I absolutely agree but the bigger point is really any tie in from the $140m decrease in operating budget of $9.7m basically tieing it to the loss of 30 people in their athletics department (in addition to 330 others). Stanford fields 36 teams 20 in women's sport and 16 in men's. They just hired in AD that was making $60m at his last job, and Shaw was making about $6M per year so a safe guess is Troy $2-4m range.
So lets do a comparison to Vanderbilt as they are on a similar plane on academics, atheletics success (Baseball good, football meh) budget and student enrollment.
Stanford enrollment:
Est 17,000
Vandy Enrollement:
13575
Stanford + Stanford Health Operating Budget:
$10.4 billion
Vandy + VUMC Operating Budget:
$8.9 billion
Stanford Avergage Attendance Per Game 2024
26,035
Vandy Average Attendance Per Game 2024
28,091
Stanford Athletic teams:
36 Total
20 women, 16 mens
Vandy Athletics teams:
17 total
11 womens, 6 mens
For the record, VUMC is cutting $300m budget cut and laying of 650 which I personally actually find extremely concerning. Main point is Stanford isn't the only ones seeing big budget cuts.
TLDR: Politics isn't the main reason 30 athletic jobs were cut at Stanford.