Sometimes it takes a little while to settle into a new job.
Desireé Reed-Francois has been Arizona’s athletic director for a little over a week, and she just gained a key code to enter the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility at Arizona Stadium.
With a scheduled meeting with the Arizona football team at 6:30 a.m. on Monday, Reed-Francois stood outside LSFF until a custodian opened the doors for her.
She walked past the weight room and onto the field at Arizona Stadium and the first player she meets is star quarterback Noah Fifita, the Pac-12 Offensive Freshman of the Year who led the Wildcats to a 10-3 season and a win at the Alamo Bowl.
“That was my first introduction to Arizona football,” Reed-Francois told the Star in a sit-down interview Monday morning. “I’ve always heard what a great young man he is. That was the first young man that I met and you could just tell why this team has been so incredibly successful. The leadership and character I saw within the first six or seven minutes was fantastic.”
Arizona football standouts Tetairoa McMillan, right, and Noah Fifita, left, cemented their legacy as Wildcat legends when they appeared on the court at McKale Center on Jan. 20 to announce they’d be staying in Tucson.
Reed-Francois is bullish on the Wildcats and said, “Arizona football is on a great trajectory.”
“We’re on this wonderful path. We’ve got a lot of momentum throughout our sports — and momentum carries, right? Momentum is just physics,” she added. “We look forward to continuing to grow. It’s a force-multiplier. We’re looking to add more force.”
Added Reed-Francois: “I think we’re going to be a team to be reckoned with. I’m on, what, Day 7? I’m exactly one week in, but what I saw today was great culture, I saw leadership. When you have great culture, great leadership and a lot of talent? It says something to me that those young men said, ‘I wanna stay at the University of Arizona.’
“When I talked to them, I said we all have something in common. I asked, ‘Who in this group had other opportunities to go other places?’ Many raised their hands. I asked Noah, ‘Why did you stay?’ He said, ‘Because of the family. Because of the University of Arizona.’ I asked another young man, ‘Why did you stay?’ ‘Because of love.’ ... I said, ‘Just like all of you, University of Arizona is home and I came back because of that love. This is a really special place and I think everyone on that field recognized it.’”
Reed-Francois and first-year UA football head coach Brent Brennan have built a relationship that dates back to before their time in Tucson. Brennan was a wide receiver at UCLA while Reed-Francois rowed for the Bruins. They “didn’t really know each other too well, but we reconnected when I was in the Mountain West Conference,” when Reed-Francois worked in San Jose State’s athletic department while Brennan coached the Spartans.
While Reed-Francois was the athletic director at UNLV, she hired Marcus Arroyo, a longtime and close friend of Brennan, to become the head coach of the Rebels.
“There’s an easy working relationship already,” Reed-Francois said.
Reed-Francois said she has met with “60%” of UA coaches and is making her rounds to familiarize herself with the athletic department.
Just over a week into the job, Reed-Francois sat down with the Star on Monday to share her five pillars — or “five priorities,” as she called it — in the early stages as Arizona’s athletic director, which is the same message she relayed to UA athletes, coaches and staffers. Here’s what she said:
Desireé Reed-Francois has a list of pillars or "five priorities" that she has been sharing with UA athletes, coaches and staffers.
People
“We’ve got to get to know our people. (Tennessee women’s basketball coaching legend Pat Summitt) was a mentor of mine. One thing I learned from Coach Summitt is in order to lead people, you’ve gotta know your people. Everyone filled out a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis and I just came from one of my SWOT meetings, and we’re going in alpha order and I’m meeting with every single staff member. I want to find out about their motivations. Why do they work at the University of Arizona? Who are they as people? We’ve got to get to know our people.”
University
“For us to be incredibly successful, like we’re going to be, we have to have great partnerships, we have to have great alignment. That’s something that I learned from Pat. You gotta have alignment with your president, the athletic director and your coaches. There’s no one that impacts your student-athletes’ lives more than your head coaches. That alignment, our community can feel it. Our community can be a part of that, but alignment is critical. The university partnerships are going to be critical.”
Budget
“I have to analyze our budget. It’s not so that we can just balance a budget. We have to build a model business. As an athletic director, you’re the CEO of a $150 million company. You gotta build a model business that is based upon your core values, the student-athletes have to be at the center of what we do — and make no mistake about it, we’re a high-performing business.”
New Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois talks with UA president Robert Robbins just before Arizona tipped off against UCLA in the Wildcats’ final regular-season Pac-12 women’s basketball game on March 2 at McKale Center.
Infrastructure
“We really have to evaluate what’s working, what’s not. Do we have the right people in the right spaces, in the right positions? Do we know what success looks like? Let’s really look at that infrastructure. That ‘winning within’ philosophy, if you will.”
External constituents
“We have to get to know our external constituents. I’m in the memory-making business. On the Saturday before the USC game, we had dinner with some donors, and I was talking to someone about their best memories at the University of Arizona. Not University of Arizona athletics, just University of Arizona. He talked about bringing his children to the 1997 national championship and the moments he shared with his children and how he’ll never forget about that. Every year, they talk about 1997. That’s what’s so wonderful about college athletics, it brings people together, it galvanizes people. When I mentioned the university and how we’re good partners with the university, we’re one of, what, 81 units across campus?
“We’re a very visible unit across campus, but we’re always going to be looking for how can we be great partners for this university. When athletics does a great job, admissions goes up. When athletics does a great job, donations go up across the campus. When athletics does a great job, brand awareness for the University of Arizona goes up.
“That’s what we talked about in terms of the top 5 priorities, and then three to five special projects this first quarter that we wanted to tackle — No. 1 being NIL. We have to analyze what’s working, what’s not working and how can we shore that up? Are we skating to where the puck is going? Or are we satisfied with where the puck is? ... I don’t know what’s working here — I’m only on Day 7 — and what’s not. That’s going to be part of that analysis.”
