. . . *t’s been a challenging year for the mighty Cardinal program. Layoffs and nearly $8-million in budget cuts have cast shadows on a department accustomed to sunnier times. Those fiscal realities have prompted some number-crunching —and soul-searching—over whether the university can, or should, continue to field 35 athletics teams.</p>
<p>The stumble, triggered by severe losses in the once-$500-million athletics endowment, came as a surprise to many observers. Not only was it among the first major athletics departments to feel the pain of the recession, it is the most envied program in college sports.</p>
<p>“If it can happen to Stanford,” Bob Bowlsby, the university’s athletic director, says in a rare interview, “it can happen to anybody.”</p>
<p>The Pac-10 power is hardly alone in its fiscal nail-biting. Dozens of athletics departments have cut teams, halted capital projects, laid off employees, or otherwise trimmed their budgets in the last year. And while Stanford is unusually reliant on its sports endowment, it is still among the wealthiest and most successful athletics programs.
But the Cardinal aren’t in the clear just yet. Mr. Bowlsby says he hasn’t ruled out the possibility of cutting athletics squads should the financial circumstances call for it.</p>
<p>With an annual operating budget of around $75-million, Stanford is surpassed only by Ohio State University in fielding the largest number of sports in Division I-A, the NCAA’s most competitive grouping. (Ohio State’s budget for 36 sports, by comparison, tops $100-million.)</p>
<p>When Mr. Bowlsby announced the budget cuts this year, he said eliminating teams would come only under the most dire circumstances. Nine months later, though, one big question lingers: In a still-sluggish economy, is it realistic for an endowment-dependent program that struggles to fill its football stadium to offer such an expansive menu of sports?</p>
<p>“I’ve tried to be as forthright with our coaches as I can,” Mr. Bowlsby says. “The discontinuation of sports is, by far, the course of last resort.”</p>
<p>But when coaches ask if he thinks the economic picture will ever reach a point where cuts are unavoidable, he is cautious.</p>
<p>“I can’t unequivocally say, ‘No, we’re not going to ever get there.’ I’d be less than honest if I said that, because I just don’t know,” he says. “We have to constantly look at issues of sustainability. So how many varsity sports we have and what level we support them at is, I think, a fair question.”