On May 26, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta announced his retirement from a job he’s held since 2006. Two weeks later, Notre Dame announced that its AD, Jack Swarbrick, is stepping down in 2024 after 16 years on the job. And just like that, an increasingly impermanent profession saw its collective experience further diminished.
Consider how things once were at Iowa and Notre Dame. While Barta’s tenure seemed endless in Iowa City, it doesn’t measure up to Bump Elliott, who held the AD job from 1970–91. And Swarbrick is only going half as long as Edwin “Moose” Krause, who was AD from 1949–81 in South Bend. There are no Moose Krauses anymore.
Removing Barta and Swarbrick from the equation, the average current tenure for Power 5 conference athletic directors is 5.67 years. (That figure actually is boosted by the arrival of BYU as a Big 12 member come July 1; Tom Holmoe has been the AD there since 2005.) For the entirety of NCAA Division I FBS, the average is 4.99 years.
