Brian Barwick is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 football

Football (soccer)

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 administrator and the former chief executive of The Football Association

The Football Association

The Football Association, also known as simply The FA, is the governing body of football in England, and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. It was formed in 1863, and is the oldest national football association...

 having held the post from January 2005 to December 2008. He previously worked with the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

. He is a known supporter of Liverpool F.C.

Liverpool F.C.

Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...

 and is a member of the Board of Directors at Hampton & Richmond Borough F.C.

Hampton & Richmond Borough F.C.

Hampton & Richmond Borough F.C. are an English football club based in the suburb of Hampton, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. They were founded in 1921 and formerly known as Hampton F.C. until 1999 when they changed their name in an attempt to draw a wider support base from around the...

Education

Barwick was educated at Quarry Bank High School

Calderstones School

Calderstones School is an English comprehensive school and specialist science college, located opposite Calderstones Park on Harthill Road in the Liverpool suburb of Allerton.The school's post code is L18 3HS...

 and then gained a degree

Academic degree

An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...

 in economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 at Liverpool University.

BBC

He later worked as a journalist for the North West Evening Mail, based in Barrow-in-Furness, before joining the BBC's sports department

BBC Sport

BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC. It became a fully dedicated division of the BBC in 2000. It incorporates programmes such as Match of the Day, Grandstand , Test Match Special, Ski Sunday, Rugby Special and coverage of Formula One motor racing, MotoGP and the Wimbledon Tennis...

 in 1980. He was a producer of Football Focus

Football Focus

Football Focus is a BBC television show, broadcast on BBC One on Saturday lunchtimes, covering football, presented from the 2009/2010 season by Dan Walker...

between 1982 and 1984 and was then senior editor of the BBC's coverage of the 1990 and 1994 World Cups

FIFA World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...

, having also worked as an editor on Match of the Day

Match of the Day

Match of the Day is the BBC's main football television programme. Typically, it is shown on BBC One on Saturday evenings during the English football season, showing highlights of the day's matches in English football's top division, the Premier League...

.

Aside from football, Barwick was also responsible for the BBC's broadcasting of several other sporting events including the Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 and Atlanta Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

, the Commonwealth Games

Commonwealth Games

The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930 and takes place every four years....

 and the European and World Athletics Championships. In 1995 he became head of production at the BBC and then head of television sport.

ITV

In February 1998, Barwick moved to ITV and became controller of sport. At ITV he was responsible for several high profile sporting events such as the 1998 World Cup, which saw the channels highest ever audience of 23.8m viewers for the match between England

England national football team

The England national football team represents England in association football and is controlled by the Football Association, the governing body for football in England. England is the joint oldest national football team in the world, alongside Scotland, whom they played in the world's first...

 and Argentina

Argentina national football team

The Argentina national football team represents Argentina in association football and is controlled by the Argentine Football Association , the governing body for football in Argentina. Argentina's home stadium is Estadio Monumental Antonio Vespucio Liberti and their head coach is Alejandro...

, and the 2002 World Cup, and the 2000 and 2004 European Championships.

Barwick also negotiated rights for ITV to televise sporting events, including: the Champions League

UEFA Champions League

The UEFA Champions League, known simply the Champions League and originally known as the European Champion Clubs' Cup or European Cup, is an annual international club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations since 1955 for the top football clubs in Europe. It...

, the Rugby World Cup

Rugby World Cup

The Rugby World Cup is an international rugby union competition organised by the International Rugby Board and held every four years since 1987....

, Formula One

Formula One

Formula One, also known as Formula 1 or F1 and referred to officially as the FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of single seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile . The "formula" designation in the name refers to a set of rules with which...

, The Boat Race

The Boat Race

The event generally known as "The Boat Race" is a rowing race in England between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights each spring on the River Thames in London. It takes place generally on the last Saturday of March or the first...

, the Super Bowl

Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League , the highest level of professional American football in the United States, culminating a season that begins in the late summer of the previous calendar year. The Super Bowl uses Roman numerals to identify each game, rather...

 and the Tour de France

Tour de France

The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The...

, and retained Premier League broadcasting rights from the BBC. He was also responsible for creating the ITV2

ITV2

ITV2 is a 24 hour, free-to-air entertainment television channel in the United Kingdom owned by ITV Digital Channels Ltd, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998, and is available on digital television via satellite, cable, IPTV and terrestrial platforms. The channel has the...

 channel, and bringing Des Lynam

Des Lynam

Desmond Michael "Des" Lynam, OBE is an Irish television and radio presenter based in the UK.He has hosted television coverage of high profile events for many years...

 and Gabby Logan

Gabby Logan

Gabby Logan is a television presenter and radio presenter, as well as a former Wales international gymnast. She currently hosts programmes for BBC Sport, mainly focusing on football.- Early life :...

 to ITV as presenters. He did, however, receive criticism over ITV's production of the 2003 Rugby World Cup

2003 Rugby World Cup

The 2003 Rugby World Cup was the fifth Rugby World Cup and was won by England. Originally planned to be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, all games were shifted to Australia following a contractual dispute over ground signage rights between the New Zealand Rugby Football Union and Rugby World...

. He also fired commentator Ron Atkinson

Ron Atkinson

Ronald Ernest Atkinson, commonly known as "Big Ron" and "Bojangles" is an English former football player and manager. In recent years he has become one of Britain's best-known football pundits...

 after Atkinson made a racist remark about then- player Marcel Desailly

Marcel Desailly

Marcel Desailly is a retired Ghanaian born French footballer and star of the France national football team squad, with whom he won the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000...

 in 2004.

The FA

In November 2004, Barwick was named as the chief executive of the Football Association and began the role in January 2005. He had worked with the FA before joining as the chief executive, negotiating a number of TV rights deals for both the BBC and ITV. Barwick played a key role in appointing Steve McClaren

Steve McClaren

Stephen "Steve" McClaren is an English football manager and former player.McClaren was previously manager of VfL Wolfsburg in Germany between May 2010 and February 2011, having left his post at Dutch side FC Twente, with whom he won the club's first Eredivisie championship in the 2009–10 season...

 as England's new manager in 2006, and was later criticised as England failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championship.

Since then, Barwick has stated that the completion of the English National Football Centre

St George's Park National Football Centre

St George's Park is the FA's National Football Centre which is situated near Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire and is due to be completed in 2012. It was originally referred to as NFC by The FA and was informally referred to as "Burton" but following a public consultation the FA favoured a name...

, due to be opened in 2010, and the national teams (men and women) reaching the semi-finals of the next European Championships and World Cups are the FA's priorities. Before he managed to accomplish this, it was reported in August 2008 he would leave the FA at the end of the year.

University of Liverpool

In 2008, Barwick was made Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Liverpool

University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

 and he now teaches on their Football Industries MBA (FIMBA)

Football Industries MBA (FIMBA)

Football Industries MBA The MBA program at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, was the first, and is currently the only MBA focusing on the business and management of Football...

.