Without a centralized government sports ministry, the likes of which most countries employ to build their Olympic teams, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee is deeply reliant on America’s extensive college sports program to field its team.

Of the 558 athletes the U.S. sent to Rio four years ago, around 75% came from the college sports system. Of the 121 medals the U.S. won, nearly 85% came from college-trained athletes. Stanford placed 29 athletes on the U.S. team; 15 of them stood on the medals podium, more than any other school in the country. Another 10 Stanford athletes won medals for other countries.

USOPC figures show Division I schools spent $5.6 billion last year on Olympic sports alone.

“By and large, college sports are a lifeline for our national teams,” said Sarah Wilhelmi, the USOPC’s director of collegiate partnerships.

But the numbers have been dwindling for years now. Men’s gymnastics, which survived the cut at Stanford, has fewer than 20 Division I programs. Men’s volleyball is at around two dozen.

In listing its criteria for cutting sports, Stanford acknowledged that of the 11 sports it was cutting (it also cut two that were not on the Olympic program), nine were sponsored by fewer than 9% of Division I institutions.

Virtually all of the Olympic-sports budgets at big schools are subsidized by football and basketball, the futures of which are both in peril themselves. As of mid-August, the Big Ten and the Pac-12, where Stanford is based, have canceled fall sports. Studies say if the Power Five conferences all scrub football , it could lead to $4 billion in losses, or an average of $62 million per school.