A brother, a son and the family that led Desiree Reed-Francois to Mizzou
Desiree Reed-Francois answered the phone on Friday. Her first thought was, “Is this real?” Her second thought was, “I have to go get some high heels.”
On the other end was Parker Executive Search Firm, asking Reed-Francois to fly from Las Vegas to St. Louis on Sunday to interview for Missouri’s Director of Athletics job. She knew immediately she was taking the interview. She also knew immediately she couldn’t tell her son.
Jackson Francois is about to begin his senior year at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas. The rest of the students actually started on Monday, but Jackson has been a little busy and won’t be in attendance for the first week of classes. He’s still figuring out whether he’ll stay in Vegas or move to mid-Missouri and attend Father Tolton for his final year of high school. But he knows he’ll be a student in Columbia a year from now.
Following a campus visit in June, Jackson decided he wanted to go to college at Mizzou. He’s going to study journalism and walk on to the Tiger basketball team to play for Cuonzo Martin, who his family has known for a decade going back to when Desiree was on the committee that hired Martin at Tennessee.
So mom was going to interview for a job where her son was going to school. And she wasn’t about to tell him.
“I thought in case they don’t offer me the job or I don’t accept it, I didn’t want him to have a negative impression of Missouri,” Reed-Francois said.
Reed-Francois called her husband, Josh Francois, who was golfing with friends in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Josh said he’d get an early flight home so Desiree could fly to St. Louis for the interview. “Don’t tell Jackson,” she told her husband. Then Desiree told Jackson they had to go shopping.
“I needed to go get some new shoes, but I also needed a gold blouse,” Reed-Francois said. “So I sent Jackson on this wild goose chase...I’m like 'go to the sporting goods store,' so I bought the shoes and I ran upstairs to buy a gold blouse and I hid it. He did not know where I was going.”
Reed-Francois interviewed with University President Mun Choi and members of Missouri’s search committee.
“We started off with a list of about 30, and we narrowed that down, the group narrowed that down to about seven to eight,” Choi said. “And we narrowed that down to about four. And from the four, we met with two individuals.”
Following the Sunday meeting, Choi offered Reed-Francois the job. She called home and finally told her son where she’d been all weekend.
“You thought you were escaping your parents,” she told Jackson. “Mom might be the next athletic director at Mizzou.”
“I can't get away from her,” Jackson joked. “We had kind of thought that she might get it when it opened. Excited. Super excited.”
"I had tears in my eyes," his mother said. "It was just really, really special."
Reed-Francois is no stranger to breaking down barriers. She probably broke another one Wednesday, becoming the first athletic director to invoke the movie Wedding Crashers at her opening press conference. She referenced a scene where Isla Fisher tells Vince Vaughn “I will find you,” comparing it to her following her son across the country.
But Jackson wants it to be clear: He chose Missouri first.
“He’s the leader, man,” Jackson’s uncle, Roman Reed, said. “Mom’s just a follower.”
“Once he went on his official visit (in June) and just felt it, he was all in,” Reed-Francois said. “On the interview, I told my husband, should I wear my ‘Missouri Mom’ shirt? Because like every other parent, we go and we buy the whole bookstore.“
“We’ve been on a lot of college campuses and Columbia was just a treat. We didn’t realize how pretty the campus was, didn’t realize how close the downtown setup was,” Josh Francois said. “We walked in and got a tour of basketball and all the construction that was going on, and obviously the South end zone project is fantastic. We didn’t realize kind of how nice it was and how friendly everybody was.”
Nor did they realize that less than two months later, they’d all be on their way to Columbia.
Jackson Francois is one reason Desiree is set to replace Jim Sterk as Missouri’s Director of Athletics on Sunday. But for the real impetus, you’ve got to go further back. Back to Sept. 10, 1994.
Not many people can identify the exact moment their future was formed. Desiree Reed-Francois can.
Roman Reed was playing in a junior college football game that day. He was a Division I linebacker, but he didn’t have Division I grades. As kids, Roman and Desiree had plans. He was going to play in the NFL and she was going to be his legal representation.
“That wasn’t as far-fetched as that may seem,” Roman said. “I benched 430 twice, squatted 625, ran a 4.53. I was going to be there.”
Then came that moment. Reed dove to make a tackle. The pile cleared and everyone got up. Everyone except Reed. He couldn’t move. He tried to give the crowd a thumbs up, but his arm didn't cooperate. He was put on a stretcher, into an ambulance and taken immediately to the hospital.
