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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
Syracuse, N.Y. — When Fran Brown saw the head coaching job open at Syracuse University last November, she watched a clip of athletic director John Wildhack listing the qualities he would look for in the next head coach.
Northeastern ties? Brown could fill that box a dozen times over. Head coaching and coordinating experience at the Power Five level? Brown had neither, but in his mind, those qualifications didn't matter. He wanted the job. So he picked up the phone.
He called Wildhack himself.
“Something John was looking for early on was experience and stuff like that, and I thought, 'He doesn't really know what he wants. He's looking for me,'” Brown said during a recent interview in his office. “I was a perfect fit for him.”
“Literally five minutes before I was about to call Fran, my phone rang,” Wildhack told ESPN in a phone interview. “It was a number I didn't recognize, so I didn't answer. It went to voicemail. I played the voicemail and it was Fran.
“Sometimes I wonder, 'Is this a bit of divine intervention?'
That initial 15-minute conversation turned into texts, a two-hour Zoom call and an interview in front of the search committee. The consensus was, Brown was the perfect fit. Brown was a native Northeaster, having grown up in Camden, New Jersey. He had worked for such highly regarded coaches as Matt Rhule, Greg Schiano and Kirby Smart and was one of the top recruiters in the country.
Brown had no head coaching experience, but Wildhack said that could be ignored because so many other factors made sense.
Now, five months later, it looks like Wildhack's prediction was correct.
Brown didn't even play in a game, but he drew attention to Syracuse, a team that hasn't won a conference title in 20 years thanks to some surprising offseason moves, including quarterback Kyle McCord, who transferred from Ohio State and became the highest-profile transfer in Syracuse history.
More transfers followed, including defensive lineman Fadil Diggs from Texas A&M. Syracuse ultimately landed 18 players through the transfer portal — 12 from the Power Five and seven from the SEC, an unprecedented number for a school that has only won 10 games once since 2002.
A top freshman has also signed with Syracuse. Last December, defensive end King Joseph Edwards became the first ESPN300 prospect to sign with the Orange. Brown has signed four four-star prospects in total, more than in the previous five seasons combined. Syracuse finished with the 42nd-ranked signing class, its highest ranking since ESPN began its Top 75 rankings in 2014.
This has energized and engaged those in and around the program. Wildhack said donors have come forward to improve NIL's efforts but asked to remain anonymous. The spring game drew a record 16,500 people. Wildhack said Syracuse is well ahead of normal in selling and renewing season tickets.
“It's phenomenal,” Wildhack said. “I've never seen him energize the community, the fans and football alumni in the time I've been here.”
As a reminder of that, Brown temporarily keeps a $10 bill framed in his office while construction continues on the new Football Operations Center. Attached to the money is a yellow Post-it note that read: “Coach Brown — I saw your interview with the Syracuse Orange. As a coach, I'm all in on you. Here's my $10. Support the Orange.”
Program Brown Brown has enjoyed recent success under former coach Dino Babers, who led the team to consecutive bowl games for the first time since 2012-13, and he also inherits a strong returning roster that includes running back LeQuinte Allen, tight end Oronde Gadsden II, linebacker Marlowe Wax and defensive backs Justin Barron and Alijah Clark.
But Babers' Orange have started well each season but haven't been able to finish strong since. Last season, Syracuse opened 4-0 before losing five straight. In 2022, Syracuse started 6-0 before losing five straight again.
Of course, Brown knows he'll have to do more than get off to a strong start to make Syracuse truly relevant again. History has shown that it's unlikely that a Northeastern team will ever win a national championship, but Brown believes it's possible. Since 2006, all but two teams from the South have won national championships (Ohio State in 2014 and Michigan State in 2023). The last Northeastern team to win a national title was Penn State in 1986.
Growing up in Camden, Brown looked to schools like Syracuse, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh, all of which made waves on the national stage, and he asks why that can't happen again.
He rejects the notion that Syracuse University is at a disadvantage in the transfer portal and NIL era because it doesn't have the same resources as the top football programs in its conference, let alone the school it hails from in Athens, Georgia.
“How can we not have what they have?” Brown asked. “You have to talk to the players and find out what they want. And if I'm developing you the right way, are you going to walk away here with $20,000? Is that all you want for your future?”
“Georgia coaches football well. Everybody tries to learn from that. Some people will say, 'This is why they're winning,' but that's what a fool would say. We all have the same opportunity. We just have to figure out how to get it done.”
Brown can point to the work he's done in the transfer portal as proof he can get top-tier players to play for him at Syracuse. It started on Day 1: Brown was introduced as Syracuse's coach on Dec. 4, the same day McCord announced he had entered the transfer portal after three seasons at Ohio State.
