TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — In the changing landscape of college athletics, the Arizona Athletics department released its five-year plan, the Bear Down Blueprint. The department announced the plan following the NCAA House Settlement, which, in part, will allocate $20.5 million for schools to directly pay their athletes.
“We have 504 young people we have the privilege of impacting their lives at the most important time," Arizona Athletics Director, Desireé Reed-Francois said. “There’s going to be challenges. This is not perfect, this settlement, but we have great progress and, with that, we are going to continue to see this evolution, and that’s why the Bear Down Blueprint has the accountability and the ability for us to adapt.”
WATCH RELATED | Arizona Athletic Director, Desireé Reed-Francois on NCAA settlement
The four keys goals of the plan are to enhance revenue-sharing, grow total fundraising to be top three in the Big 12 conference, reduce the department's deficit from $39 million to $5 million and make Arizona a Top 25 Athletics Department nationally.
“In the 90s and early 2000s, we were Top 10 in the Director’s Cup and we’ve fallen; we’re in the 50s now," Reed-Francois said. "That’s not who we are. We need to get back to excellence across the board.”
The plan also focuses on retaining and growing Arizona’s fan base. Reed-Francois started with ideas like letting the fans vote on the return of the cactus logo, the same logo when she was a student at the U of A. Now, progressing to how the department can bring more fans in.
“As we were looking at football and concession prices," Reed-Francois said, "do we need to be charging what we’re charging? How do we lower our concession prices and make it affordable for families to come out to a football game?”
Across Olympic sports, Reed-Francois plans to set up endowments for each program, but she also looks to the high-revenue sports to make sure the Olympic sports never waver.
SEE MORE ON THE BEAR DOWN BLUEPRINT:
“Our Olympic sports we take a lot of pride in and we are never going to deviate from that but we also need to make sure that we are positioning football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, softball, those sports that are more revenue producing that others are competing at the highest levels," Reed-Francois said. "For us to fund the rest of our sports, we need those revenue sports competing and succeeding at a high level.”
Reed-Francois says this plan is a road map into the ever-changing world of college athletics.
“We’ve had challenges, and what we do with challenges is—we’re wildcats: We tack them head on because this isn’t the last transformation we are going to have," Reed-Francois said. "This is going to be a constant evolution, and we have to be nimble. We have to be innovative, and we have to be bold.”
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Erin Patterson is a reporter for KGUN 9. She's agraduate of the University of Alabama with a Bachelor’s in News Media with a Sports Concentration. Erin recently obtained her Master's Degree in Sports Journalism from Arizona State University at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, where she gained experience a sports reporter, anchor and producer. Share your story ideas and important issues with Erin by emailing erin.patterson@kgun9.com.
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