UNLV athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois arrives for a news conference at the Mendenhall Center Friday, March 15, 2019. Reed-Francois discussed the firing of UNLV basketball head coach Marvin Menzies and the search for a new coach.
Sunday, April 18, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Everyone loves a good succession plan. So few of us actually have one.
I have spent a good part of my working life trying to figure out a succession plan for, well, the next part of my life. Yes, I am still working on it.
I have also listened to practically every CEO I know lament the fact that what his or her company needs and doesn’t have is — you guessed it — a good succession plan. And almost every Wall Street investor worth his salt has at the top of his “must have” list a succession plan.
In short, no one wants to get caught short in any endeavor without a plan for success. You know, the “what if the boss gets hit by a bus” scenario?
It was barely a month ago when the inevitable happened to UNLV’s basketball program. That’s why you have got to admire my friend UNLV Athletic Director Desiree Reed-Francois, who in less than a week’s worth of tumult showed Las Vegas that she not only had a plan for Runnin’ Rebel basketball but that she could successfully execute it.
It has been easy during COVID-19 lockdown for all of us to lose track of UNLV athletics, given everything else that has been happening. Or, more precisely, not happening.
Paying attention to a basketball team when the entire university, city, state and country were reeling from the ravages of the pandemic is a lot to ask. And, yet, here we were in the throes of yet another basketball crisis and we needed someone to step up.
UNLV’s vaunted head coach, T.J. Otzelberger, who had come to town barely two years ago, was rumored to be leaving UNLV for Iowa State. In hindsight, everyone says they could see it coming. In reality, I don’t know anyone who had an inkling.
Except, Desiree. That’s because it is part of her job to see around the corners of the myriad job offers that constantly invite coaches with promise to greener pastures. Otzelberger is one of those coaches. So when Iowa State came calling, T.J. was all ears.
You can’t stop the schools from offering and you can’t expect your coaches not to move on to their own “dream jobs.” All you can do is wish them well, knowing that their success tells the rest of the world that one path to achieving a coach’s dream may very well run through UNLV.
What we should expect from a good athletic director, though, is planning. As in always planning ahead for that time when she gets the call that her head coach got “his call.”
I suspect that given the time it took for Desiree to land on the Rebels’ newest head coach, Kevin Kruger, she had already been well down the road of her own basketball succession plan. Knowing that T.J. was the type of coach who could get his “siren call” at any time, Desiree was probably making plans to replace him, if necessary, from the very beginning.
Her seemingly overnight search for a successor to T.J. was probably two years in the making because she had that much time to watch Kevin Kruger, learn about his many strengths and confirm his commitment to Rebel basketball and our community.
Her search was years long, her decision-making just days long. That’s what makes for successful leadership.
By acting swiftly and decisively and, thereby, avoiding weeks of rumors, innuendos and intense lobbying by the well-intentioned, I believe our athletic director chose wisely by hiring Kevin Kruger.
All of college basketball will see in the next couple of years whether Desiree chose well.
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
