Dennis Franchione needed three seasons to change the course of TCU football. The coach who took the Horned Frogs from a 1-10 season to back-to-back conference championships died Oct. 6. He was 75. 

Then-Athletic Director Eric Hyman hired Franchione from the University of New Mexico in December 1997. Franchione brought a young defensive coordinator, Gary Patterson, with him to Fort Worth. From 1998 to 2000, his teams went 25-10, won two Western Athletic Conference titles and earned three bowl invitations. 

“Coach Fran arrived at TCU believing our football program could be great, and he made the people around him believe it too,” said Chancellor Daniel W. Pullin. “We are grateful for all he gave this university, for the young men he led on the field and the football program he helped build for the future.” 

The turnaround began in year one. After a 6-5 regular season in 1998, Franchione lobbied Sun Bowl officials, promising that Horned Frog fans would fill the stands in purple. On Dec. 31 in El Paso, TCU upset USC 28-19 and held the Trojans to minus 23 rushing yards, a Sun Bowl record. It was TCU’s first bowl win since the 1957 Cotton Bowl Classic. 

Franchione told TCU Magazine in 2024 that the win “immediately changed the outside world’s perspective on TCU.” 

In 1999, TCU won its first WAC football championship and beat East Carolina in the Mobile Alabama Bowl. That season, LaDainian Tomlinson ’05 ran for 406 yards against UTEP, then an NCAA record.

Franchione went 213-135-2 as a college head coach, including 25-10 at TCU. Courtesy of TCU Athletics

Franchione built his teams around player leadership, forming a TCU Leadership Council of student-athletes soon after he arrived. In Franchione’s 2024 memoir, Tomlinson described him as “a man that understood what it took to win.” 

In 2000, the Horned Frogs went 10-1 in the regular season and shared a second straight WAC title. Tomlinson won the Doak Walker Award and was a Heisman Trophy finalist, with a Pro Football Hall of Fame career ahead. 

Franchione left for Alabama after the regular season. Patterson succeeded him and became the winningest coach in TCU history. 

His bond with his players outlasted his time in Fort Worth. In a 2024 interview with JD Andress of TCU on SI, Franchione said “over 100 players from my time at TCU” had reached out or visited after his cancer diagnosis. 

Born March 28, 1951, in Girard, Kansas, Franchione graduated from Pittsburg State in 1973 and began coaching high school football in Miller, Missouri. He went on to coach at Southwestern College, Pittsburg State, Southwest Texas State, New Mexico, TCU, Alabama and Texas A&M, then returned to Texas State, where he retired in 2015. Between coaching jobs, he was a college football analyst for ESPN. 

“He felt the most accepted, the most loved here.”
J.W. Wilson ’00

He finished with a 213-135-2 record as a college head coach.  

His daughter-in-law, Rebecca Franchione, drew on years of interviews with him to write Tough Times Never Last: The Coach Fran Story, published by TCU Press in August 2024. The memoir follows his life from southeast Kansas through four decades of coaching.  

“He was open and candid about his life, even about the most difficult moments of his coaching career and his cancer diagnosis,” said Dan Williams, director of TCU Press and honors professor of humanities, who spoke with Franchione regularly during the book’s development. “I was also impressed by how much he loved the players he coached, and whenever asked about his coaching experiences, he always talked about his players rather than himself.” 

That September, Franchione returned to campus to sign copies before TCU honored the 1998 Sun Bowl team at Amon G. Carter Stadium. 

“He said that coaching at TCU was the best coaching experience of his life,” said J.W. Wilson ’00, a member of that team. “He felt the most accepted, the most loved here. … and you know, he changed the course of history at TCU.” 

Survivors include his wife, Kim; his son, Brad; and his daughters, Ashley and Libby.