After returning from Australia where she ran a 26-mile marathon earlier this month, Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois spent a provocative hour on the Excel Search & Advisory podcast last week. Here are five items you might not have known about the third-year Arizona AD:
– Her first job was cleaning fish tanks as a 14-year-old living near San Francisco. She did so before her 6 a.m. track workouts. Her father was a diver at Marine World USA, and Desiree picked up his love for skin diving. She has dived with hammerhead sharks in Indonesia and near dangerous tiger sharks in Hawaii. "It's therapeutic," she said. "I try to carve out one week a year to go diving."
– Her first career goal was to be GM of the San Francisco 49ers, a team she most admired as a youngster. That has changed. Her dream job today would be "CEO of REI or Patagonia; I'd like to go on backpacking excursions in exotic locations. Antarctica is on next on my list."
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– As a young college sports administrator — she worked at Virginia Tech and Tennessee before becoming AD at Missouri and UNLV — she was allowed to track Alabama football coach Nick Saban for a day. "I have 60 pages of notes from that day," she said. "Being around coach Saban made me realize you don't have the benefit of the doubt when you start a new job."
Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois.
– She is planning to endow every head coaching position at Arizona. She began that process when a donation from a UA booster enabled her to endow the AD job. Her official title is the R. Ken Coit Director of Athletics. There is precedent for endowing coaching positions. At USC, for example, football coach Lincoln Riley's official title is C&J Elerding Head Football Coach. Track coach Quincy Watts is officially the Ted Banks Endowed Track and Field Coach. And the swimming coach at USC is known as the Peter Daland Head Swimming Coach. Those positions are estimated to cost $5 million to $10 million each to endow.
– Reed-Francois expects more changes in college sports. "They are likely to become more commercial, more analytical and more sophisticated without losing its purpose," she said. "That's fine as long as the changes benefit out student-athletes." She refers to UA student-athletes as "The 504," which was the number of student-athletes at the beginning of the 2025-26 season.
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