It has been nearly week and it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
On Monday, in an announcement out of the blue, Missouri athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois was no longer the Missouri athletic director.
After two-plus years of running the Missouri athletic department, Reed-Francois was heading to take the same position at the University of Arizona.
Usually there’s a little smoke that leads to the fire in situations like this. But there were no public puffs about Reed-Francois being unhappy in Columbia.
So why did she leave?
There was speculation since she was an alum of Arizona’s law school, there was a call to return to the alma mater. But was that it?
Then contract details came out. Reed-Francois is actually going to make less money -- $1 million a year -- in Tucson than she did with her current contract in Columbia -- $1,250,000.
Who takes a job for less money?
And then there’s the matter of the Arizona athletic department’s financial situation. It is in debt to the tune of $177 million. That’s a pretty big hole to dig out of.
Reed-Francois had done a good job of raising money at Missouri, finishing with a reported surplus of $15 million in the 2022 fiscal year. But that’s nowhere near $177 million.
So it’s a job with a smaller salary and a mountain of debt to try to eliminate.
Why would Arizona, a school moving from the sinking ship that is the Pac-12 Conference to the Big 12 Conference this fall, be a better job than Missouri in the more prestigious Southeastern Conference with a lofty steady paycheck coming in through media rights?
The answer? Her job changed.
Earlier this month, the Board of Curators announced it was forming an “oversight committee” for the athletic department. It likely would monitor the department’s spending and future plans.
I guess the head of an athletic department that by nearly every measure had been on the rise under Reed-Francois’ tenure needed looking after by people who may or may not have any idea what it takes to run it on a daily basis.
Why would the curators form such a committee? Who knows? Politics? Pettiness? But whatever it was, it was enough to drive Reed-Francois out of the Central Time Zone and into an athletic department so far in debt, it can’t see solvency without using the Hubble telescope.
You hired her, let her do her job and stay out of her business. No one wants to be micromanaged at their job. Reed-Francois was offered an opportunity to get out of an uncomfortable situation and she took it.
Then another bomb dropped later in the week.
Arizona donors agreed to pay up to $1.5 million if it actually has to buy out Reed-Francois’ contract at Missouri. Reed-Francois signed an extension a little less than a year ago. And it states she is on the hook to pay Missouri half of whatever she is owed on the remainder of that deal.
That contract was good for another four years. So if you figure $1.25 million times two, that’s $2.5 million Missouri could legally ask for from Reed-Francois for leaving early.
I can do simple math. Arizona says it’s OK with paying $1.5 million if it has to, which leaves exactly $1 million Reed-Francois to come up with somewhere. Either she isn’t good at math as I appear to be or she really, really wanted to get out of Columbia.
In a memo, Arizona said it expects Reed-Francois to “undertake best efforts to reduce or eliminate any financial buyout” owed to the University of Missouri. So donors don’t really want to contribute to the buyout, they will kick in some if needed, but not all of it.
I truly don’t see Missouri doing anything except playing hardball and wanting the full amount. That money can be used to pay the next athletic director, the fourth for the university since 2015.
That’s a lot of turnover in a decade. I think it says something about the way the university itself is being run.
It should give the next person to take the position a lot to think about.