Dennis Franchione
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Dennis Franchione (born March 28, 1951 in Girard, Kansas) is the head football coach at Texas A&M University.
Franchione received his B.A. from Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas. After graduating, Franchione served as the head football coach at several high schools in Missouri and Kansas. In 1978, Franchione was hired to be an assistant coach at Kansas State University, a position he would hold until he was hired to be the head coach at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas in 1981. During his two years at Southwestern, he led the team to a 14-4-2 record.
After two seasons as offensive coordinator at Tennessee Tech in 1983 and 1984, Franchione was hired as the head coach for his alma mater, Pittsburg State. He would stay on as head coach through 1989. During his time with the Gorillas, he would lead the team to a 53-6-0 record and would be named NAIA Coach of the Year in 1986 and 1987. At Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University-San Marcos) from 1990 to 1991 he led the team to a 13-9-0 record.
Franchione continued moving around to a series of different head coaching roles, quickly becoming known as a turn-around specialist. In 1992, Franchione joined the University of New Mexico and turned the team around from a 3-8 record in 1992 to a 9-4 record in 1997, complete with a WAC Mountain Division title and an Insight.com Bowl berth. In 1998, he joined TCU and promptly turned around their fortunes, going from 1-10 the year before to 7-5 and a berth in the Sun Bowl. In 2001, Franchione became the head coach at the University of Alabama and led the team, who had posted a 3-8 record the prior season, to a 7-5 record in 2001 and a 10-3 record in 2002. His time at Alabama, however, was filled with constant rumors of his interest in other jobs. In 2001, it was rumored that he was interested in an opening at Kansas, and when Texas A&M struggled in 2002, it was rumored that he would pursue the coaching job if long-time Aggie coach R.C. Slocum was fired. Franchione emphatically denied the rumors as Internet gossip, and even used his website as a forum to deny their truth. After his Alabama teams came out obviously lacking in preparation for the 2002 Iron Bowl(the annual game with in-state rival Auburn), which the Tide lost in a huge upset, and the Hawaii game the following week, which the Tide narrowly won over an inferior team, the intensity of the rumors reached their peak. Once the team returned home, Franchione boarded a plane owned by a Texas A&M booster to merely "look around" the A&M campus, but when the plane landed Franchione was the Aggies new coach. He left his Alabama players in Tuscaloosa without a goodbye; his players, understandably so, were livid. Texas A&M fans were convinced they had landed the coach that they had long wanted, and many Aggie fans, as well as some members of the national media, compared Franchione leaving Alabama for Texas A&M the direct reverse of Paul "Bear" Bryant leaving Texas A&M for Alabama in term of its future impact.
Franchione became head coach at Texas A&M, bringing his entire coaching staff to College Station with him for the 2003 season. He often publicly expressed the fact that the Aggie program was the first that he had taken over that was not in serious need of rebuilding. However, Franchione went 4-8 in 2003 and suffered the worst loss in Texas A&M history to rival Oklahoma 77-0. The team improved to 7-4 in 2004 only to lose their bowl game, 38-7 to Tennessee. In 2004 Franchione, was a finalist for the BCPC Association's Coach of the Year Award. Franchione's Aggies regressed to a 5-6 season in 2005 which prompted Franchione to dismiss defensive coordinator Carl Torbush. Torbush was replaced by former Western Michigan University head coach Gary Darnell. Expectations are mixed for the 2006 season, however many Aggie fans are doubting his coaching abilities, with others calling for either him to be fired or for him to resign. Examples of web-sites calling for his dismissal are FireDennisFranchione.com [link] and FranUnderFire.com [link].
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