When Desireé Reed-Francois last month shared the process behind the hire of track and field/cross country coach Andrew Dubs, she provided a direct window into the precise decision making required of a Power 5 athletic director with a finite budget.
Arizona did not use a search firm, which could have cost into the five figures. Instead, Reed-Francois deployed high-level staffers to conduct a national search process, while relying on her contacts across two-plus decades in college athletics.
Once Reed-Francois narrowed her sights on Dubs, an assistant at Virginia Tech, the work only picked up from there.
Reed-Francois spent three years in athletic administration at Virginia Tech before becoming the athletic director at UNLV and then Missouri. She turned to her Blacksburg connections to get a full rundown on the coach she would be entrusting with Arizona’s track and cross country programs.
“He would be surprised the number of people we contacted about him in our background checking,” Reed-Francois said.
“Some would say sleuthing,” Reed-Francois added with a slight smile.
The amount of diligence Reed-Francois put into the hiring of a non-revenue head coach illustrates the lengths Arizona’s second-year AD will go to carry out her vision for an efficient, economical and winning athletic department.
A 5-year roadmap
Last month Arizona Athletics released a 5-year strategic plan called The Bear Down Blueprint that lays out the department’s top goals through 2030.
The plan, developed in tandem with the Eller College of Management, provides a roadmap for what Reed-Francois expects to see in the coming years. Key goals include:
- Establishing Arizona as a Top 25 athletics department nationally and a top three program in the Big 12 Conference
- Developing a long-term, sustainable business model aligned with future revenue-sharing frameworks
- Balance the department budget by FY26 (Arizona Athletics reduced its deficit from $39 million to $5 million in Reed-Francois’ first year)
- Growing total fundraising to the top third in the Big 12 Conference, with long-term targets for major gifts, annual giving, and donor base expansion
Other goals include maintaining a 3.25+ department GPA, increasing season ticket retention and enhancing revenue-sharing infrastructure in the wake of the House settlement.
“This is a plan about clarity, purpose, and discipline,” Reed-Francois said.
If Reed-Francois’ vision for the athletic department’s on-field success sounds ambitious, it is. Arizona is coming off a 43rd-place finish in the Learfield Directors’ Cup standings. Only one Big 12 school made the top 25—BYU at 25th—and a total of six Big 12 schools finished ahead of the UA.
Arizona is not operating in the college athletics landscape it was when Reed-Francois attended the university as a law student in the late 1990s. During those years, Arizona routinely finished in the top 10 of the Directors’ Cup, buoyed by national championships in sports like softball, men’s and women’s golf and, of course, men’s basketball.
Reed-Francois’ time as a student came during the university’s glory days, before massive television contracts and conference realignment shifted college athletics’ balance of power to the Midwest and Southeast.
Reed-Francois’ goals for the future are undoubtedly rooted in her own past. She’s spoken of the thrills of celebrating Arizona basketball’s 1997 national title, of the excitement that engulfed Tucson during the peak of the school’s athletic prowess.
Whether Arizona can climb back into the upper-echelon of athletic departments will come down to how well the department’s financial blueprint is executed. Reed-Francois knows how work a room and balance a spreadsheet.
“This plan is not just aspirational—it’s actionable,” Reed-Francois said. “We’ve established the framework, the benchmarks, and the accountability to move with purpose.”
The plan will also depend on whether the coaches Reed-Francois hires and retains can meet her lofty expectations while working under a fiscally conscious boss.
Return on investment
Reed-Francois’ predecessor, Dave Heeke, developed a reputation–fair or not–as a free spender. With the backing of former UA president Robert Robbins, Arizona Athletics’ debt ballooned under Heeke’s watch in part because of major loans the department took out during COVID.
In June 2024, the athletic department had $171 million in outstanding principal for capital improvements to facilities and $96 million in internal loans from the university, according to a report by Arizona Public Media.
In front of the Arizona Board of Regents, Reed-Francois last June vowed to trim personnel costs, cut down on the department’s travel budget and bring in more donations and ticket sales. A year later, in the same press conference that she introduced Dubs as track/cross country head coach, Reed-Francois sounded like a well-seasoned account as much as a college athletics administrator.
“We are going to look at every single dollar spent,” Reed-Francois said. “Just because this is how we’ve always done it isn’t going to work anymore.
“There has to be a return on investment.”
Conserving money is at the forefront of every item that comes across Reed-Francois’ desk, and few decisions are more important than who an athletic hires, fires or retains.
In her first year-plus as AD, Reed-Francois has shown a willingness to make sometimes unconventional personnel moves, even if they’re unpopular. They include:
- Retaining football coach Brent Brennan after a disappointing first season rather than pay a buyout of more than $10 million and spend tens of millions more to bring in a new coaching staff
- Not extending the contract of women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes’, who was due to make $1.3 million next season, thus opening the door for Barnes to leave for the head job at SMU
- Giving softball coach Caitlin Lowe and men’s golf coach Jim Anderson one-year extensions – as reported by AZ Desert Swarm’s Kim Doss – a move that signals an unwillingness to commit long term to two coaches who’ve recently underachieved in the postseason
- Hiring mid-major head coaches to fill vacancies for swimming and diving (Ben Loorz, UNLV) and women’s basketball (Becky Burke, Buffalo)
- Hiring assistant coaches to lead track and field/cross country (Dubs) and women’s golf (Giovana Maymon)
Reed-Francois has consistently opted to not award lucrative extensions and to hire young coaches willing to sign on for less money than hiring a high-major head coach.
Reed-Francois’ personnel philosophy doesn’t come without risks.
Deciding not to give a multi-year extension to an established coach could send a sour message to the program’s athletes, or encourage the coach to look for employment elsewhere. Opposing programs may use a coach’s tenuous status as a negative recruiting tactic.
Hiring head coaches unproven at the Power 4 level can be a huge gamble even in the best of circumstances. Arizona’s non-revenue sports are already competing at a serious financial disadvantage compared to SEC and Big Ten peers.
At the same time, Reed-Francois’ decisions to cut back on coach salary has allowed her to fulfill a promise to not cut any Olympic programs.
“Our Olympic sports are a source of pride,” Reed-Francois said in June. “We are going to continue to be very good fiscal stewards. We’re going to be disciplined in our approach and we’re going to be very aggressive in our revenue spaces.”
Reed-Francois pointed to selling naming rights to McKale Center and Arizona Stadium as a revenue generating option, while creating endowments for Olympic sports is an avenue towards preserving non-revenue programs.
“We have to look at this as the big business enterprise that we are,” Reed-Francois said.