[chrisk]

I wish the Stanford AD had considered suspending programs rather than axing them entirely, but that's another conversation.

I'm with you on that one. If there is some institutional reason for cutting down on these non-mainstream sports, I wish they'd just suspended them now and left a final announcement for later. The timing with the pandemic is unfortunate. As an alum, I was proud of Stanford offering kids intercollegiate competition in these other sports.

But the administration claims they were running a deficit prior to COVID. Their position is they it is a structural problem, not a cyclical problem and that none of the many alternatives they considered to increase revenues were feasible even in normal times. Since football, basketball, and media are the main sources of revenue, other than philanthropy, I think they made a sober assessment of future of increases in those sources relative to the growth rate of expenditures.

[chrisk]

I wish the Stanford AD had considered suspending programs rather than axing them entirely, but that's another conversation.

I'm with you on that one. If there is some institutional reason for cutting down on these non-mainstream sports, I wish they'd just suspended them now and left a final announcement for later. The timing with the pandemic is unfortunate. As an alum, I was proud of Stanford offering kids intercollegiate competition in these other sports.

But the administration claims they were running a deficit prior to COVID. Their position is they it is a structural problem, not a cyclical problem and that none of the many alternatives they considered to increase revenues were feasible even in normal times. Since football, basketball, and media are the main sources of revenue, other than philanthropy, I think they made a sober assessment of future of increases in those sources relative to the growth rate of expenditures.