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The University of New Mexico's athletics department will cut several sports teams in an attempt to close a $4.7 million deficit, according to KRQE.
"We are better off supporting fewer sports," New Mexico president Garnett Stokes told the radio station.
Eddie Nuñez, the university's athletics director, said New Mexico had yet to decide which of 22 varsity sports programs would be eliminated. Stokes, who became the university's president this year, said she'd asked Nuñez to compile by July a list of teams to be cut.
"At this point, we owe it to everyone to look at everything from basketball to football to baseball," Nuñez said.
Student athletes will be given one year’s notice before their sport is eliminated, according to the Associated Press.
Stokes said the university's budget proposal would allow it to pay off the $4.7 million deficit over 10 years, starting in 2020. According to the proposal, the athletics department would cut $3 million annually -- $2 million of which would come from sports teams. A committee of the university's board voted not to take any action on the budget proposal Tuesday, requesting more details.
The department has been criticized for spending recklessly in the past. Last year, former athletics director Paul Krebs resigned over spending public money on a 2015 golf trip to Scotland that was attended by athletics officials and private donors, according to Sports Illustrated.
