Can every Gophers sport survive the budget cutting ahead?

Gophers athletic director Mark Coyle will present a plan to the Board of Regents on Friday for how his department plans to tackle revenue losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an outline released last week, the department revealed that it has lost $4 million and is targeting a "double-digit reduction in operating budget."

What's not known is whether that double digit is 10 percent or a figure considerably higher. If it's 10 percent, that would equate to $12.3 million from the $123 million budget.

Some members of the department, including Coyle, his senior staff and coaches P.J. Fleck, Richard Pitino and Lindsay Whalen, have taken pay reductions of different degrees.

But to reach that $12.3 million mark (or more depending on what Coyle announces), the Gophers will need to dig deeper than pay cuts and furloughs.

The extent of those cuts hinges greatly on what happens with the football season. Not just here but across all of college sports.

If the football season is canceled, draconian measures will be necessary because football is the cash cow that drives college athletics. Hopefully that's not the case. Different scenarios are being discussed by conference leaders including an on-time start to the season, a short delay, or possibly moving the season to winter.

But let's focus on the Gophers and their budget as it stands. First, start with a basic premise that no school wants to eliminate sports as a response to this crisis. It's already happened at Cincinnati and at Old Dominion, and I'm sure those won't be isolated cases as schools wrestle with lost revenue and come to the conclusion that they have no other alternative. But that is the last resort option for most schools.

The Gophers have a $123 million budget, which ranks 8^th in the Big Ten. Their 25-sport department ranks 4^th in the conference in sponsored sports.

For context and to show how much the arm's race in college sports has altered the picture, here's some data from the '19 fiscal year compared to the 2012 athletic budget:

Total operating revenue:

2012: $83.6 million

Total expenses:

2012: $83.6 million

Current: $129.4 million

First reaction is, Whoa. That's a big spike in revenue and spending in just seven years. The revenue jump is easily explained – TV money. Conference networks and various media rights distribution have pumped billions of dollars into college athletics the past decade-plus, pushing the arm's race to new heights in the primary areas of facilities, salaries and staffing.

In terms of expenses, the growth can be attributed to many factors. For example, the cost of scholarships for the Gophers has increased from $9.6 million in 2012 to $13.8 million at present. Attending college is considerably more expensive now.

But a few budget categories also highlight just how much the landscape has changed college sports and where Coyle likely will look in cutting costs:

Coaching salaries, benefits and bonuses:

2012: $10.3 million

Current: $22.2 million

Support staff/administrative compensation, benefits, bonuses:

Current: $21.0 million

Team Travel:

2012: $5.7 million

Current: $8.3 million

As a long-time college sports administrator told me recently: "It's hard to go backward on salaries." That is true, but as I've written what seems like countless times in the past two months, these are unprecedented times. Here is what Coyle told me in late March after the sports world had just shut down:

University weighs multiple options for fall semester

Pay reductions and hiring freezes already are in effect. Coyle's regent outline also notes that three senior staff members who left the department have not been replaced. Travel budgets and scheduling likely will look different coming out of this crisis, too.

The travel budget has grown significantly over the years because traveling in general has become more expensive, the Big Ten's footprint has grown with the addition of Rutgers and Maryland, the move to Big Ten hockey and increased use of charter over commercial, among other factors.

I expect non-revenue teams to shift to more regional scheduling in non-conference to save money.

A few examples …

The department reported operating revenues of $177,000 for softball in the 2019 fiscal year.

This is not to highlight softball only. The women's soccer team played road matches in California, Mississippi and Virginia. The men's tennis team played in Florida, California, Massachusetts.

Coyle can't fix the weather, but the Gophers have to find an alternative to that expense. Scheduling more regional opponents seems like a logical step. Or perhaps schedule fewer games.

The NCAA requires a minimum number of games each team must play to count as a sponsored sport. For instance, the minimum for baseball and softball is 27. Soccer is 11.

The Gophers softball team already had played 25 non-conference games before the season was shut down. They had 54 regular-season games scheduled, counting their Big Ten season.