Former and current Arizona athletic directors get contract extensions | Greg Hansen

Arizona’s athletic department will have continuity at the top as it works through major financial and competitive pressures. Athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois has received a three-year contract extension that keeps her at the University of Arizona through the 2031-32 school year, with a base salary of $1.6 million in the final season. The deal signals that university leaders believe her work has put the department on firmer ground during a period of unusually difficult change in college sports.

The extension also connects Arizona to the career path of Greg Byrne, the former Wildcats athletic director who now leads Alabama’s athletic department. Byrne, like Reed-Francois, is 54 and has received a new deal that keeps him at Alabama for two additional years. His contract is scheduled to pay him $2.67 million in 2032-33. Together, the agreements reflect the standing both administrators have built nationally, with each regarded as one of the stronger athletic directors in the Power 4 conference structure.

For Tucson, Reed-Francois’ extension is especially significant because her tenure has involved more than routine administration of a large college sports program. She inherited an athletic department facing financial problems and a need for major organizational change after Dave Heeke’s dismissal in 2024. Since arriving, she has overhauled the staff, addressed the department’s financial position and dealt with competitive challenges across Arizona’s programs.

Her work has made her appointment look increasingly like a major success for Arizona. She has demonstrated a willingness to reject the wishes of prominent coaches when she believes doing so protects the broader athletic department. That approach was identified as one of the areas where Heeke struggled before his departure. Reed-Francois has also shown that she can absorb public criticism and outside pressure without allowing it to dictate decisions, an important quality in a department where football and basketball demands often compete with long-term financial planning.

The scale of Arizona’s recent difficulties places Reed-Francois’ responsibilities in a longer institutional history. The challenges facing her department have been compared with the crises encountered by former athletic directors Dick Clausen in 1960 and Cedric Dempsey in 1983. That comparison suggests that the current period is not simply a matter of adjusting to changes in conference membership or balancing a single difficult budget. It is a broad test of how Arizona organizes, funds and competes in college athletics.

The extension comes as the Wildcats continue reshaping their programs and coaching staffs. New women’s basketball coach Becky Burke is assembling her first staff, and one of the expected additions is former Arizona player Julie Brase-Hairgrove. Her return would give Burke’s program a direct link to Arizona history while adding a coach with substantial professional experience.

Brase-Hairgrove spent 17 years as an assistant coach in the WNBA, remaining with the Phoenix Mercury through multiple head coaches and helping the team win all three of its championships. She left the Mercury staff in 2022 and has worked in real estate in the years since. Before her professional career, she coached for two seasons at Loyola Marymount, including the school’s 2004 West Coast Conference championship team.

Her connection to Tucson is extensive. Brase-Hairgrove finished her Catalina Foothills High School career as Arizona’s girls’ basketball scoring leader, averaging 26.8 points per game and producing 2,913 points from 1994 through 1998. She helped Catalina Foothills win a state championship in 1997, then played four years at Arizona under Joan Bonvicini. She was a team captain for two seasons, appeared in the NCAA Tournament three times and later was inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame.

Burke’s hiring of a former Wildcat would fit an effort to connect the women’s program to its past while building a new direction. Brase-Hairgrove has previously said that working as a WNBA assistant allowed her to spend school years with her three children, though she later became interested in becoming a head coach. With her children older, she has apparently become more open to college coaching. Burke still has at least three staff positions to fill, while Lauren Flaum, Ryan Thorne and associate athletic trainer Bart Jameson are listed as holdovers from Adia Barnes’ staff.

Those personnel decisions will unfold under Reed-Francois’ extended leadership. Her contract does not remove the financial pressures facing Arizona athletics, nor does it guarantee success on the field or court. It does provide the department with a longer period to pursue the financial, staffing and competitive changes she has started. For Tucson supporters, the message is that the person responsible for navigating the department’s most consequential problems is expected to remain in charge well into the next decade.