Over a month after announcing the discontinuation of the Cal Poly swim and dive program, athletic director Don Oberhelman made his first public comments on the move. He cited multiple issues, including budget reduction, the House v. NCAA settlement and Cal Poly’s large number of sports offerings.
“It’s painful,” said Oberhelman in a video on the Cal Poly Athletics YouTube discussing the winter sports season. “It causes anger and a lot of misdirected rage and things like that. It’s an awful situation to go through, but we didn’t go into it lightly.”
In the interview, Oberhelman stated Cal Poly has the most athletic programs and the most student-athletes in the Big West conference.
Currently, Cal Poly has the second-most programs and athletes, but he did not take UC Davis into account due to their scheduled move to the Mountain West Conference in the 2026-2027 season.
“We’re really, really large and we’re trying to hold on,” Oberhelman said. “What it’s starting to do is impact the student-athlete experience.”
Regarding funding, Oberhelman said the 8% budget cuts to California State universities are impacting athletics. Additionally, the House v. NCAA settlement will cost Cal Poly Athletics $550,000 per year for the next 12 years, according to the video.
The class-action lawsuit, which was initially filed in 2020 against the NCAA, seeks $2.8 billion in name, image and likeness damages along with an injunction to lift restrictions on revenue sharing with student-athletes. The payments will be spread out over the course of multiple years.
The settlement’s terms were adopted by the NCAA Division I Board of Directors on Tuesday, which includes the following:
- Changes to the bylaws around paying athletes directly
- Eliminating scholarship limits and setting roster limits for every sport
- Annual reporting requirements for schools that pay athletes with a $20.5 million payment pool
- Establishing a clearinghouse for all name, image and likeness (NIL) deals that come from third parties worth $600 or more
“We have to start tightening our belts and figure out how we can function in this new reality without further cuts,” Oberhelman said.
While the initial April 15 deadline to raise $10 million in funding passed, according to an Instagram post from the account “savecpswimdive, “there are still conversations about a path to reinstatement.”
Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong set a requirement of $25 million to reinstate the program in a meeting on March 19.
Oberhelman cautioned about the road ahead for Cal Poly in the new college landscape.
“This is just the beginning rather than the end of what these new realities are going to look like for us,” Oberhelman said. “We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to do, which is prepare for those realities, uncomfortable and painful as they may be. We have to make sure our sports are primed for success, and we were just too big at that point in time.”