Hold The Rope: Remembering Dennis Franchione at Alabama
By David Wasson
How do you get from Dennis Franchione to four national titles and the most dominant college football program in this millennium? Don’t replace the carpet!
It must be hard for many Alabama football fans to recall anymore, given the stratospheric rise to dominance that is the Crimson Tide in the past 10 years. But once upon a time, the most dominant college football program in recent history was cast aside like an unwanted old cardigan.
All over some threadbare carpet.
OK, that wasn’t the only reason December 2002 became seared into my memory. But some weather-beaten rug was the proverbial straw to Alabama football’s camel during the holiday season – a season that left college football royalty holding a rope their head coach callously let go of in the middle of the night.
Turnaround Artist
Once upon a time, Dennis Franchione was considered a savior-in-training around Tuscaloosa. Plucked from TCU to build from the ruins of Mike DuBose’s train-wreck coaching conclusion, “Coach Fran” was the guy who was going to bring order and discipline back to the program.
He was going to be the turnaround artist.
What Franchione faced at Alabama would be even harder than what he faced at TCU. DuBose and Co. went 3-8 in 2000, sure, but the specter of an NCAA probe was also looming large. Just a month after Franchione arrived at the Capstone, news surfaced that Alabama booster Logan Young had given a high school coach $200,000 to steer recruit Albert Means to Alabama.
If you don’t remember this, ask around: It was devastating. The resulting dumpster fire was still a bit away, of course, and Franchione led the Tide to a promising 7-5 season in 2001.
But the NCAA levied its penalties in February 2002, hammering Alabama with a five-year probation and significant scholarship reductions. Thomas Yeager, then the chairman of the infractions committee, said that the death penalty weapon was cocked and Alabama was staring down the barrel of a loaded gun”.
That night, a beleaguered Mal Moore met with the media and inferred a gentlemanly combination of betrayal/unknown future rarely seen by major-college athletic directors.
Franchione was outwardly undeterred, asking Tide players to “Hold The Rope” and buy in to help return Alabama to glory. That year, the Crimson Tide went 10-3 – beating Nick Saban’s LSU squad 31-0 (with Franchione getting into a handshake squabble postgame) and drubbing Tennessee by 20 points.
Banned from participating in a bowl game, Alabama athletic director Mal Moore scheduled a 12th game at Hawaii – with the Tide taking a monster traveling flotilla of fans to Honolulu to watch their team bash the Warriors en route to a No. 11 ranking in the final Associated Press poll.
Even while on the Big Island, though, word was getting out that Franchione didn’t exactly have two hands on the rope like he wanted his team to have. Privately fuming over feeling misled by the gravity of Alabama’s recruiting transgressions, and feeling nickeled-and-dimed by Moore over things like worn carpeting in the football offices, Franchione was quietly dancing with Texas A&M about the job opening left when the Aggies fired R.C. Slocum.
Five days later, and without talking to his team in Tuscaloosa, Franchione boarded a private jet at Tuscaloosa Regional Airport and departed for College Station. That night, a beleaguered Mal Moore met with the media and inferred a gentlemanly combination of betrayal/unknown future rarely seen by major-college athletic directors.
“Destiny” and Deliverance
Franchione’s fleeing created chaos back in Tuscaloosa. Players, fans, boosters and the national media were outraged. The academic year wasn’t even over by the time Moore hired – and fired – Mike Price (a series of head-shaking actions that erased the name “Destiny” in any the baby girl name banks of potential Alabama fan parents for years to come). Price’s self-immolation begat Mike Shula, a prodigal son (both of Alabama and his paternal NFL legacy) brought on more to keep the death-spiraling Alabama football program out of the ditch than to actually win games.
Because karma has 20/20 vision, Franchione didn’t fare much better. Tattooed in the media and by rival recruiters as a cut-and-run coach, Franchione posted an unimpressive 32-28 record in five seasons that included an embarrassing 77-0 loss to Big 12 rival Oklahoma. He ultimately was shown the door after becoming embroiled in a scandal – pimping a for-pay newsletter to boosters that contained inside information.
As Franchione’s career was melting down, Moore engineered the coup of the century – bidding Shula a fond farewell and rolling the dice on his entire Alabama legacy to camp out in South Florida to bring the disenchanted Dolphins coach back with him.
In an odd way, that worn-out carpet in what is now known as the Mal Moore Football Building was the reason Alabama is blessed with four more national titles and a sudden lack of space on the Walk of Champions (which didn’t even exist on paper when Franchione bolted town).
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Franchione begat Price who begat Shula who begat Saban.
And the Tide lived happily ever after.