Penn mourns the death of Charles Harris, the Ivy League’s first Black athletic director
Harris, who served as athletic director at Penn from 1979 to 1985, died on Dec. 7. He was 71.
Despite an era of tight budgets and low morale in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Charles Harris found a way to come up with winning teams.
Mr. Harris, who served as athletic director at Penn from 1979 to 1985, died on Dec. 7. He was 71.
When he took the position at Penn at age 29, he became both the youngest and the first Black athletic director in the history of the Ivy League.
Coming from his role as assistant AD at Michigan, Mr. Harris arrived in Philadelphia to find an athletic program in disrepair. The year before, a sizable budget deficit forced Penn to discontinue its men’s hockey team. The decision led to a three-day student sit-in that saved other sports from the same fate but failed to reinstate the hockey program.
“Pennsylvania represents a lot of the class things in college athletics,” Mr. Harris said in 1979 to the Daily Pennsylvanian. “And that’s with the full recognition that there are problems here.”
A recession in 1980 didn’t help. When the university froze the athletic department’s budget for the year, students feared the worst. Mr. Harris was backed into a corner but would not let the department down, promising no more teams would be cut, “even on a speculative basis.”
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Even with financial struggles, Penn had tremendous athletic success during Mr. Harris’ time as AD. Penn football won four straight Ivy titles under head coach Jerry Berndt, who was hired by Mr. Harris. The 1978-79 Quakers under coach Bob Weinhauer reached the Final Four in men’s basketball.
The 1980-81 season saw the men’s fencing team capture the NCAA championship, with Paul Friedberg and Mary Jane O’Neill each winning individual titles.
The men’s basketball team continued its five-year Ivy title streak under Mr. Harris, but its fans were perhaps more notable. The 1982 Penn-Princeton game saw two fights break out in the student section, apparently involving both a player and a cheerleader. Mr. Harris moved the 1983 game against Princeton game to the Spectrum.
Students were vocal with their disapproval of the move, but Mr. Harris’ bold decision accomplished exactly what he intended. Mr. Harris filed a formal request alongside student representatives that fans reform their behavior. The game between the two schools during the 1984 season returned to the Palestra without a hitch.
In 1985, Mr. Harris left Penn for Arizona State where he became the first Black athletic director at a Power Five school. He also made later stops at the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and Division III Averett University.
With almost 50 years working in college athletics, Mr. Harris was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the All-American Football Foundation. He was also an Asa Bushnell Commissioner’s Award winner as a part of the National Association of College Directors of Athletics.
A native of Mecklenburg County in Virginia, Mr. Harris earned a bachelor’s degree in mass media from Hampton University.
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