Fran Harris (born March 12, 1965 in Dallas, Texas) is an American television personality, sportscaster, and former professional and college basketball player who has won championships in high school, in college, and in the

Women's National Basketball Association The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...

(WNBA). After not playing competitively for nearly 8 years, she beat out more than 200 athletes to earn a spot in the inaugural season of the WNBA for the

Houston Comets The Houston Comets were a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team based in Houston. Formed in 1997, the team was one of the original eight WNBA teams and won the first four championships of the league's existence. They are one of two ...

. Harris played basketball at

The University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, where she captained the team that won the 1986 national championship and led the team to the first ever

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges and ...

undefeated season going 34–0. In 2010, Harris was the host of ''Home Rules'', a transformational television series on

HGTV HGTV (an initialism for Home & Garden Television) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The network primarily broadcasts reality programming related to home improvement and real estate. As of February 2015, ...

. She's currently an announcer for the

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

family of networks, serial entrepreneur and author who's appeared on

The Today Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It ...

Good Morning America ''Good Morning America'' (often abbreviated as ''GMA'') is an American morning television program that is broadcast on ABC. It debuted on November 3, 1975, and first expanded to weekends with the debut of a Sunday edition on January 3, 1993. ...

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sh ...

, CNN, ''Oprah’s Radio Network'',

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

, ''The Tavis Smiley Show'' and numerous other television and radio networks.

Early life and education

Born in Dallas, Texas, Fran Harris is the fourth of five children; she has three brothers and a sister. She started playing basketball when she was a sophomore at

South Oak Cliff High School South Oak Cliff High School (colloquially referred to as SOC, pronounced "sock") is a public secondary school located in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas, United States. South Oak Cliff High School enrolls students in grades 9- 12 and is a pa ...

and played on the on JV and varsity teams her first year. She then helped the team to a 40–0 season and State Championship. She moved on to the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

where she had a standout basketball career and earned bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in journalism.

Fran Harris Profile
Retrieved 2011-03-19.

Basketball career

Harris was a player for

The University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Te ...

from 1982 to 1986. She led her team to its first and only NCAA Championship title, to date in 1986 with the first perfect season in women's NCAA history. The team went 34–0. Harris was the leading scorer three years in a row and was the team captain in 1986. She was named to the Southwest Conference All-Decade Team, SWC Player of the Year and was two-time team MVP, selected by teammates. Harris was an outside shooter who finished her career as the University's fourth all-time leading scorer with 1,798 points. Harris played for USA Basketball as part of the 1985 USA National Jones Cup Team that captured Gold for the second year in a row, World Championship Team in 1986 that won Gold,

USA Women's Pan American Team The Pan American Team is one of the teams under the auspices of the USA Basketball organization. The Pan American Games are held every four years in the year before the Olympics. The first Pan American Games were held in 1951, but those games were m ...

in 1987 that won a gold medal in Indianapolis, Indiana and was an

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

Team Alternate in 1988. After college, Harris went to play professional basketball in Italy and Switzerland. She later played for two years in the WNBA. In the league's inaugural season, she was a member of the Houston Comets. She started one game for the Comets but played in 25 games coming off the bench, scoring a total of 104 points on the season as the Comets won the first-ever WNBA Championship.Basketball-reference.com
1997 Houston Comets Statistics
Retrieved 2011-03-19. The next season, she was a starter for the Utah Starzz. At the end of the season she was waived from the team's roster, and chose to retire and begin her career in broadcasting with TV partner, Lifetime.

Other career activities

Harris hosted the transformational makeover show, ''Home Rules'' on HGTV, in which Harris helped redesign the interiors of people's homes. Harris has been coaching since she was a teenager and has been a fitness advocate since college. Since retiring from the WNBA, Harris has appeared as a fitness and life coach on many television shows. She produced and hosted her own reality show, ''America's Fitness Show'', which aired in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

. In 2011, Harris bested over 15,000 candidates to be named Good Morning America's Advice Guru Runner-up. That same year, Harris was one of eleven contestants appearing on the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...

competitive reality television series ''

America's Next Great Restaurant ''America's Next Great Restaurant'' is an NBC reality television show featuring contestants pitching restaurant ideas to a panel of judges, where the winner receives financial backing for their restaurant concept. Three locations were opened acros ...

'', in which aspiring restaurateurs pitch their concepts for a

fast casual restaurant A fast casual restaurant, found primarily in the United States and Canada, does not offer full table service, but advertises higher quality food than fast food restaurants, with fewer frozen or processed ingredients. It is an intermediate conce ...

chain. In 2021, Harris appeared on

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

's ''

Shark Tank ''Shark Tank'' is an American business Reality television#Investments, reality television series that premiered on August 9, 2009, on American Broadcasting Company, ABC.Hibberd, James (May 10, 201'Dancing,' 'Bachelor,' and a bigger 'Shark Tank' ...

'' to pitch her sports drink "Electra."

Career statistics

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1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

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Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

, 25 , , 1 , , 14.8 , , .346 , , .333 , , .710 , , 2.2 , , 1.0 , , 0.7 , , 0.1 , , 1.2 , , 4.2 , - , style="text-align:left;",

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

, style="text-align:left;",

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

, 18 , , 12 , , 19.6 , , .354 , , .313 , , .833 , , 2.2 , , 1.7 , , 0.7 , , 0.1 , , 0.9 , , 3.9 , - , style="text-align:left;", Career , style="text-align:left;", 2 years, 2 teams , 43 , , 13 , , 16.8 , , .349 , , .325 , , .744 , , 2.2 , , 1.3 , , 0.7 , , 0.1 , , 1.1 , , 4.1

References

External links

Fran Harris Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Fran 1965 births Living people American television personalities American women television personalities American women's basketball players Basketball players at the 1987 Pan American Games Basketball players from Dallas Houston Comets players Point guards Texas Longhorns women's basketball players Utah Starzz players Undrafted Women's National Basketball Association players Pan American Games competitors for the United States United States women's national basketball team players