliated with different governing bodies." There would be schools "banding together because they adhere to a traditional collegiate model." Swarbrick: "Other schools will say, ‘Hey, we're comfortable with sort of semi-pro model.' That's a perfectly valid choice. But for some of us that's not a choice we're prepared to make and we won't." Swarbrick said most athletic budgets are "somewhere around" the 3-8% range of the total university budget. He added, "The Stanfords of the world are not going to allow that 4 percent business unit (to) take them places they don't want to be." Dodd: "Think, then, of two college sports associations. One that includes the likes of Notre Dame, Duke, Stanford, Wake Forest, Cal, Northwestern and TCU. And another that includes most of the major-college land-grant schools" (CBSSPORTS.com, 3/18).
