I have been seeing lots of discussions across many boards and twitter, I feel very confident in saying few know how endowments work.
It seems like cutting 1/2 of something is going to be a decent savings. 1 bus rather than 2. 1/2 as many hotel rooms; reduced coaching staff; 1/2 per diem for each trip. 1/2 the number of trainers needed (or at least hours).
A question I have is does the revenue from tuition make up for the cost on a university level?
To me this seems like more of a philosophical change in that they were not willing to fund the sports to be competitive. It would be like closing a quantum physics lab because they could not get enough good profs to work it and not enough grants to pay for it.
Brown seems like an odd place to me in terms of how it goes about things.
It is not like they were setting the world on fire in those sports that were cut. So some decent HS runner will not get to run there in college.