The changing landscape of college athletics has wide-ranging impacts on schools across the country.
At Cal Poly, those impacts have already taken shape in the form of cutting the swim and dive program.
With the program no more, there’s more impacts coming to Cal Poly programs due to the ongoing opt-in NCAA settlement worth $2.8 billion addressing name, image and likeness and student-athlete backpay for NCAA athletes from 2016-2021 that are being paid for by NCAA institutions including Cal Poly.
“Cal Poly is having to pay for the transgressions of others,” Cal Poly Athletic Director Don Oberhelman said.
With Cal Poly cited as suffering a near half-a-million-dollar loss per year due to the House v. NCAA settlement, the case also has other stipulations for participating schools like Cal Poly, such as roster cuts.
For example, the football team carried 107 players on their team this last year and now they can only carry 105.
Head Coach Todd Rogers has one of the best-ranked beach volleyball teams in the country and carries 32 players this season. Come next year, he’ll be at 19.
“But after some of them that still want to be here and still want to be competing and be part of our squad is going to be really, really rough,” Rogers said of the cuts.
“I think we're going to eliminate people from the roster just because somebody told us we had to do that," Oberhelman said. "I don't think that's right. I don't think that's fair.”
Another stipulation within the settlement is that participating schools will have a revenue-sharing model up to $20.5 million for each school to distribute; however, for Cal Poly, there is no revenue to share, meaning they will have to fundraise privately, according to Oberhelman.
“I think it's not a good thing for mid-majors particularly," Rogers said. "It's great for a, for power four conferences because they got a lot of money, but for mid-majors, I don't know where you're going to get that money.”
“Non-revenue sports, particularly at the mid-majors, don't know from season to season whether or not their sport will be funded in the time ahead," the founder and coach at Athletica US, Kathy Devaney, explained. Athletica US helps student-athletes in the recruiting process.
An example of that uncertainty is the Cal Poly swim and dive program that has now begun to privately fundraise. With a goal of $200,000 to help reinstate the program, on the first day of their GoFundMe, they raised more than $25,000.
But with the ever-changing NCAA landscape, many student-athletes will look to go elsewhere and transfer, something many of the Cal Poly swimmers and divers are looking to do.
“Now, athletes after something like this, athletes are going to wonder whether or not they should consider making that move sooner rather than later," Devaney concluded.