McCord began his final season at Ohio State completing 229 of 348 passes for 3,170 yards, 24 touchdowns and six interceptions, earning third-team All-Big Ten honors. However, Ohio State lost to Michigan at the end of the regular season, ending its College Football Playoff hopes. Afterward, McCord said he had “tough conversations” with the Ohio State coaching staff.
“The vision that they had was different than the vision that I had,” McCord said. “In an ideal world, we would win, we would be undefeated, we would win a national championship and I probably wouldn't be in this position, I wouldn't be here. But everything happens for a reason. So when they told me they wanted to go in a different direction, that was the harsh reality.”
McCord grew up in New Jersey and his relationship with Brown dates back to when McCord was in sixth grade. His father, Derek, worked at the same hospital as Brown's wife, Tiara. Derek would sometimes brag about McCord. Tiara told Fran that she should go see Kyle play. He went to a youth football game and the two began dating.
Still, McCord says now, “I never thought this would happen.”
Brown flew to Columbus, Ohio, shortly after McCord entered the portal and met with him at his apartment. McCord remembers Brown selling his vision for Syracuse and his belief that they could win right away. Another big selling point was Brown's hiring of Jeff Nixon as offensive coordinator, another coach McCord knew in New Jersey. McCord and Nixon's son, Will, played youth football together in southern New Jersey since they were 5 years old, when Nixon was an assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles. (Will Nixon transferred from Washington to Syracuse last week.) Nixon had worked with Brown before, and when he was hired, Nixon immediately texted him and said, “Coach, I'm available.”
“That was music to my ears,” McCord said. “The vision he had, going out and competing, winning a lot of games early, being involved on offense, that kind of thing really appealed to me.”
There's another Nixon connection McCord thinks will help: Nixon and Ohio State coach Ryan Day served on the same offensive staff at two different places during their respective careers. McCord said Syracuse's offense is similar to the one he ran at Ohio State, even with some plays having the same names.
McCord committed on Dec. 17, which Brown says gave the program instant credibility. Two days later, Diggs, an East Camden, New Jersey, native, announced he was transferring from Texas A&M. Brown was already working on a big transfer deal: Georgia wide receivers Jackson Meeks and Zied Haynes had already committed to join Brown from Athens. And in early January, cornerback Deuce Chestnut announced he was transferring to Syracuse after spending last season at Louisiana State.
McCord noted he played youth football with some of his current teammates, including Chestnut, and also played against Diggs in high school. As players from the area, McCord said rebuilding Northeastern football at the collegiate level is something they want to do.
And Brown is determined to build a winning program with players primarily from the region. Forty players on the Class of 2024 roster are from the Northeast, including seven of the 11 transfer students who enrolled in January. Four of them are from Camden High School, where Brown played quarterback and threw a then-school-single-season record 47 touchdown passes.
“It's been a childhood dream for a lot of us to play together,” McCord said, “and you look around the building and you see guys from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York. … I think you can turn a program around pretty quickly. You look at what Coach Fran has done the last few months, and if we can keep that trajectory, I think things will look up.”
Defensive Coordinator Elijah Robinson and Brown played Little League football together in Camden, and they both had the same godfather who made sure they stayed on the right path. Robinson knew his friend would achieve great things one day, even as Brown was a star player on his high school team. Brown had natural charisma, but he also had the determination to make it happen.
“I never doubted that one day he'd be here, given the kind of person he is,” Robinson said. “I know who Francis Brown is, as a young man who overcame a lot of adversity. I knew Francis Brown when he went to junior college. He didn't have money for food, so he drank a gallon of water and went to bed early so he wouldn't think about hunger. That's the kind of guy that gets promoted — the guy who does it the right way.”
On his desk is a gift from his parents that sums up what he tries to remember every day: a knight in full armor, on one knee, arms outstretched, sending a clear message: “I give my son to you for the time being.”
Coaches often say, in broad platitudes, that they want to have a lasting impact on their players. Brown said one of the reasons he didn't want to be a coordinator was because it would mean he could only influence a portion of the team. He wanted to work with players one-on-one.
So he's been preparing for this moment his entire coaching career, biding his time. His iPad holds folders of every stop he's made, filled with notes, schedules, plans, reminders and blueprints for running his own program.
It's just part of the job. What he believes most of all is to inspire those around him to believe the same.
“The true definition of a coach is a carriage that takes your loved one from where they are to where they want to go,” Brown says. “You are the loved one, and I am the carriage, so I have to take you from where you are to where you want to go.”
