Opinion: William & Mary Leadership Miscalculated What Mattered

Editorials are opinions of their authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of SwimSwam as a company, nor other members of the staff.

On Tuesday afternoon, William & Mary administration, most forcefully athletics director Samantha Huge, had to admit that they got it wrong, when Huge resigned her position amid the fallout of her decision to cut 7 of the school’s varsity sports.

Huge’s calculation, and that of the school, was that their fortunes would be advanced if they could build the school into a recognizable brand in football and basketball.

But what they neglected, and what the alumni of the programs that were cut have said all along, is that unlike at places like Iowa, or Minnesota, or other Power 5 schools that have cut programs this fall, the football fans don’t hold the purse strings at William & Mary.

“‘Football Saturdays’ is not part of our culture,” one alum told me shortly after the swimming & diving program was cut. Alumni don’t get doe-eyed at the thought of making the leap to BCS football. They don’t even sell out their existing 12,000 seat stadium.

Meanwhile, several of the alumni of the school’s Olympic/non-revenue sports have gone on to wildly successful careers outside of sports. That’s what William & Mary alumni are known for. 3 United States presidents earned degrees from William & Mary. 13 members of the U.S. Cabinet have degrees from William & Mary. Ambassadors, directors of major national organizations like the National Park Service or the FBI, founding fathers, CEOs, and the co-founder of Hulu attended William & Mary.

They’ve had a handful of players go on to play in the NBA or NFL or Major League Baseball, but even in sports they’re better known for the coaches they produce than the athletes, including Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, the United States’ most successful women’s soccer coach ever Jill Ellis, and the head coach of the last 3 NCAA Division I women’s swimming & diving champion Stanford Cardinal Greg Meehan.

Perhaps the school’s most famous athletics alumni was a member of the men’s soccer team. Jon Stewart, the former host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central that reframed the way Americans approach politics, has won 22 Primetime Emmy Awards, which is more than any other individual male in history.

The point is, that it’s not clear that the alumni ever asked for a championship-winning football team. As evidenced by the substantial endowment that covered almost all of the costs of the swimming program, they were happy with their success in Olympic sports.

Even the response to the protests by alumni were disingenuous, with the school painting a worst-case “fully funding” financial endowment picture for programs like swimming that were already doing well without that level of money.

But the hubris of the administration, including Huge, who has quickly climbed the ladder of college athletics, burned too brightly here.

She believed that her future as a Power 5 athletics director rested on building a football and basketball program, rather than the fact that your college’s swim team was winning conference titles and producing All-Americans without athletic scholarships swimming in an unspectacular pool by Division I standards.

And maybe it does. But maybe it shouldn’t. Especially in the modern era of college athletics as budgets across the country disintegrate, there is more skill in an athletics director who does more with less, and produces winners in a variety of sports. That shows true expertise in one’s craft more than throwing huge sums of money at football and basketball programs and hoping you hit gold.

She’s not the first AD that has fallen apart chasing this glory. And she probably won’t be the last. The most infamous example is former Boise State athletics director Gene Bleymaier, who oversaw the building of the Boise State football program into one of the most famous success stories of the modern era, was eventually fired after an NCAA investigation revealed 22 rules violations.

But others, of course, have had success, and have made that jump, and so they will continue to try.

There may not be a universal message here, and nothing that will necessarily help Iowa or UConn save their swimming & diving programs. But the alumni have made it clear: William & Mary isn’t a stepping stone for an athletics director hellbent on proving a point about football and basketball. If you take the job at William & Mary, you better understand that the alumni have their own idea of culture, and if you want their money and their support, you better make sure that you listen to their ideas, too.

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Gabrielle Geroe Zimmerman ‘78
3 years ago

Thank you for supplying the words that convey how we feel. This article nails it.

swimapologist
3 years ago

Ol’ Longhorn, what’s your relationship to Huge?

She was at Texas A&M, you live in Houston, maybe that’s the connection, you ran into each other there?

The passion with which you’re fighting for her reputation seems to reach way beyond “disinterested observer.”

Swimmom
Reply to  swimapologist
3 years ago

I have to agree. Over the top ‘Ol Longhorn responses would signal some sort of TX connection. “I don’t have a horse in this race”?
Not so much. Tribe swimming is fighting for Tribe swimming, and they are ahead at the moment. Great article, and thank you SwimSwam for continuing to cover what is happening!

Swimmermom71
Reply to  swimapologist
3 years ago

I completely agree. Ol’ Longhorn doesn’t understand the culture at W&M. I’ve lived in Williamsburg off and on for nearly 50 years now. My father was a professor at W&M for 34 years. I went there as an undergrad. I swam there. My husband went there as an undergrad, and got his MBA there. I’m currently coaching with a team founded by a member of Tribe Swimming. Many of our year-round kids want to swim at W&M or schools like it. My family, and many people like my family, have a vested interest in W&M as a school and as a home. I still know many of the professors there – in fact, one texted me three minutes into her… Read more »

Ol’ Longhorn
3 years ago

Braden, I hope you will circle back on this wreck scene in a year to see what all this gnashing of teeth actually accomplished, or more likely, the added deleterious consequences of this piling on led to. On a related note, the unintended consequences of pulling the Title IX card to restore women’s swimming at Iowa and other places: Minnesota just made additional cuts to women’s athletics to balance cuts made to men’s sports for Title IX purposes. It cuts both ways.

