Swarbrick Speaks | by Pat

UND.com has the transcript of Jack Swarbrick's presser up with audio of Rob Ianello's follow-up comments. It's definitely worth a read. Here's the intro where Jack makes the official news even more official.

Good evening. Thank you all very much for joining us here this evening. As indicated by a press release that we issued earlier today, last night I made a recommendation to Father Jenkins that we take our football program in a different direction by replacing our head coach. Father Jenkins accepted that recommendation, and so effective December 1st, we will move forward in that way. ...

[Charlie] will go on to have great success. He'll add some Super Bowl rings, no doubt, to the ones he already has as a successful coordinator in the NFL, and we will miss him. But for us it's time to move forward. It's time to move forward because it is critical to this program and to its place in this University and college football that we compete at the highest level, that we compete for National Championships.

Jack seemed pretty confident and in control as he talked about ND possibly playing in a bowl game (no decision yet) and the timetable for the coaching search (open-ended, but will "move as expeditiously as we can").

If you're looking for clues about which direction ND is headed, Jack didn't offer much, but this quote seems to frame the ideal candidate rather well.

Q. Can you describe what -- you're a data guy, you've crunched the numbers. What's important to you in the next guy, football philosophy wise?

JACK SWARBRICK: Well, I won't go into the specific criteria. We have developed a list of criteria to help us shape the search. But I think I will say that it is important to us to look first and foremost at people who have demonstrated an ability to build and sustain a Division I college football program.

Jack also noted the need for a strong defense, which may or may not be relevant to who ND ultimately hires. Often coaching searches look for the opposite of the guy they just fired, so this could be a bit of that, but I have to agree with the old saw that defense wins championships.

Q. Given the defensive struggles this year, is there any priority given to a coach that tends to have experience on one side of the ball or the other?

JACK SWARBRICK: I don't think you can afford to be that narrow in your approach to candidates. My personal view is that given where we play and who we play, we need to be able to play good defense. And if you look at the defensive rankings of the leading teams this year, there's a correlation between BCS standings and defensive abilities, and so it's important to us, but it's not a limiter in terms of the background of the coach.