Hansen's Notebook: UA's Desireé Reed-Francois betting that risky move will pay off in long run

The Star's longtime columnist on how UA's new AD is tackling the changing NCAA landscape head-on, how many of UA's non-revenue sports are the culprits for a rough finish in the Director's Cup, why being picked in the second round of the NBA Draft has been tough on ex-Wildcats and remembering the impact that Willie Mays had.

Desireé Reed-Francois bets on herself, Wildcats

By Friday afternoon, the bios of the eight employees of Wildcat Sports Properties — the Learfield IMG team in charge of media rights income — had been scrubbed from the UA’s online staff directory.

That includes Joe Moeller, vice-president and general manager of the UA’s Learfield operation for 12 years, one of the ranking names in the vast Learfield college sports industry. Moeller is a highly capable man whose path to the UA included five years as ASU’s senior director of development.

Although it may possibly save about $750,000 in salaries, this is a significant risk by Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois, who has hired Nikki Barry, her former Missouri Tigers assistant AD for marketing and creative services. Barry, who had a listed salary at Missouri this year of $63,600, will be responsible for operations and fulfillment.

It’s not that Barry doesn’t have good sports genes. Her grandfather, Phillip Barry, was the No. 2 man in the UConn athletic department when the Huskies hired future NCAA championship basketball coaches Geno Auriemma and Jim Calhoun many years ago.

This is the old ‘‘burn the place down and build it up again’’ managerial strategy, which, to her credit, Reed-Francois believes can someday more than double the UA’s annual income from Learfield (about $7 million).

My question is this: Does she know something that Alabama AD Greg Byrne, Texas AD Chris del Conte and Ohio State AD Gene Smith don’t know? All employ Learfield, among 161 schools to do so, including future Big 12 rivals Cincinnati, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU and Texas Tech.

Reed-Francois is eliminating the middleman. She is swinging for the fences and betting on herself. It could be an uphill battle.

It’s not unlike what future Big 12 partner Houston did last week when it fired athletic director Craig Pezman, seven years on the job, with a Houston legacy like few others: Pezman was captain of the 1992 Houston football team.

But in an era when college sports are changing dramatically year to year, Houston’s president said, “This change is necessary as we navigate a paradigm shift in college athletics.’’ Translation: the blueprint for college sports has shifted.

Reed-Francois is not Dave Heeke, who was about to sign a 10-year contract extension with Learfield before being fired in January. As we are seeing, Reed-Francois is doing her own paradigm shift.

I think she learned a lot about taking on challenges from her grandfather, Charles Hooper Reed, who died in April at age 101.

Grandpa Reed, a Cal grad, spoke 12 languages, worked 23 years as a diplomat for the U.S. State Department in Asia and South America, established refugee camps for 5,000 people in Ethiopia, taught Bible classes on four continents, was the superintendent of California schools in Piedmont, Oceanside, Hayward and Antioch and spent three years in the Army in World War II.

Reed-Francois is just stepping up to the plate at Arizona, which needs some serious stepping up.

Arizona plunges in Director’s Cup standings

With the last NCAA sport of the school year — the College World Series — set to soon finish, Arizona sits 49th in the annual NACDA Director’s Cup standings, the second-worst mark in school history and ninth in the Pac-12. Only in 2018, at No. 54 overall, were the Wildcats lower.

The Director’s Cup measures each school’s total sports success (or lack thereof). Stanford will finish No. 2, UCLA currently sits at No. 5, and USC is No. 9. Non-revenue sports are as important as football and basketball. Stanford earned its high ranking — behind only Texas — in part with top finishes in rowing, fencing, gymnastics, golf and tennis.

What happened? Arizona has experienced a seismic decline in men’s and women’s swimming, men’s and women’s cross country and a notable drop in softball, volleyball and men’s and women’s track and field. That’s enough to plunge out of the Top 25. From 1999-2024, Arizona averaged 25th overall.

When the Director’s Cup was created 30 years ago, Arizona finished in the Top 10 from 1994-2001, and then came a steady decline in non-revenue sports.

Future Big 12 opponents Oklahoma State (20th), Iowa State (31st), BYU (33rd) and Baylor (42nd) will finish ahead of the Wildcats this season.

The question is: Does it really matter if you finish 49th in the Director’s Cup in a year you were ranked No. 1 in men’s basketball, finished No. 11 in the AP football poll and won the Pac-12 baseball championship?

Not much. Given the UA’s revenue numbers, No. 49 is about right.

Plus, the Director’s Cup numbers are somewhat misleading. The Denver Pioneers, for example, are ahead of Arizona at No. 46. How did that happen?

Denver won the NCAA Division I hockey national championship, finished No. 3 in skiing, No. 4 in men’s lacrosse and reached the round of 32 in men’s soccer. That’s sensational if you are a Denver Pioneer, but outside the 303 area code, it didn’t create a stir.

Second-round NBA draft picks have struggled

Most of the respected NBA mock draft sites project former Arizona Wildcats Pelle Larsson and Keshad Johnson to be selected somewhere between No. 40 and No. 58 this week. It sounds good, right?

