Been rethinking the athletics cuts lately. New proposal: We've already cut baseball and men's golf is now self-funded ($750,000). Next we cut swimming and diving completely ($1 million), get approval from the Big Sky to cut men's tennis ($100,000), and reduce funding for women's hockey by 20% ($300,000). That $2,150,000 covers the deficit and most of FCOA and we'd get to keep the sacred cow that is women's hockey.
If we think we need more, then it comes time to consider moving everything other than football and hockey to the slummit to save on travel (maybe $300,000) and cut women's tennis ($200,000). The move to the slummit would likely also result in increased revenue (maybe $15-20,000) from ticket sales for MBB, WBB, and VB (just USD and SDSU bumps, as we're already set to play ndsu yearly).
That'll put us at 9 women's sports and 7 men's. If the Title IXers complain, it would seem justifiable to allocate half the REA expenses to women's hockey (reducing men's hockey expenses) to increase the women's hockey expenses to $2.3 million.
More? If possible, get football into the MVFC and we'd save another $200,000 in travel and increase ticket sales by $100,000.