When Fran Brown stepped up for the head coaching role in Syracuse, college football fans might have gone like, ‘Why though?’ After all, Brown was set to fill Dino Babers’ shoes in November 2023. The seat was too hot. Orange fired Baber after his eight-season stint at the program. He left a real mess for Brown to clean up, while the new HC already had a history of embarrassing setbacks.

The firing decision came after the Orange had a devastating 22-31 loss to Georgia Tech, wrapping up the 2023 season with a 6-7 overall record. Babers went 41-55 at Syracuse, with just two winning seasons and two postseason berths. Brown was taking up a program that won a bowl game in 2018 but never won more than seven games in any other season. As Syracuse was coming fresh out of a financial loss worth an $8.9 million buyout given to Babers, the pressure on Brown got 100x more. But then he signed up for it.

Now we know what went on behind that risky move. It turns out that more than one program had closed its doors right in front of Brown’s face. On June 12, the Syracuse head coach appeared on the Next Up with Adam Breneman podcast and poured his heart out about the rejections.

Fran Brown said, “I said I wanted Temple, Syracuse, or Rutgers; I wanted to be in the Northeast. Greg [Schiano] was never leaving Rutgers until he was done. I think he’s a really good football coach. He doing a h- -l of a job there. He building the culture. I learned a lot of stuff from him. So, as Schiano did that there you knew that okay, not going to go to Rutgers. Coach’s there that’ll do well.” He pacified himself, saying he could now turn to Temple. The Owls, then led by Stan Drayton, later fired him last November after three straight losing seasons. But there too, he found a shut door.

Brown confessed with a heavy heart, “Temple didn’t want to give me a job. They said I wasn’t a good enough coach. I didn’t have good enough experience. And they went with someone else that didn’t have experience as a coach instead of myself, and that hurt. Like I cried when I didn’t get the job. The second time it was extremely embarrassing. Because, first they put out that I was getting a job, and then it comes, I’m not.” Given the 2024 seasons of Temple and Syracuse, that was undoubtedly a poor decision. The Owls wrapped up the last season with a 3-9 record, while the Orange under Brown had a 10-3 season. However, all this experience turned out to be a blessing in disguise. 

Brown shared, “It was embarrassing, and it was motivating, though. But once I didn’t get the job, I was blessed with the opportunity to get the chance to go down to Georgia and Coach [Kirby] Smart and [Will] Muschamp and Glenn Schumann and those dudes we interviewed for like two days, and everything they told me they was going to do they did. And everything I told them I would do from the recruiting to the making sure I was around the players to just being a team guy, right, being an employee on the staff. That was about everything.” Brown served two seasons as the defensive backs coach at the University of Georgia from 2022 to 2023. Now that he is on the Syracuse steering wheel, he holds the reins tight for the players, keeping distractions at bay. 

Fran Brown’s uncompromising culture at Syracuse

As per On3 reports, Brown’s Syracuse holds an average NIL value of $19.2k. Anyway, it’s too low as compared to the frontrunners like the Alabama Crimson Tide, which holds a valuation of $213k. Does that mean he can keep the strings loose? No way. No matter how small the amount, Brown is very particular about the spending. On that note, Syracuse offensive tackle Byron Washington and defensive back Demetres Samuel Jr. shared some scoop about Brown following strict discipline in Syracuse.

On May 22, they appeared on the State of Orange podcast. Samuel Jr. shared, “We get fines for missing morning, two absences in class. We got class checkers. If you don’t have your jug or your tablet.” And things started to look interesting from there.

Washington chimed in to inform the fine amount, “That’s $50.” Brown also keeps the players on their toes when it comes to their physical training. “You weigh three times. On Monday, it’s kind of more lenient. Wednesday, you kind of want to be there; on Friday, if you are not there, that’s a quarter.”

The head coach is so particular about the morality of the program that he did not think twice about letting go of Syracuse’s pride, WR Trebor Pena, over the NIL hoopla. No matter how much Pena offered to the program as the team captain, undue demands are a big turnoff for Brown. As he said, “We paid him enough. He was going to get paid more. There were some numbers that were asked to me that I didn’t feel I would be able to do and move on.” External pressure doesn’t shake Brown—it sharpens him and his squad.