Former Alabama head coach Dennis Franchione passed away on Tuesday at the age of 75 after a long battle with cancer.
Coach Fran, as he was often referred, spent two seasons as the head coach of Alabama in 2001 and 2002. He replaced Mike DuBose, who was fired after a disastrous 2000 season that saw a preseason Top 5 Crimson Tide team finish just 3-8.
Alabama hired away Franchione from TCU, where he had compiled a 25-10 record with the Horned Frogs and had just led them to a 10-1 mark during the 2000 regular season.
Unbeknownst to Coach Fran at the time, Alabama was about to get hit with crippling probation, which severely limited his ability to build the program. It's fair to wonder, had the whole Albert Means situation never happened, what he could have accomplished in Tuscaloosa.
Because in 2001, one year removed from just a three-win season, Franchione led the Crimson Tide to a 7-5 mark and an Independence Bowl victory.
In 2002, Alabama jumped to 10-3. If the postseason ban hadn't been in effect, the Crimson Tide would have won the SEC's Western Division and played Georgia in Atlanta for the SEC Championship.
Franchione tucked and ran after the season, accepting what he called his dream job at Texas A&M and leaving Alabama to go through another coaching search for the second time in two years.
Alabama fans never really forgave Coach Fran for that. He was ours, and then he wasn't. Many, like myself and my father, took joy in watching his tenure at Texas A&M end in failure.
Franchione passed away nearly seven months to the day that my father did.
Two important parts of my childhood Alabama fandom gone just like that.
Coach Fran was the villain of my Alabama childhood until I grew up
When you deal with the death of somebody close to you, it puts a lot into perspective. Your family, your close friends. The things that really matter. The petty stuff, like the misguided anger of a nine-year-old kid for his team's football coach leaving for another job, another team, means very little.
Because that's what I was: a nine-year-old kid. I didn't know Dennis Franchione. I knew Coach Fran.
I knew him as the man who had taken over Alabama, brought some hope back to the program and then, in my mind, abandoned us. I knew him as the traitor who left for Texas A&M, and I knew him as the guy my dad hated.
That's a child's understanding of a complicated situation.
It isn't the understanding of an adult who has watched enough people come and go to realize that football, as much as we love it, is still just football.
By all accounts, Coach Fran was a good man. He had a family: a wife, kids, and grandchildren. They'll remember him not as the football coach, but as the man; the father, the husband, the grandad. His results as a football coach are the furthest thing from their mind.
But Coach Fran was a heck of a coach. He won at places it was difficult to win. His success at TCU launched the Horned Frogs into the program they ultimately became. He brought Gary Patterson to TCU as his defensive coordinator, and it was Patterson who took the job when Franchione departed for Tuscaloosa; he carried on what was being built and turned TCU into what you see today.
Coach Fran was on the path to building something in Tuscaloosa, too. His 17-8 mark was more than respectable considering what he inherited. He just didn't stick around long enough to see it bear fruit.
He struggled at Texas A&M, ultimately reaching the same fate as the three coaches who followed him in College Station.
And for a long time, that was the part of Dennis Franchione's story that mattered to me.
He left Alabama. He went to Texas A&M. It didn't work out for him.
Good.
That's how a nine-year-old Alabama fan saw it. But I'm not nine anymore, and my father isn't here to watch Alabama play anymore, either.
So when I heard that Dennis Franchione had died, I didn't think about his two seasons at Alabama. I didn't think about Texas A&M. I didn't think about Albert Means or probation or the dark years that followed.
I thought about my dad.
And I thought about being a kid, sitting around with him and caring so deeply about a football coach leaving Alabama. At the time, it all felt so important. It felt like the only thing that mattered. Now, after losing my father, I understand how little it did.
What matters is that my dad was here. What matters is the memories I have of watching Alabama with him. What matters is the conversations, the arguments, the celebrations, and the disappointments.
Coach Fran was just a character in those memories. But he was an important one.
And now he's gone, too.
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