The Sun Shines Again at TCU

Give Dennis Franchione a downtrodden team--some woebegone players whose self-esteem is lower than the blades of grass on their practice field--and get out of the way.

He’ll turn it around. He has done it every time.

Texas Christian, a school whose glory days long ago receded into the past, won only one game last season before Franchione was hired in December. The players he met were feeling like Horned Frogs that had been flattened by a tractor-trailer.

“Our guys finished 1-10. I’m not sure sometimes they wanted to admit they were TCU football players,” Franchione said.

They do now, with a 6-5 team that will play USC in the Sun Bowl on Thursday, relying on defense and an option attack led by 1,000-yard rusher Basil Mitchell.

“Last year was really hard,” said Royce Huffman, a punter who also plays receiver and returns punts for TCU. “Our self-esteem was real low. We were 1-10. We were so close, so many games, but we couldn’t find a way to win. Coach Fran came in and got us into the weight room and tried to change our mental attitude.

“He took us bowling a couple of times. We played softball. Picnics. Corny stuff, to try to get us together. It does work. I know it’s a cliche, but the game is mental. You go out and do what you think you can do. If you don’t believe, there’s no way.”

With Franchione, they had reason to believe. He didn’t plan it this way, but turning losing into winning became his specialty.

Before Texas Christian it was New Mexico, where Franchione took over a 3-9 team that hadn’t been to a bowl game since 1961 and hadn’t had consecutive winning seasons since 1971.

In his sixth year, New Mexico was 9-4--its second winning season in a row--and played Arizona in the Insight.com Bowl in Tucson in Franchione’s final game before leaving for TCU.

Before New Mexico, it was Southwest Texas State, a Division I-AA school in San Marcos that had lived through five losing seasons when Franchione showed up in 1990.

Two winning seasons later, the Lobos grabbed him.

Franchione also had successful stints at two small schools in Kansas, Southwestern and later Pittsburg State, where he went 53-6 in five seasons and was the NAIA coach of the year in 1986 and ’87.

He climbed the ladder to a major-college job not as an assistant coach, but by running his own programs and developing a system that longtime assistant Mike Schultz swears by.

“I truly believe we have a system that works,” said Schultz, TCU’s assistant head coach and running back coach. “This is my third turnaround with him. This is a unique system. I’ve been other places that tried to get it done and did not. Southwest Texas, that’s I-AA, it’s a little different, but the approach with the kids doesn’t change. From I-AA, to Division I, probably to the NFL, I think this works.”

Franchione, 47, breaks down the problem, and has a plan of attack.

“Usually there are common characteristics in programs that are down,” he said. “Usually there’s a lack of work ethic, a lack of discipline, a lack of attention to detail and a lack of organization.

“Obviously it’s not something that’s universal in each situation, but those are the ones I’ve found to be pretty consistent wherever I’ve been.”

OK, but how to fix it?

“No. 1, you have to learn how to work. You have to teach them the kind of work ethic you expect in the weight room, in the classroom.

“From a discipline standpoint, you have to draw the line and tell the players if they cross that line, they’ll be dealt with. You have to let them know the parameters.

“Organizationally, a football team is a large group. To maximize your use of time, you’ve got to be as organized and detailed as you can, and keep the coaches going in the right direction. I can’t do the job myself. I can only lead, and try to be the organizer.

“Attention to detail--you have to dot the I’s and cross the Ts and turn over rocks looking for players in places other people don’t go. A down program can’t out-recruit another program sometimes, but you can out-evaluate. Evaluating athletes in this game is just as important as recruiting.”

Going to a bowl game helps.

“It’s immense. I think we have 13 commitments right now,” Franchione said. “Probably over half of those commitments have come since we got the bid.”

Franchione also believes in giving the team back to the players, forming a 12-player council that has a say in almost everything.

“Most major decisions, they’re involved in,” Schultz said. “Things like uniforms, or if there are problems with players, we go to the council. Kids want to do the right thing, and they usually know what the right thing is. When they’re making the decisions about what’s right, they have to live by it. It’s up to them. He builds confidence that way.”

Building confidence is the first step in building a program, and Franchione believed rebuilding at TCU was a better prospect than trying to sustain New Mexico’s resurgence. Former UCLA defensive coordinator Rocky Long took over at New Mexico and went 3-8 this season.

Franchione saw TCU as “a sleeping giant” because of the ability to recruit talent-rich Texas, not to mention the still-simmering passion among fans for TCU football that dates to days of Sammy Baugh and Davey O’Brien in the 1930s and another Horned Frog heyday in the 1950s.

New Mexico was a little different.

“The problem with New Mexico, it’s a great state, but it probably only produces about five Division I football players a year,” Schultz said. “You can find five players 10 minutes from our office in Dallas-Fort Worth.

“Besides, when we got to TCU, there were some athletes already here. Basil Mitchell, Joseph Phipps, Reggie Hunt.”

Out of a shattered group of players who won only one game, Franchione built a 6-5 team that was the only team this season to beat Air Force and could have been a few notches better--or a few notches worse. Nine of TCU’s 11 games were decided in the fourth quarter.

“We don’t have too much quit in us,” said Phipps, a first-team Western Athletic Conference linebacker who led the team with 153 tackles. “We’ll fight to the end. That’s our motto, ‘Play all four quarters.’ We never quit. Some people would count us out, be leaving the stadium. Then they’d have to run back in the stadium quick.”

Franchione laughed. He never saw so many close games in his life.

“Never,” he said. “I had much darker hair before this season.”

TCU’s first game provided an inkling things might work. The Horned Frogs fell behind Iowa State, 21-14, late in the third quarter. Another loss was only 15 minutes away.

Then Mitchell scored on a 29-yard run and added another touchdown on a 43-yard run, and Chris Kaylakie kicked a 23-yard field goal.

TCU had a 31-21 victory.

“I knew that day I had captured their minds and spirit,” Franchione said. “The previous year, the team would have tanked and been out of it. This year, the team kept believing.”

Against Vanderbilt, Kaylakie kicked a 50-yard field goal with four seconds left to send the game to overtime. Two overtimes later, TCU won, 19-16, after holding Vanderbilt to a field goal and then scoring on a four-yard run by LaDainian Tomlinson, who rushed for 717 yards this season as Mitchell’s backup.

TCU lost four in a row at midseason--to Southern Methodist, Colorado State, Wyoming and Rice--but finished with victories over Tulsa and Nevada Las Vegas.

The Horned Frogs are decided underdogs against USC, but they’re off and running after Franchione’s first season, trying to bring some glory back to TCU.

“A lot of my elders at home filled me in about Sammy Baugh and all those guys, so I know we have a lot of good history,” Phipps said. “That’s what we’re working for, to try and get TCU back to that level. It’s very possible one of these days.”

Huffman agreed.

“Our team kind of looks to be the turning point. That’s something the seniors take pride in, saying they’re the ones who got it started in the right direction,” he said.

One more turnaround. How many more does Franchione have in him?

“I keep saying I’m not going to do this anymore,” he said with a laugh. “It’s consuming, but it’s very gratifying. Some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had have been in the locker room after beating Air Force, after beating Vanderbilt in overtime. Those things are why you coach.

“Hopefully this is my last turnaround. If you ask my wife, I think she’ll say we’ve found a home.”

*

SUN BOWL

USC (8-4) vs. TCU (6-5)

Thursday, 11 a.m., Ch. 2

* RANDY HARVEY: The Horned Frogs have a history of playing the spoiler. Page 2