DALLAS — Coaches simply didn’t leave Tuscaloosa, Ala., for another college job, at least not of their own volition. Bill Curry did in 1989 and Wallace Wade in 1930, but that’s the list. Bear Bryant left A&M for Alabama when mama called, not the other way around.
Only Dennis Franchione, who died Tuesday at 75 after a long battle with cancer, knows if he lived long enough to regret it. He’d never been fired anywhere before A&M. Never so much as gave anyone pause. He’d won everywhere he went.
Resuscitated programs at Pittsburg State, Texas State, New Mexico and TCU, which was his biggest trick of all. In the three decades before his hiring in 1998, the Horned Frogs had been to a bowl game twice. His first year in Fort Worth, Texas, he took a team that had won one game the season before and beat USC in the Sun Bowl.
Over the next two years, he won eight games, then 10. He was the hottest coach in the country. His creative offense turned LaDainian Tomlinson, a former fullback, into a national sensation. The defense, led by Gary Patterson, his successor, was a revelation.
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On that high note, Fran left TCU in 2001 for another rebuilding job, this one in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide had won only three games in Mike DuBose’s final season. Fran repeated his TCU pattern, winning seven games his first year and 10 the next. Except there would be no bowl after the 2002 season. The NCAA said so because of sins committed by the previous regime.
Feeling misled by Alabama officials and facing rugged sanctions over the next two years, Fran got homesick for Texas, his adopted home state.
Next thing you know, he’s being introduced as R.C. Slocum’s heir. Of course, the problem with the Crimson Tide faithful and others wasn’t just that he left Alabama, which was bad enough. The way he left didn’t win any admirers, either.
Flew back to Texas without so much as a farewell to his former players, whom he addressed later in a video call.
“Franchione will give plenty of positive reasons why he decided to leave for College Station,” ESPN’s Ivan Maisel wrote at the time, “but if bailing out on the very commitment he asked of his players isn’t one of them, then, as Alabama rockers Wet Willie used to sing, grits ain’t groceries, eggs ain’t poultry and the Mona Lisa is a man.”
Probably should be noted here that Ivan, a SportsDay alum and Stanford grad, grew up in Alabama.
Friends, if you believe in karma, Fran certainly got his in College Station. His middling 32-28 record in five seasons included a 77-0 demolition by Oklahoma, the worst loss in Aggie history. He dug himself an even deeper hole with a newsletter marketed to big hitters for $1,200 a year. Subscribers got information unavailable to the general public. The inside dope included injury reports highly useful to anyone who might want to, say, place a wager on the Aggies' games. Fran pleaded ignorance of abetting gambling. Suffice to say his bosses, who claimed to be unaware of the newsletter, were not amused. Neither was the NCAA.
Before the shock waves had settled, Fran, under pressure from the university, resigned. The irony in the timing of the announcement was that it came immediately after he’d just beaten Texas. At least you couldn’t say he didn’t go out on top.
He applied for other jobs over the years, only to return to Texas State. His five years back in San Marcos didn’t do anything to burnish his resume.
A writer from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram found him happily retired when they talked in 2018. Living with his wife, Kim, in Horseshoe Bay, playing golf, enjoying his grandkids. He’d recently survived what would be his first round with cancer. Life was good far from the ambitions that once led him out of a comfort zone he would soon miss. He’d remember his three years coaching in Fort Worth as his happiest.
He left because he wanted a shot at a national championship. But, as Mike Shula, Mike DuBose, Ray Perkins, Bill Curry and others learned, even Alabama comes with no guarantees. Wallace Wade won the program’s first three titles, and he was so unhappy he quit for Duke.
Fran told the Star-Telegram “there is nothing like coaching football at Alabama.” But the blowback from his exit took a toll. He interpreted it as a compliment, of sorts, that they didn’t want him to leave.
He couldn’t say the same about his next stop.
“I wanted to coach in Texas again because I had Texas ties,” he told the Star-Telegram. “It was hard. I don’t know if I fully understood the Aggie culture. Sometimes it felt like the criticism was unfair, but you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
“When I reflect on it, it happened to me once in 40 years. That’s pretty good.”
There are no hard feelings in Fort Worth, apparently. Sonny Dykes recently invited him back for a close-up look at the program he, in effect, kick-started in 1998. Not a little ironic that one of his successors got to the national title game he figured he could only win somewhere else.
Just the same, TCU owes Fran a debt no less than the one to Gary Patterson, and he got a statue for his efforts.
“College football is in a better place for having Dennis Franchione’s influence on it,” Dykes said in a statement Tuesday, “and today is a great loss to all who knew him.”
There are worse epitaphs for an old football coach. Anyone still holding a grudge can let go now.
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