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Friedlander: Fran Brown isn’t at Georgia anymore. Can he make it work at Syracuse?
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The names roll off Fran Brown’s tongue with the reverence they deserve.
Ernie Davis. Floyd Little. Larry Csonka. The great Jim Brown. The greatest players in Syracuse history.
In all of college football history.
But to young recruits choosing a place to begin their college careers and the start journey they hope will lead them to the NFL, they’re just a bunch of old guys from a dust-covered history book.
It’s what former North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams meant when he used to say, jokingly of course, that kids coming up today think that Michael Jordan invented basketball.
So while Syracuse’s football tradition is rich and deep, with a national championship (1959) and a Heisman Trophy winner to its credit (Davis, 1961), its perception among today’s crop of 4- and 5-star prospects is of a program that has averaged only 5 wins per season since the turn of the century.
In a location where the average snowfall is more than 100 inches per year.
That makes it difficult to attract top talent and build a championship-caliber program. Even for a coach named the nation’s top recruiter. But it’s a challenge Brown willingly accepted when he was hired to replace Dino Babers with the Orange in December.
He’s already off to an impressive start.
Within a month of his arrival, he attracted a franchise quarterback, Ohio State’s Kyle McCord. He brought three transfers with him from Georgia, where he coached defensive backs. And he signed Syracuse’s highest-rated freshman class (No. 37) since the current rating format came into existence.
It’s an early success Brown has built upon a combination of reputation and personality.
“He’s a great father figure and mentor. I can’t wait to play for him,” said running back LeQuint Allen, one of the many returning players who decided to stay with the Orange after Brown’s hiring. “Players are just ready to suit up and get going.”
Like most great recruiters, Brown talks a good game. The difference is that when he looks you in the eye and tells you who he is, what he’s about and how he plans to get the best out of you, it’s hard not to get caught up in his excitement.
But he’s not at Georgia anymore. Or Alabama, Ohio State or any of the other blue-blood programs that always seem to dominate the national recruiting rankings and stockpile the game’s top talent. He has a much tougher sell at Syracuse.
That might be a problem if he was only out there selling Syracuse.
He’s not.
Brown’s pitch is more about himself than his location. For emphasis, the 41-year-old New Jersey native holds up the cup of water from the table in front of him.
“I sell me and it looks like this,” he said. “Do you think this is half empty or half full? If you’re looking at us because we’re not Alabama, it’s half empty. I’m looking at it like it’s half full. You’ve got to have that mindset. Anything else is a loser’s mindset a lot of people have. You have to change that mindset. Once I get more people around to think positive, you become one of those programs.”
It’s a tall task. But you have to start somewhere.
As Brown is quick to point out, Alabama had only 1 winning record under Mike Shula in the 4 seasons before Nick Saban took over.
“I’m not saying I’m Nick Saban,” he said. “I’m saying that if you stick to your culture, who you are and what you believe in, then it all works out.”
No, Brown isn’t Nick Saban. Nor is he Kirby Smart, the coach for whom he worked as an assistant at UGA the past 2 seasons.
In fact, when asked where he thought he’d rank if the new EA Sports College Football ’25 game rated coaches the same way it does players, his answer was refreshingly honest.
Dead last.
If there’s one advantage to being at a place like Syracuse, it’s that the potential is there to move quickly up the ranks. Louisville showed it was possible in 2023 by making an immediate leap from the middle of the ACC pack to the conference championship game in its first season under Jeff Brohm.
Given the balance within the league, the influx of talent on the roster and a schedule that like last year’s Cardinals that Florida State and Clemson, it’s not out of the question for the Orange to produce a similar result.
But Brown isn’t interested in quick fixes.
That’s why despite casting a wide net first recruiting effort as a head coach, he was much more selective in who he brought in. Especially when it came to transfers.
“Once you start taking players over your culture, it’s not a program,” he said. “Then it’s a football team. A program has some substance behind it.”
You have to go a long way back in those dusty old history books to find the last time Syracuse enjoyed that kind of sustained success. But if recruiting is the 1st step toward that end, then the Orange may have finally found the right coach to bring it back again.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
