In an extensively detailed letter and list of frequently asked questions sent to the Stanford community, the school president and provost, along with athletic director Bernard Muir, detailed a financial picture that had been crumbling even before the crisis.

They said the athletic department’s deficit was projected at more than $12 million for fiscal year 2021. After impacts from COVID were factored in, the deficit would grow to $25 million. It would, they said, grow even larger if sports schedules for the upcoming season were affected, as they were after the decision was made last month.

The leaders said they had been considering how to keep their athletics program stable for several years, and settled upon the cuts in July.

Weiss and Olympic silver- and bronze-medal fencer Alex Massialas, who graduated from Stanford in 2016, said that despite the long-running financial troubles, Muir told them the option of cutting sports wasn’t considered until late May and the decision came less than six weeks after that.

“We see this as a demonstration of financial mismanagement, basically,” Massialas said. “They’ve known of this deficit for a few years, and in their own budget announcements, they mention they’re running a deficit, but it’s nothing they’d address in an actual way.”

Muir, who is on the USOPC advisory council that studies the relationship between the Olympics and college sports, didn’t deliver any notice to the USOPC about the cuts before Stanford made them.