Building the WNBA’s Next Franchise: Lessons from the Toronto Tempo
Institutions tend to think of themselves as standalone enterprises, competing for attention, students, and resources on their own merits. But no organization rises entirely on its own. The health of the wider ecosystem it belongs to determines how much attention, investment, and credibility any single member can command, and that dynamic runs in both directions.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz draws on a comparison he has used for years: The Community Solution Education System works like a sports league, where the System is the league and each university is a team. The strength of the league creates opportunities for individual teams, while the success of each team strengthens the league as a whole. To explore that dynamic, he speaks with Eli Horowitz, Assistant General Manager and Senior Vice President of Basketball Strategy for the Toronto Tempo, who joined the WNBA’s first Canadian franchise before it had played a game, after seven years with the Los Angeles Sparks. Eli is also his son, a relationship they address at the top. Their conversation covers how the WNBA grew from a sliver of sports media coverage into a sold-out product, why the Tempo built a full leadership team and a fan base before a single player arrived, and how analytics and human judgment now work together in evaluating talent.
Rather than treating sports as a metaphor held at arm’s length, this conversation traces the specific mechanics that transfer directly to higher education: how culture gets built deliberately, how leaders balance central support with local autonomy, and why data works best when it narrows the field rather than making the decision.
Listen to Episode 34 of Radical Cooperation on your favorite platform:
Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a conversation about bold ideas and collaborative leadership in higher education.