As Sports Authority sails into the choppy waters of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the troubled sporting goods retailer and its creditors are exploring two options:

• Give a buzzcut to $1.1 billion in unwieldy, outstanding debt; slim down the operations; and emerge lean and competitive.

• Sell all or part of the business.

“We’re charging down both paths,” Sports Authority CEO Michael Foss said in an exclusive interview with The Denver Post. “We don’t know which path we’ll end up going down, but we want to make sure we’ve looked at everything broadly and determined what’s best for all four constituencies” — financial stakeholders, employees, customers and vendors.

Either option should reach its conclusion by the end of April, Foss said. The company and the lender that is providing as much as $595 million in bankruptcy financing want it that way.

“I think this will all come to fruition over the next month or two months,” Foss said.

Failure could leave a trail of vacant big-box stores akin to the shutdown of Borders and Circuit City.

Sports Authority’s Chapter 11 petition was expected. In recent months, the company skipped a key debt payment, executed a round of corporate layoffs, drafted plans to shutter stores and warehouses, and engaged in negotiations with its lenders.

The filings, made early Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, indicated Sports Authority has assets of $500 million to $1 billion and that the company secured debtor-in-possession financing to keep the company afloat during the reorganization.

Sports Authority laid out plans to close or sell 140 of its 464 stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, as well as distribution centers and warehouses in Denver and Chicago. The venerable Sports Castle in Denver, all 25 stores in Texas and locations in places such as Virginia Beach, Va., and Kansas City, Mo., are on the list, Foss said.

The company expects to let go about 3,400 of its 15,000 employees, Foss said. The tally includes 100 people, mostly at corporate headquarters, who were laid off in January. The affected store and distribution center workers were notified Feb. 10.

Under bankruptcy option No. 1, Sports Authority would emerge as a 320-store operation with a greater focus on e-commerce, private-label sales and customer service, Foss said.

But those changes might not be dramatic enough to correct course, said Jon Schallert, a business and retail analyst with the Schallert Group Inc. in Longmont. Consumers are seeking “breadth and depth” and specialization as opposed to generalists, he said.

“If (Sports Authority) is really proactive, they’ll start looking at smaller, more specialized formats,” he said. “The problem with large companies like this is they don’t want to reinvent to the extent that consumers are telling them they should.”

Shedding stores to cut costs is one thing, but unless Sports Authority executes on planned changes to the way it interacts with customers, Schallert said, it runs the risk of failing, as did Service Merchandise, Montgomery Ward, Circuit City and Blockbuster.

“Historically with retail trends, 90 percent of the time a move like this is usually not enough,” he said.

If Sports Authority shutters 140 or more locations, the effects would ripple through retail employment and commercial real estate markets, he said.

“There aren’t a lot of retailers these days that are readily going to come in and take over those larger-format stores,” he said.

Some regions would feel the departures more than others, said Ryan Severino, senior economist and director of research for Reis Inc., a New York-based commercial real estate research firm.

Power centers — large outdoor shopping centers with three or more anchors — could more easily absorb a Sports Authority vacancy than a lower-caliber mall, he said. Areas such as Texas, with economic growth occurring in pockets, could be shielded more from the negative effects than locations in the Midwest, which already are economically depressed, he said.

“I don’t think you’ll see a huge, systematic effect” from the closure of 140 stores, he said. “It’ll be specific centers and specific submarkets.”

Sports Authority, which was taken private by Leonard Green & Partners LP in 2006, had $2.6 billion in revenue for the 12-month period that ended in October, according to Statista. In 2014, the company had 470 stores and pulled in $3.4 billion in revenue.

But Foss said the company has been dogged by an “inefficient store network” that resulted from the merger of five major sporting goods retailers.

The hodgepodge of Sports Authority stores, with sizes ranging from 8,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet, couldn’t collectively adapt to changing consumer behaviors and an increasingly competitive environment that includes e-commerce giant Amazon.com and specialty retailers such as REI and Lululemon Athletica.

A wide variety of retailers has approached Sports Authority since word started leaking that the company would try to exit 140 of its stores, Foss said, declining to provide specific names or confirm that rival Dick’s Sporting Goods is in the mix.

A&G Realty Partners, which said it was marketing leases on behalf of Sports Authority, posted a flier shopping 87 subleases to other retailers.

Company officials have yet to disclose what stores will close. Pending court approval, closing sales could start as early as Friday, Foss said.