Missouri AD Desiree Reed-Francois leaving for Arizona job raises some eyebrows

Three days days before the new year, Missouri’s football program capped its best season in a decade with a Cotton Bowl win against Ohio State, the Tigers’ first bowl win against a top-10 team since 1960.

Nine months earlier, the men’s basketball program won its first NCAA Tournament game in 13 years.

And now, at the onset of 2024? The school’s gymnastics, wrestling and softball teams are ranked in the top 15.

One more thing: Two weeks ago, the athletics department announced a record $62 million donation.

Been a pretty good run in Columbia.

Oh, except for the stunner that came Monday. The person at the top of that athletics totem pole, Desiree Reed-Francois, is bolting, and not for a clear step up, but rather for the same job at Arizona.

The recipient of credit is always a debate when things are progressing, but it is undoubtedly true that Reed-Francois will leave Mizzou in a better spot than she found it — competitively and financially.

Most importantly, she has secured improvements that will make MU better for the long haul — better travel arrangements for recruiting trips, increased salary pools for assistant football coaches, improved practice facilities and more stadium upgrades in the works. That stuff has a real effect.

It is not a good day for Mizzou, in other words, and that’s not strictly because it’s the equivalent of a company losing a valuable employee, but also because that valuable employee indicated to all of her peers, along with you and me, that Arizona is her preferred job.

Arizona.

Look, this column isn’t intended to rip another school about which I candidly have little knowledge, and Arizona has fine sports programs. But I do have this knowledge: Arizona will soon be in the Big 12, not the coveted SEC that Reed-Francois just departed, and its athletic department has an operation deficit of $177 million, per a report from The Athletic.

Reed-Francois will not only inherit that debt, she will also inherit a football coach the last guy hired (and one who has yet to coach an actual game in Tucson).

I realize Reed-Francois attended law school at Arizona, but as far as headlines go, that all amounts to big, bold letters that jump off the page to report the same news: Think twice.

It is not the most attractive of jobs, but for some reason, Reed-Francois found it more attractive than the one she had — even with a pay cut, no less. The school announced a contract that will pay her $1 million annually, less than the $1.25 million she secured from Missouri in her contract extension.

Which means maybe she didn’t find the school more attractive. Maybe, instead, she found the situation more attractive.

The timing sure seems too curious — just a couple of weeks after the University of Missouri System Board of Curators established an oversight committee for her department. As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time — with some foresight, I might add — the committee has the power to “obtain, monitor and gather all information (it) deems necessary to assess progress of athletic funding, efforts and results of funding.”

Uh, that sure sounds like the job description of, well, what do you call it? An athletic director.

You know, the job Reed-Francois has.

Or had.

It’s easy to mention this now — the truth is it should have raised all of our antennas then, just as it did on the other side of the state. To be clear, Reed-Francois hasn’t provided a reason for her move — and here’s hoping she will be asked specifically about the committee during her introductory news conference in Arizona.

But whether that’s at the bottom or top of the list of reasons she left Columbia, we can agree it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the person currently doing the job when you ask someone — or a committee of someones — to make sure that person is doing their job. And we can agree the next candidate is going to have some questions regardless.

Look, few are always on the same page with any co-worker or superior, private institution or public, but we know it’s not the first time here. As reported by Power Mizzou last year, it was the board of curators, not Reed-Francois, that drove the extension for football coach Eliah Drinkwitz. It was notable then, and even more so now, that Drinkwitz got the extension — the board got its way — before the program’s 11-win season.

Reed-Francois is sharp. It is hard to be almost universally liked by fans in sports these days. Heck, throughout the NFL season, my inbox filled with those questioning the draft history of the Chiefs — the team that polished off any debate about a dynasty in a sport that hasn’t seen one in 20 years. But the reaction to her departure is darn-near a consensus.

The board of curators can publicly avoid the question of why — as in why oversight of her job was necessary enough that it received unanimous approval in the vote earlier this month. (They obviously had some reason, at least in their minds.) But those curators will almost certainly have to answer that question privately, because any candidate with any sort of leverage will be asking it.

Missouri is losing a pretty good thing while a lot of pretty good things are falling in place, and nobody should be more aware of that than Missouri itself. And it’s fair to question whether the board of curators realizes that much.

Even more fair to fear they will realize it only after she’s gone.