Hall of Fame college football coach Dennis Franchione has died, according to multiple reports Tuesday.
Franchione spent 40 years in coaching, starting in the high school ranks in Missouri in the early 1970s. He joined college football as the wide receivers coach at Kansas State in 1978 and became the head coach at Southwestern College in Kansas, going 14-4-2 with a conference championship in two seasons. After two seasons as offensive coordinator at Tennessee Tech, he embarked on a 30-year journey at six institutions.
Coach Fran took over at Pittsburg State in 1985 and lost one conference game in five seasons at the school. The Gorillas went 53-6 in his five seasons, with five trips to the Division II quarterfinals and three semifinal appearances. In March, he was elected to the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Hall of Fame.
This success took him to Southwest Texas State (now Texas State), an FCS school at the time. He went 11-9 in two seasons, then took over at New Mexico, where he recorded three winning seasons and one bowl trip in six seasons. In 1998, Franchione took over at TCU, taking the Horned Frogs to three bowl games and winning two WAC championships in three seasons. Franchione brought Gary Patterson with him from Albuquerque to Fort Worth, who built on Franchione’s success and eventually took TCU to the Big 12.
Franchione left TCU for Alabama in 2001, leading the Crimson Tide to a 10-3 mark and 11th place in the AP poll under the dark cloud of NCAA sanctions. Due to these sanctions, Franchione made the controversial decision to leave the Tide for Texas A&M and a massive 5-year, $11 million contract. Franchione had moments of success in College Station, including a trip to the Cotton Bowl and back-to-back wins over Texas, but his tenure never materialized into the success he and the Aggies envisioned. (And in the all’s well that ends well department, who knows if Alabama will ever land Nick Saban without Franchione gone.)
Franchione took three years off from coaching before returning to Texas State for arguably his most impressive stint. Starting in 2011, he guided the Bobcats in their transition to FBS, going 6-6 in their first year in the Sun Belt, then 7-5 in 2015. Although the 2015 Bobcats were not selected to a bowl game, it was Texas State’s best season in FBS until reaching their first playoff game in 2023.
Franchione leaves behind his wife, Kim, daughters Ashley and Libby and son Brad, who was previously the head coach at Blinn College.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of knowing Franchione for a brief period many moons ago. He took a job as a color analyst at ESPN Radio between his coaching stints at Texas A&M and Texas State, and I was that team’s part-time observer as a student, assisting the play-by-play announcer, the great Dave Barnett. Although the details escape me, I vividly remember a surreal afternoon waiting for a connecting flight while sharing a bowl of skillet queso at a Chil’s Too as Coach Fran told stories of recruiting in the 1980s. Coach Fran was a warm man, and my life and college football were better because he was a part of it.
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