You can probably count on one hand the amount of colleges and universities that have as impressive as athletic program across all sports as Stanford University. The Cardinal have won a combined 126 team national championships, the most of any Division I athletic program.
On Wednesday bad news was made by this historic athletic program as Stanford is dropping 11 sports to cut costs during the pandemic.
The school will discontinue men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling after the 2020-21 academic year. Stanford also is eliminating 20 support staff positions.
If interested, you can read the entire letter penned by university officials that was released Wednesday.
In case you were wondering, Stanford had a reported endowment of $27.7 billion in 2019. I won’t pretend to be an expert when it comes to how that money all works but I feel like there is enough there and that there would probably still be around 27.6 or so billion dollars left over if they chose not to cut these sports.
This flat out sucks for all of the student-athletes that are effected and their family and friends but also touches on a bigger part. That is, if it happens at Stanford, chances are great it’s going to happen at a lot more colleges that it hasn’t already in the coming days and weeks.