Like all college athletic directors, Baylor’s Mack Rhoades feels like he is getting a crash course in crisis management magnified by 10.

Things ramped up more for Rhoades and Baylor on Tuesday. In the wake of the coronavirus, Baylor President Linda Livingstone announced $65 million to $80 million in university cuts for the fiscal year beginning June 1.

Livingstone cited declines in sources of revenues, including tuition from potential falling enrollment, research grants and contracts, fund-raising and investments from the school’s endowment.

For athletics, the biggest announced change is that construction of the new $130 million basketball pavilion and practice facility, scheduled to open in fall 2022, is on hold. Because he was part of the process and planning, Rhoades knew what was coming but acknowledged the difficulty of the announcement for athletics and the university.

“It’s sobering. It’s real. It’s what we’re dealing with,” Rhoades said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s not specific to Baylor. It’s what higher education as a whole is dealing with. Let’s make the most of it and be well positioned when we get to the other side.”

Rhoades said it was too early to know how the ultimate timeline on the basketball pavilion would be impacted.

Baylor was currently meeting with architects for the new facility with groundbreaking scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

“For us, nothing has changed in that we’ll continue with the design phase,” Rhoades said. “When the time comes and we get to a better place with our economy and the university has a much better understanding of the economic impact and where enrollment is and we can go to the market and borrow money, it will be full speed forward.”

Regarding other cuts, including salary and personnel, Rhoades said decisions “are TBA. We’re working through it.”

Much of the discussion is linked to the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming football season, Rhoades said. Revenue from the sport amounts to about 85% of athletic department income.

Currently Baylor is working with up to four contingency plans, Rhoades said, ranging from a 10% reduction in revenue from a full season with fans to a delayed season to football without fans to no football at all.

“There’s just a lot of unknowns, not just for athletic directors but all of us,” Rhoades said. “It’s hard to form any definitive pathway moving forward. You have to have so many different contingencies and what-ifs, and you have to begin to think that way in planning for all those contingencies and what-ifs now, because if you wait until you know a clear direction, it’s too late.”

Even before the Baylor budget announcement, signs of the new financial reality were apparent in college sports.

American Athletic member Cincinnati announced that it was dropping the men’s soccer program, citing the uncertainty created by the shutdown created by COVID-19.

“This was a difficult decision, but one made with the long-term interests of UC Athletics at the forefront,” Cincinnati AD John Cunningham said.

A former athletic director at Houston, Rhoades understands the challenges with being an AD at a “group of five” school.

While Rhoades emphasized that Baylor has no current plans to reduce its number of intercollegiate sports, he said similar decisions may be coming across the college sports landscape.

“I think that could be a reality for all of us,” Rhoades said. “No pun intended, I don’t think anybody is immune to that, even those that are [power conference] institutions. Depending on where this heads with football, across the board, we’re all expecting to be impacted financially. ...

“There’s no one who can’t be impacted enough. We have to start making decisions about personnel. We got to make decisions regarding the sports programs.”

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