While readying for his future as a retired administrator, outgoing Cal Poly athletic director Don Oberhelman explained further the difficulty of a controversial decision to eliminate its swimming and diving programs.
Speaking to Matthew Ho of Mustang News, Oberhelman delved further into the decision made back in March to cut the program in the wake of the changing landscape of college athletics following the recent House v. NCAA settlement.
“We knew exactly what this is going to look like,” Oberhelman said. “But it doesn’t make it a bad decision. It’s going to benefit the rest of our student body and the rest of our student athletes.”
After initially announcing the plans to eliminate the swimming and diving programs, the university pivoted somewhat and gave an opportunity for athletes and other supporters to raise $25 million by mid-June to save them.
The number was eventually dropped to $15 million, but fundraising efforts ended up falling short regardless. Just short of $9 million was raised, and the university decided to end the programs. In a letter, university president Jeffrey Armstrong said that $15 million was the bare minimum that needed to be raised.
Oberhelman has echoed the thoughts of other administrators around the country in saying that the non-revenue Olympic sports are going to be the programs paying the price in the wake of the House v. NCAA settlement.
Oberhelman said roughly 100 fewer student athletes will be in the athletic program with the swimming and diving programs cut.
“We were starting to see sports suffer because we have too many mouths to feed,” he said. “It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an athletic director. But I 100% believe it was the right decision for our university, and we did not go into it lightly.”
Oberhelman announced his retirement in June. He will stay on until the fall or his replacement is named.
The Mustangs’ swim & dive team was an NCAA Division I mid-major program competing in the Big West Conference. There were 29 swimmers on both the men’s and women’s rosters this past season, and scholarship commitments for current team members will be honored throughout their time at Cal Poly if they stay at the school.
Cal Poly had $120,000 of funding, compared to the $210,000 that other Big West programs had. The Cal Poly men finished third out of five teams at February’s Big West Conference Championships, while the women’s team was last out of six teams.
Junior Evan Woo won titles in the 100 breast and 200 breast, while junior Drew Huston won the title in the 200 back.
Sam Seybold was named co-Freshman Swimmer of the Year after the men’s meet.
His vitriol has no limits.
Sadly this team was left on the smallest of funding/budget, with zero support. They had 2 years and 50+ amazing coaches who applied to do that job yet the AD interviewed ZERO of those 50 because they did not want to have pay anyone. They had planned to cut this team for a few years based on the threats that if there were any complaints (about the abuse from coach) that they would just get rid of the team. Left with 2 swim and 1 dive coach who were all part time (15-20/hours week is all they were paid) was an NCAA violation to not have any full time coaches on deck. Refused to pay the $800 to join the… Read more »
And to think there are people out there thinking this has something to do with House. Asking them to raise 25 m$ is proof he didn’t want the team anymore. That’s 100 years of swim and dive budget. Still violating title IX and the lack of any kind of respectful support for this team and its coaching staff started at the top. And where’s the 1/2 m$ current endowment going? Sickening frankly.
29 is a nice roster! Good on the coaching staff to keep these kids motivated. Looking at the numbers presented, the coaching staff did a lot with less. I hope they all land better jobs.
For everyone that hates the guy who made the decision…get used to it. Non Revenue Olympic sports are only just starting to take a massive, massive hit.
Look friend, I know what you’re shooting for here, but trust me when I tell you that none of the coaches involved with this program needs to land a better job.
The last one was fired for being abusive. The current ones were basically glorified swim parents who step in to do meet entries after the high school team can’t find a new coach. But not like regular moms, like cool moms (anyone who knows what happened in Vegas this season will know what I mean). And I mean literally – the most recent head coaches’ primary qualification was that her daughter was an All-American swimmer at USC.
The chaos of the coaching at this program made it easy to… Read more »
What happened in Vegas?
CMU swimmer was cheating on breaststroke and CP swimmers called for officials to call it and they refused so a heated debate took place. CMU coaches tried to blame CP coaches and swimmers.
In accurate on many levels but the coaching situation was 100% on the AD. He had 50+ very qualified candidates to interview and he interviewed ZERO because he did not want to pay any of them so therefore he found 2 people locally who were paid for 15-20/hours per week and NONE were full time coaches, including the diving coach. A total NCAA violation by Cal Poly to have ZERO full time coaches, who by the way took a messy situation post Phil trauma and the 1 year of Tom coming back to help out and turned the season into a fun and successful season IN SPITE of the AD doing all he could to try to make the entire… Read more »
As far as I’m aware, the NCAA does not require its schools to have any full-time coaches.
The AD set all those dumpster fires.
What a joke.
Just admit it bro. You’re a d bag!
They gave the team a few months to raise that money, an impossible task for any group. Don was the worst AD and he did nothing to help or enhance any of the sports at that school.
Well, he did give the football coach $400,000 and 12 assistants. Still couldn’t win a game.
team was set up to fail for MANY years yet persevered anyways!!
Bro cut the programs and is retiring to let the next AD face the heat
He really said:
Nah, he was forced out.
“Oberhelman has echoed the thoughts of other administrators around the country in saying that the non-revenue Olympic sports are going to be the programs paying the price in the wake of the House v. NCAA settlement.”
Thanks again Grant House. Enjoy your $100,000 settlement for wrecking college swimming, putz!
Easy to throw Grant under the “bus”, but he was just a face to an issue that would have come up one way or another. Colleges do unfairly benefit off student athletes on many occasions, including name and likeness that goes beyond the time an athlete was competing in college.
A very popular retort, and you certainly have a point. But this is a swimming blog, the sport of swimming is substantially impacted by this settlement (negatively), and a swimmer is the lead plaintiff of this lawsuit. As a member of the swimming community I am just so embarrassed that a swimmer is the face of this, regardless if it was inevitable. Makes us look like dipshits.
So who should have bit the bullet? Volleyball? Tennis? The problem isn’t with House it’s with NCAA keeping revenue rather than giving back to the schools!