UCLA AD Tim Harris sees major opportunity to wake up the giant

Note: This is Part 2 in a series on new UCLA CEO and athletics director Tim Harris.You can read Part 1 here.The UCLA chancellor wanted to see him, and Tim Harris figured that couldn’t be good.The former Lakers business boss had agreed to teach a sports marketing class at his alma mater when he received an email calling him in to visit with Chancellor Julio Frenk.“I thought, oh my gosh,” Harris told the California Post, “I haven’t even taught a class and I’m in trouble.”Actually, it was the school’s athletics department that was in peril.Mounting debt and an outdated way of doing things were inescapable problems that threatened to compound themselves if nothing changed.Frenk wanted to meet Harris, who had helped build the Lakers into one of the world’s most successful sports franchises, to get a read on the way he viewed college athletics.

The first meeting went so well, several others followed.The more the men talked, the more they realized their visions aligned.By last month, as it became increasingly obvious that major changes to UCLA athletics were necessary, Frenk asked Harris to take over the operation.Harris agreed to do so — on a pro-bono basis until a more permanent arrangement could be worked out.As he sat behind the desk in his corner office inside the Morgan Center this week, having taken over as CEO and athletics director, Harris unveiled his vision.The idea is to reimagine his department as an entertainment company whose product is college athletics.

If such a move sounds transformative, that’s exactly the point.“The landscape of college athletics is evolving at a breakneck pace, and our athletics department needs a leader who can navigate that change with both vision and discipline,” Frenk told The Post.“Tim has UCLA in his heart, and he brings a clear commitment to our student-athletes, as well as a deep understanding of our university and how to create a program that sustains itself for generations to come.

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