Arizona State continued to show sensitivity and acute public relations skills by cutting three sports from the university yesterday to save money. Men’s wrestling, men’s tennis, and men’s swimming have been sliced from the actuarial tables, resetting the team totals to eight men’s and 12 women’s squads.

Of course, these cuts follow the recent and oddly-timed move by ASU VP for Athletics Lisa Love to move the cheerleading squad under the marching band’s supervision just after a few curious photos appeared on the Internet. We wonder how much money was saved by that decision.

Announcement of the cuts came rather abruptly for the three teams. For example, the swimmers found out by email they could paddle their wares elsewhere. The communities for each sport have reacted strongly to the news and efforts are underway already to try to save each program.

We largely agree with Paola Boivin’s analysis in THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC this morning, noting a combination of declining Arizona tax receipts, relative popularity for capital donors, and Title IX considerations in the decision, though we don’t necessarily agree that this was the only or final option.

(We also love the oblique suggestion in her piece that Phil Mickelson is keeping Arizona State golf alive. How thin the thread we all hang by, non?)

If private donors wish to revive the sport at Arizona State, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC estimates costs for each sport will range from $5 million to $8 million. (At $18m for all three, you’re halfway to owning your own MLS franchise.)

We suspect other universities might not handle this like a business decision and more like stewards of young people’s aspirations. After all, if these young men wanted to work unbelievably awful hours for a fairly minuscule salary for years and then be laid off brusquely by email, they could have skipped college and headed for the corporate world.

Love and ASU haven’t even shown the minimum public relations acumen to dump the news on a Friday afternoon to let cooler heads prevail on Monday, much less contact athletes directly or work to lessen the shock through open communication. This makes us wonder if there aren’t other ways to tackle university funding woes.