“When I got in the ambulance, my dad was there, he was beside himself,” Roman said. “I made a joke and said, ‘Dad, it looks like I’m gonna be a teacher now.’”
On some level, Roman already knew. His neck was broken. He was a quadriplegic.
“Three days after, the doctor told me, ‘You will never move your arms, you will never move your legs, you will never father a child,” Roman said. “I said, in that moment, ‘Fuck you. Get out of my room.'”
Today, Roman has use of his arms. He works out every day, boasts about being able to bench press 200 pounds now. He has three children, Roman Jr., Jason and Katherine. Asked how to spell Katherine’s name, he says “You can spell it heartbeat.”
Roman is still confined to a wheelchair. That too, he believes, shall pass.
“I’m going to walk one day,” he said.
The story of how Desiree Reed-Francois got here as the first female athletic director at a public institution in the Southeastern Conference just four years after becoming the first Hispanic female athletic director at an FBS school? Well, that’s the story of Roman Reed. You can’t tell one part of the story without including the other. There is no Roman without Desiree. There is no Desiree without Roman.
After two minutes and 19 seconds of thank yous in her introductory statement on Wednesday morning, Desiree talked about her little brother (for the record, he's two years and nine months younger; he says he'll probably get in trouble for sharing that).
“My brother personifies everything; he personifies perseverance and determination, and it's actually because of him that I'm in college athletics and I got into college athletics to begin with,” she said. “Watching Roman, he inspires me and he's the reason why I do what I do. I'm inspired to help others achieve those dreams and that's the reason why we're here. I am focused on the student-athlete, and I want them to have the incredible holistic experience that my brother never did.”
Roman was done playing football as of Sept. 10, 1994. He wanted to play again, even said he was going to play again, but even superheroes have their limits. The NFL dream was dead. Of course he felt sorry for himself, right? Of course he was pissed off, wasn't he? There had to be a grieving period, didn't there?
“I’ve never had one moment where I felt like I wasn’t gonna walk or I felt sorry for myself,” Roman said.
It sounds like something people say. It doesn’t sound like something people really believe. But if you talk to Roman Reed, you can’t help but feel that he believes it. Through the phone from Fremont, CA, his enthusiasm radiates.
The reason he stayed so positive? It’s his older sister.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “I never wanted to see her sad, so I never could afford to have my attitude down. I never wanted to let her down. I always wanted to do more than I could. How am I just gonna sit here and feel sorry for myself? She is so uplifting, so motivating, there is no more positive person in the world.”
Reed-Francois was asked on Wednesday how she inspires her brother, rather than the other way around.
“I think he just knows that I love him dearly, and I think he's very appreciative and proud of how much he means to me,” she said. “I don’t know about the inspiration part, I just think that he knows how much I love him.”
She said nobody had ever asked her that question. Maybe nobody had ever asked Roman either. When he was asked, he said she would drive from the University of Arizona, where she was getting a law degree, to Palm Springs, CA, twice a week to see him. He recalled one day when they were going to a movie—he didn’t really want to, but she insisted—and he fell out of his chair on the way to her car.
“She found a way to pick my 250-pound limp body up and get me back in the car,” he said. “No matter what, even if I fall, she’ll be there to pick me up. That’s life. She’s always been there for me.”
Roman also credits their mother, Gloria, who passed away last year. He calls her “the strongest person that we’ve ever met. She would always tell us we’ll find a way.”
Turns out, she passed some of that on to her daughter and her son.
Roman’s football future ended 27 years ago, before it had really even begun. It turned out the joke he made to his dad in the ambulance wasn’t far off. He isn’t a teacher, but he’s done some teaching. He got his associate’s degree from Chabot College in 1996. Twelve years later, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California.
“I said, I got one more muscle working and that’s the one between my ears,” he said.
He’s put it to good use. In August of 2000, the state of California passed the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act sponsored by Don Reed, Roman and Desiree’s father. The act established The Roman Reed Laboratory for Spinal Cord Injury Research at UC-Irvine in 2002. Don gathered signatures for Proposition 71, which established the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a landmark stem cell agency. Roman joined the Stanford Partnership for Spinal Cord Injury and Repair. He has been central to raising millions of dollars for stem cell research in the state of California. He's won awards and been invited to the White House for his efforts. He says he never really thinks about how far he has come since the doctor told him he’d never even be able to use his arms again.
