With the specter of the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic looming over the collegiate landscape, tangible signs are beginning to appear of how the fiscal tightening will manifest itself.

The most stinging blow yet came Tuesday when the University of Cincinnati cut the men’s soccer program. It’s the second major college program to be cut since the start of the pandemic, as Old Dominion cut its wrestling program earlier this month.

The foreboding feeling around the college sports industry is that the cuts have just begun. One athletic director summed up the financial options for schools as ranging “from a haircut to decapitation” amid an environment where athletic department pay cuts and furloughs have become common.

“I think now that Cincinnati just did it, watch the next month,” said another athletic director from an FBS school. “They cleared the way for other people to do it. Cincinnati puts it on a different level. Unfortunately, you’re going to start to see it. When you have to right-size everything, that’s going to become a way out for a lot of these programs.”

Schools desperate for financial relief

A letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert from the Group of Five commissioners obtained by Yahoo Sports on Tuesday offers searing insight into the financial constraints felt at that level and the potential for a landscape that could look much different when sports return to campus. The fallout being discussed by those commissioners includes the potential elimination of postseason conference tournaments and shortened seasons in non-revenue sports.

The letter from the commissioners of the AAC, Mountain West, MAC, Sun Belt and Conference USA asked for alterations of NCAA bylaws in the wake of COVID-19 in order to save money. The letter asks for “temporary relief from several regulatory requirements for a period of up to four years” in order to provide “short-term relief.” The letter hopes that this relief will provide “opportunity for institutions to retrench and rebuild the financial structures of the institution.”

The requirements the conference commissioners asked for relief from hint at the fiscal peril of schools and leagues outside college athletics’ so-called Power Five. The most relevant among them is relief from the minimum number of “Sports Sponsorships,” as every FBS school is required to have a “minimum number of 16 varsity intercollegiate sports.”

View photos In this April 19, 2019, file photo, an athlete stands near a NCAA logo during a softball game in Beaumont, Texas. (AP) More

Other requests range from waiving football attendance requirements, the minimum number of contests to be played in varying sports to both scheduling and financial aid requirements.

Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson, who signed the letter, told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that the point was to come up with ways to make financial pinches in order to avoid sports being cut.

“We have to be creative in these times,” Thompson said in a phone interview. “I cannot emphasize enough that our intent is to maintain the same level of sports sponsorships. Is there a way to work on the edges or requirements, like the minimum number of contests? How can we reduce sports without eliminating sports?”

‘Athletic directors are using this as a reset’

But the Cincinnati move to cut soccer was viewed throughout the college sports industry as an unfortunate harbinger. Once Cincinnati honors remaining financial commitments to staff and player scholarships, it’ll save $800,000 per year. (The move had been discussed there internally prior, in part because the Big 12, where university officials have long targeted as a potential landing spot, doesn’t offer men’s soccer.)

One collegiate sports source noted that many schools that will end up cutting sports had long been thinking about it. COVID-19 becomes the cover to do so, as one official brought up the old Winston Churchill quote: “Never waste a good crisis.”

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