But based on the 11 ex-Wildcats drafted between 40-56 the last 40 years, it usually means that player is destined for the EuroLeague more than the NBA. Here’s how those 11 ex-Wildcats have fared:

Grant Jerrett, No. 40 pick: Eight games in the NBA

Miles Simon, No. 42 pick: five games in the NBA

Nick Johnson, No. 42 pick: 28 games in the NBA

Ben Davis, No. 43 pick: 40 games in the NBA

Chase Budinger, No. 44 pick: 407 NBA games over eight years

Loren Woods, No. 46 pick: 215 NBA games, including 47 starts

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Nico Mannion, No. 48 pick: 30 NBA games

Steve Kerr, No. 50 pick: 910 games in the NBA over 16 years

Kadeem Allen, No. 53 pick: 47 NBA games

Hassan Adams, No. 54 pick: 73 NBA games

Reggie Geary, No. 56 pick: 101 NBA games, including two starts

That means two of the 11, Kerr and Budinger, had what could be termed as successful NBA careers. That’s an 18% level of success. Larsson and Johnson are going to be swimming upstream.

Delaney Schnell adds to Tucson Olympic lore

Tucson Delaney Schnell, who again qualified for the Olympics by winning last week’s 10-meter synchronized platform diving competition in Tennessee, will become the third Tucsonan to compete in multiple Olympics. The six-time UA All-American diver won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

She joins Salpointe Catholic High School softball player Tairia Mims Flowers and Green Fields Country Day School gymnast Kerri Strug Fischer.

Flowers, who played at UCLA, was a catcher/utility player on Team USA’s 2004 Athens Olympic gold medal softball team, and a key player on the 2008 Beijing USA silver medal softball team.

Strug, who graduated from UCLA, won a bronze medal on the USA’s 1992 Barcelona Olympics team, and a celebrated gold medalist on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics gymnastics team, securing a gold medal with a near-perfect vault while nearly crippled with two torn ankle ligaments.

The others from Southern Arizona to win Olympic summer medals are:

• Sahuaro High swimmer Doug Northway, who won a bronze medal in the 1500 freestyle in the 1972 Munich Olympics.

• Amphi High and UA sprinter Michael Bates, who won a bronze medal in the 200 meters at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

• Benson High and UA swimmer Crissy Ahmann Perham, who won a gold medal in the 4x100 relay at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and a silver medal in the 100 butterfly the same year.

• Santa Rita High outfielder Anthony Sanders, who won a gold medal with the 2000 Sydney Olympics baseball team.

• Mountain View High and UA swimmer Lacey Nymeyer John, who won a silver medal on the 4x100 relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics team.

• Sahuaro High swimmer Caitlin Leverenz Smith, who won a bronze medal in the 200 IM at the 2012 London Olympics.

Short stuff: Jedd Fisch misfires on state of college football; remembering a Willie Mays moment

• Former UA football coach Jedd Fisch last week said “I think college football couldn’t be in a better spot. Players are getting paid. Coaches are getting paid more than they’ve ever gotten paid. College ratings are as high as you could ever imagine on TV. ‘’

I will always admire Fisch for the out-of-nowhere turnaround at Arizona, from 1-11 to 5-7 to 10-3, but I think he’s way off on this one. I can’t recall having more negative feelings about college football in my life. Ever. It shouldn’t be about “getting paid,’’ as Fisch says, it should be about a competitive balance and the college experience. College football has never been as uninspiring.

• My best Willie Mays story: In April 1962, my dad bought tickets to a Giants-Indians spring training finale game held at the Triple-A ballpark in Salt Lake City, of all places. On our 80-mile drive to SLC, I got car sick and threw up all over me and the front seat. My dad didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but he drove to a JCPenney, bought me new clothes and washed the car instead of going home.

We got to the game just in time, sitting immediately behind the Giants dugout. Mays homered in his first at-bat. We were overjoyed. In the ’60s, Mays was rarely seen on TV except for the All-Star Game. In some way, he was like a baseball myth. My dad and I, two rabid Yankee fans, talked about our Willie Mays game for the next 50 years.

• Seth Mejias-Brean, an all-Pac-12 third baseman from Cienega High School who played a big role in Arizona’s 2012 College World Series championship, is continuing his baseball career. After reaching the big leagues with the San Diego Padres in 2019, Mejias-Brean has remained in the game. He is now the hitting coach for the Class A Everett Aqua Sox, a Seattle Mariners affiliate.

My two cents: Giovana Maymon could return strong nucleus 

Arizona’s men’s golf team, once again a legit Top-25 program under 2021 Pac-12 coach of the year Jim Anderson, found him on the coaching staff at Texas A&M in 2012.

The UA followed the same trail last week when it hired Texas A&M assistant coach Giovana Maymon to replace Laura Ianello, now at Texas.

Maymon, who played for Baylor in the Big 12, will return to that conference in her first Arizona season and be something of a mold-breaker. Seven of the Big 12 women’s golf coaches have been on the job at least 11 years. At 28, she will literally be the new “kid’’ on the block in a league that has just two steady Top-25 programs, Oklahoma State and Baylor.

That’s quite a difference from what Ianello saw at Arizona. Pac-12 women’s golf powers Stanford, Cal, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Washington and ASU were, with the Wildcats, Top-25 programs.

The immediate challenge for Maymon is to retain the five returning UA starters — sophomore Charlotte Back, senior Carolina Melgrati, junior Julia Misemer, senior Lilas Pinthier and junior Nena Wongthanavimok — a group that could open the season in the Top 10 or thereabouts.

UA’s top recruit, Thailand’s Alisa Inprasit, is also likely to be tempted by the ever-present transfer portal.

If Maymon can keep even four of those players, Arizona could be the Big 12 favorite in Year 1.