“In a football game you don’t stop and congratulate yourself, you just keep kicking ass,” he said. “This game’s still going on. Honestly, I never allow myself that opportunity to sit back and pat myself on the shoulder. There’s so much more work to do.”
Reed has become an inspiration to innumerable people. But his inspiration is still his sister. He understands the irony that the future NFL player is now the one working in medical research and the woman who says “I’m a rower because I’m very uncoordinated but I'm six feet tall” and she chose rowing because “I wasn’t quite talented enough” to run track is the one working in college sports.
“I’ll never say I'm the smart one,” Roman said. “I’ll say I’m doing the cerebral stuff, but she’s the smart one.”
But don’t be fooled. Roman’s no dummy. Dummies don’t reference Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in interviews with people they've never met.
“(It says) If you’re the smartest person in the room, don’t act like it,” Roman said. “She never ever once made me feel like I was dumber than she was, even though I was. She would help me with my homework to find mistakes, and she found plenty of them. She’s a second mom to me. If I mess up she’s the first one to tell me and if I do well she’s the first one to tell me.
“She feels like my twin, but she feels like my mom too."
Roman is a trailblazer in his field. So is his sister in hers. Most of the stories this week will mention that Reed-Francois is the first female athletic director in Missouri history, the second in the history of the SEC. It’s a job she says she never considered as she was starting her career in college athletics because women just didn’t become athletic directors. Once she was pointed on that path, she pursued it relentlessly for two decades. From a compliance assistant at Cal to the same job at San Jose State. That’s where she met Josh, who was the assistant athletic director for marketing.
“Long story short, she could run but she couldn’t hide,” Josh said. “She was right across the hall.”
From there it was on to Santa Clara, then Fresno State, then San Francisco. Next was Tennessee, then Cincinnati, then Virginia Tech before finally landing her first leading role at UNLV in 2017.
“She had to be very strategic in her process of where she goes, and every role that she took, there was a reason, was a step to get to exactly right here,” Josh said on Wednesday. “Tennessee to get experience in the SEC, Cincinnati to be in charge of football, Virginia Tech to experience Power Five football and external relations, finally UNLV and now here. She’s just worked so hard. I think it’s fantastic that she’s a woman, but she’s just that talented. She really is. And she works that hard.”
Yes, she’s a woman, the sixth woman to serve as AD at one of the 65 Power Five schools. Yes, she’s Hispanic. And she gets that that is a part of her story, even if she longs for the day it isn’t.
“I'm looking forward to that day when no one has to ask me that question,” she said. “I understand the importance of context. And I understand my responsibility. I have a responsibility to do great work because I want to serve the University of Missouri, but I also want to keep that door open. And I want to keep that door open so that the incredibly talented people, regardless of their gender, regardless of their ethnicity, where they come from (have that opportunity).”
“We’re not there yet. It takes pioneers like my sister to get there,” Roman said. “It will be awesome when it’s not the first line of the story, but it’s awesome that it is the first line of the story because she is that pioneer. She is so humble that sometimes she doesn’t take stock of what she’s accomplished.”
After Reed’s call back to Jackson and Josh on Sunday night, she officially accepted the job. Her next call was to her brother.
“My sister plays her cards close to her chest, so I had no idea,” Roman said. “She calls me up and says 'I’m the new AD at Missouri'. I said 'Are you kidding me? That’s SEC!' I screamed like a girl.
“That was out of the blue. If I could jump, I would.”
There’s going to come a day when the whole gang is together in Columbia. Desiree’s first day in the office is officially Sunday. She’ll spend Monday through Wednesday at the SEC Athletic Director meetings in Asheville, NC. She’ll head back to Vegas for a couple of days before coming to Columbia, possibly with Jackson and Josh, depending on what the family decides about Jackson’s senior year. She’s already told Roman he’s coming to a football game this fall.
"You know I will,” Roman replied.
Desiree and Roman text back and forth breaking down the Saturday game of whatever school she is working at. Josh works for Daktronics, a company that deals in large scale LED products like video boards, though he won’t be able to work on any projects involving Missouri now. Jackson ran stats for the Virginia Tech women’s basketball team as a seventh grader and as a 12-year-old wanted to start a company to study the game day experience for kids. Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock paid him $50 for his report.
“When you’re hiring me, you’re kind of getting my husband and my son as well,” Reed-Francois said. “We have to all be all in. That’s the only way I know to do it.”
Missouri didn’t hire an athletic director. It hired a whole family.
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