Exactly. I would hope before cutting programs completely they think about making do with less. I just went to the soccer page for Iowa State, and the team has 4 coaches and 5 support staff (some of which are shared clearly).
https://cyclones.com/sports/womens-soccer/roster#roster-staff. For a team of 20-some college kids! It's pretty incredible when you think how little our society pays K-12 school teachers and nurses and others who have much more important and valuable jobs to our society then these athletic coaches. The average school teacher salary in Iowa is like $54K. The head soccer coach at ISU is making $161,231.40 per year in 2023 with great ISU benefits and assistants making a ton as well for coaching a sport of 20-some people as their full-time job, it's something that should be looked at first to reduce the salary by say $70,000 for the top spot, cut paid assistants, cut travel / other expenses and of course lessen scholarships a bit for student athletes before completely eliminating the program completely. I would think you could go back to the situation of what programs looked like 40 years ago and have two paid coaches (at considerably less salary), some volunteers and keep the program alive?
If the doomsday happens and Pollard or others in administration think they have to eliminate these sports like they did baseball because of the money pits they are, I hope they'll think first about letting the sports exist with less fiscal support (partial scholarships, less coaches, etc.) and cutting within the AD itself first and within those sports. They could probably cut $600K out of the sport's budget and the results wouldn't be too different. The soccer program doesn't win already, so what is the harm in keeping it as an opportunity for a sport to play at the college level? It helps those students develop and have amazing experiences. Same with other olympic sports. Give them trial periods with less before just axing them completely. That strikes me as a bad, but "less-bad" option than complete elimination.
Regardless, I hope it doesn't get there and I hope we keep all our olympic sports programs fully-funded as they currently are, but if these programs ever face the chopping block, I hope they'll try to just keep them around because of the worth they have to student athletes, their families and the few people who do attend these games and the pride they elicit when they do well even if not funded with all the perks and well-paid large staffs they once had. It's crazy in many ways we're even talking about this considering the insane athletic revenue football and men's basketball bring in.....
To the OP, it is sad to hear they won't be able to build the wrestling training center for the foreseeable future.