Ol’ Longhorn
3 years ago

And I’m the end, the big revenge hit on the AD made it fiscally even more remote that the cut teams will be brought back. They’ll be paying Huge’s buyout with no work for it, paying the president’s COS more money for the interim AD job he’s not qualified for, scared off recruits for the revenue-generating sports so that the teams will suck even worse and gate sales and marketing revenue will be lower, generated the new expense of trying to recruit a new AD, guaranteed more money will be required to retain the new football and basketball coaches, and scared off potential major donors. But hey, it was worth it to scream at a woman on the internet and… Read more »

Tribe Mom
Reply to  Ol’ Longhorn
3 years ago

You can’t get much lower than gate sales already are!! And how do I know this….I have been a season ticket holder for decades! Since you obviously have no first hand knowledge of OUR spectator attendance, OUR lost revenue in revenue generating sports, or the chronic mismanagement of OUR athletic dollars over the past 3 years it is best you stick to something you do know. You must know Ms Huge so you stick to her , we choose NOT TOO!
Take your crotchety self and play in your own sandbox, you are not welcome in OURS!

Guerra
3 years ago

Bravo! Well written!

SWIMPOP
3 years ago

If there is anything I know about top brass is they don’t want to have to deal with a subs problems. The first time it’s a slap on the wrist, but week after week dealing with someone else’s f ups is not going to last. Too many times in the paper, too many reporters asking questions. Then faculty, and alumni, and the students. She had to go.

Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

I’ll add this to my earlier comment (presuming it gets posted, since it was critical of the author). It would’ve taken the author 30 seconds on Google to see that the plans for football and basketball predated the Huge hire or the president’s hire, and that the principal drivers were alumni donors real alumni giving big dollars to those sports. They funded the first major renovation of Zable stadium in 2016 (about $28 million, with the $10 million lead gift coming in 2012 — lots of luxury suites and other amenities for donors and boosters) — oh, and recall that Huge was hired in 2017, the horse was already out of the barn)– and the renovation of Kaplan arena in… Read more »

Tribe Parent
Reply to  Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

If you are correct that Samantha Huge and her fabulous strategic plan are responsible for bringing in tens of millions in donations, I wonder why President Rowe didn’t just say F-you to all the screaming alumni and keep the heroic Huge? As you reference, the generous donors had the interests of the entire student body in mind when they made a donation. And in keeping with this attitude, maybe they, like everyone else, did not realize that the plan included cutting 7 successful sports teams. Perhaps they were not actually happy about that. Finally, even if Huge was hired to carry out the task of cutting sports teams, one would assume that part of the expectation would be for her… Read more »

Ol' Longhorn
Reply to  Tribe Parent
3 years ago

You must be the stay at home parent. If you don’t understand the “throw the subordinate under the bus” for an institutional failure, especially in athletics, and especially in an academic institution, you either haven’t been paying attention or are just in denial. It was an easy fix to salvage Rowe’s mistake in signing the plagiarized letter and the blowback from approving the sports cuts. You also must be living in a bubble or don’t understand the concept of TIME to think that the strategic plan developed in 2017, and the sports cuts of late 2020, weren’t impacted by a ONCE IN A CENTURY PANDEMIC in 2020, ffs. All the screaming minor donor alumni got was revenge on the lowest… Read more »

Tribe Parent
Reply to  Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

No one thinks it’s a “fix” and it’s not about revenge. That is your framing. If it is, as you seem certain of, a response to the pandemic, it is abundantly clear that there were many other options at their disposal. I hope you are wrong about no changes for the better as a result of this upheaval. We’ll see. You seem to think Huge had no responsibility in her own demise and was simply a sacrificial lamb. I think you are wrong about this. She handled the entire affair poorly and at a more basic level, did not understand nor care to learn about the culture of the place she worked. That’s a miscalculation and poor performance on her… Read more »

Tribe Mom
Reply to  Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

Ol Longhorn you are EXACTLY the type of problem Huge was! Abusive, crass, domineering, unwilling to see all sides of the picture!! We don’t want a woman AD just because she is a woman! We want an AD that understands OUR culture, man or woman, a culture we pride ourselves on. An AD that works with all the stakeholders to find the best solution for all involved. That’s how we choose to do things here in Va. Ms Huge was unwilling ( and yes it may have been directed from the top, if so that will eventually come out and we will deal with that as we have Ms Huge). Since you appear to have no horse in this race… Read more »

lil' longhorn
Reply to  Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

Let’s keep this civil Ol’ Longhorn — you have no idea whom you might offend. While all of these decisions are business decisions, they are poor decisions and do not fit the culture at william and mary. William & mary is a culture that prides itself in its work ethic, academics and accomplishments. It prides itself in its openness and acceptance, and it also prides itself in its ability to achieve with very little. It is not a culture of commercialization. It is also not a culture of “glorious revenge”. No one wanted anyone to suffer or lose their job. Everyone just wanted openness, honestly and transparency. The decisions that were made were not done with faculty or community involvement,… Read more »

Tribe Parent
Reply to  Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

One more thing Ol’ Longhorn, what exactly does being a stay at home parent have to do with anything???

Ol' Longhorn
3 years ago

(Not surprisingly) I’m going to object, Braden, to the characterization that Huge was a relentless ladder climber “chasing this glory” and was too inflated with hubris, and that was an independent factor in her demise — that somehow the apparent miscalculation that SHE WAS HIRED TO CARRY OUT, was all on her, and her ilk of glory hungry ADs. Sure, you mention the school, the administration, etc., in passing, but the chum you throw out here is all Huge: “an athletic director hellbent on proving a point about football and basketball.” Really? What the hell is your proof of that? You do this without any first-hand knowledge (neither do I, nor do any of the posters to this car crash… Read more »

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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