Coach who started TCU’s rise feels good about the Horned Frogs, and his health, too

The man who believed in the possibilities of TCU football and should forever be credited for setting a foundation that has TCU in the college football playoffs will watch the Fiesta Bowl with a rooting interest, and an endless gratitude for life.

Dennis Franchione recently received the news that his cancer is in full remission.

The man who came to TCU after the 1997 season and turned around a program that had been one of the worst in college football for decades learned he had cancer in the early fall of 2021.

“Remission was the greatest Christmas gift ever!” Franchione said via text.

Franchione, 71, originally had a cancerous tumor discovered in his kidney in 2016. After clearing that hurdle, he had several clean years.

In the late summer of 2021, he fell, and ensuing X-rays revealed multiple cancers.

Shortly thereafter, he was visited by many of his former TCU players at his house in Hoseshoe Bay.

Fran’ remained in high spirits despite the prognosis, and then the emotionally and physically exhausting cancer treatments.

He and his wife, Kim, moved to the north side of Austin so he could be closer to his doctor.

In the spring of 2022, new head coach Sonny Dykes and special teams coordinator Mark Tommerdahl invited Franchione to come up for TCU’s spring football game.

Tommerdahl is the only coach on this current staff who was a member of Franchione’s original coaching staff at TCU in 1998. Tommerdahl was with Fran’ all three years at TCU.

Fran’s visit effectively served as a reunion, and buried any hard feelings from the remaining few fans who refused to let go of how he left TCU for his next job, the University of Alabama.

At the spring weekend, Fran’ was seen taking pictures and enjoying himself and so many of the TCU people whom he befriended in his three seasons in Fort Worth.

Some TCU fans were not happy with Franchione and were irate when he appeared at 2000 Heisman Trophy ceremony in New York, where running back LaDanian Tomlinson was a finalist.

Fran’ was seen sitting near the front of the audience wearing a red tie. Alabama crimson red.

Oh, the horror.

When TCU took off under Fran’s successor, his former defensive coordinator Gary Patterson, most people forgot it was Franchione who started this transformation.

A transformation that many of the coaches themselves cannot believe occurred.

“To say that I saw this coming, I’d be lying to you,” Tommerdahl said Thursday. “Sonny has done such a good job in this, and giving Gary Patterson a lot of credit. He built this place to what it is today.

“When we got here (in 1998), what we thought we could do was win conference championships. That’s what we thought was possible, and we thought this place could be good. We thought we could do it by building it with local Texas guys, and win those types of recruiting battles. We didn’t think we could (contend for national titles).”

Because at the time a team like TCU, which played in the Western Athletic Conference, had no shot at a national title. There was no path.

TCU was 25-10 under Franchione. He did not coach TCU’s last game of the 2000 season; Patterson was the interim head coach for TCU’s loss in the Mobile Alabama Bowl.

As TCU fans and alums migrated to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl and the largest stage in the sport, most of them forgot, or don’t know, that this process began in earnest in 1998.

When TCU upset USC in the Sun Bowl that year under Franchione, he had something to sell. He always believed TCU was a “diamond in the rough,” and that season, and specifically that win, was his proof.

Since that win on New Year’s Eve in 1998 in El Paso, all TCU has done is grow.

As the head coach for most of this success over these last 20 years, Patterson justifiably will garner the majority of the credit.

Never forget Fran’. He certainly has not forgotten TCU.

“It has taken a while but the Frogs are the first team from Texas to get in (the playoffs)!” he wrote.

Fran’ isn’t from Texas originally, but he knows the state as well as a coach could. He was the head coach at Southwest Texas State in 1990 and ‘91; TCU from 1998 to ‘00; Texas A&M from 2003 to ‘07; Texas State from 2012 to 2015.

He has said that TCU’s Sun Bowl win is one of the highlights of his career, which includes wins over Auburn when he was the Alabama head coach, and against Texas when he was at A&M.

“Maybe it’s the Sun Bowl memories, but they will not surprise me (against Michigan),” he wrote. “First trip (to a bowl) can be a little nerve wracking.”

Fran will watch TCU on Saturday, because he’s forever attached to TCU, and feeling a helluva lot better, too.