Hall of Fame college football coach Dennis Franchione has died, according to multiple reports on Tuesday.
Franchione spent 40 years in coaching, starting in the Missouri high school ranks in the early 1970s. He joined college football as Kansas State's wide receivers coach 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 the 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.
That success took him to Southwest Texas State (now Texas State), an FCS school at the time. He went 11-9 in two seasons, and then took over at New Mexico, where he posted three winning seasons and a 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 upon 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 a No. 11 AP poll finish under the black cloud of NCAA sanctions. Because of those sanctions, Franchione made the controversial decision to leave the Tide for Texas A&M and a whopping 5-year, $11 million contract. Franchione experienced moments of success in College Station, including a Cotton Bowl trip 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 ever lands Nick Saban without Franchione's departure.)
Franchione took three years off of coaching before returning to Texas State for arguably his most impressive stint. Beginning in 2011, he guided the Bobcats in their transition to FBS, going 6-6 in their first year in the Sun Belt and then 7-5 in 2015. Though the 2015 Bobcats were not selected for a bowl game, it was Texas State's best season in FBS until reaching their first postseason game in 2023.
In June, Franchione was among nine coaches to make the College Football Hall of Fame ballot. He's also in the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame and won six coach of the year awards.
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 time many moons ago. He took a job as ESPN Radio's color analyst in between his Texas A&M and Texas State coaching stints, and I was that crew's part-time spotter as a college student, assisting the play-by-play announcer, the great Dave Barnett. Though the details escape me, I vividly recall a surreal afternoon killing time waiting for a connecting flight while sharing a bowl of skillet queso at a Chil's Too as Coach Fran shared 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.