Franchione left his mark on New Mexico football
The UNM football players left their first meeting with their new coach in January of 1992 and knew their world had changed.
Dennis Franchione, in a voice as flat and steady as the Kansas plains that bore him, explained the ground rules. There were conditions for practice, study hall, meetings and classes.
If an offensive player missed a class, the entire offense would have to run at 6 a.m. The same for the defense.
If you quit the team, don’t expect to be accepted back — because if you quit now, you will quit in a game.
“We were just waiting for someone to come in and lay down the law,” center Justin Hall said shortly after the meeting.
Franchione’s question after that same meeting? “Where were the offensive linemen?”
“Coach,” he was told, “they were in the front row.”
It was the first of many surprises the man who resuscitated Lobos football would encounter in the six years to come.
A boy from Kansas
Dennis Franchione was born in the spring of 1951 in Girard, Kan., a small city on the prairie.
He grew up hauling hay, loving Mickey Mantle and playing quarterback for the high school team.
He was coaching high school football in Missouri when his mother died of cancer. The next day his father killed himself with a shotgun. Franchione was 23 years old and buried both his parents on the same day.
He threw himself into football. He won conference titles with the Southwestern (Kan.) Moundbuilders and his alma mater the Pittsburg (Kan.) State Gorillas. He rejuvenated the Texas State Bobcats.
Meanwhile, UNM athletic director Gary Ness was in search of a coach. He wanted someone with a record of winning. He needed a guy not afraid of a rebuilding job with limited resources. He required a guy who could raise money and play by the NCAA rules.
Ness called coaches, athletic directors and former athletic directors. Franchione’s name kept surfacing. Ness offered him the job on a Monday night. The following Wednesday, Franchione accepted.
It was a lifetime contract, Franchione joked at his introductory news conference. But it was made clear to him that UNM president Richard Peck could declare him dead at any time. Franchione was given a base salary of $80,000, a tiny office and a depleted roster.
Work to be done
To say Franchione saved Lobos football may be an exaggeration, but not by much. He inherited a team that had gone 9-50 the previous five seasons under Mike Sheppard. Its only win outside the state of New Mexico in that span was Sheppard’s last game at snowy Colorado State.
Fans were allowed in free to the final home game of 1991 if they brought a canned good for charity. Fewer than 3,000 bothered to show.
UNM’s facilities were openly mocked by high school recruits. Coaches would take them to the Sandia Peak Tram, the Pit and the airport, hoping in between they would not ask to see the football locker room.
Grub worms attacked the University Stadium grass before Franchione’s first game, leaving pock marks everywhere.
His first team had a core of guys like Hall, quarterback Stoney Case, wide receiver Carl Winston and linebacker Tuli Mateialona. Franchione just did not have enough of them with only 58 scholarship players in an era that allowed 95. It was also the physically weakest football team he had ever seen. So he went to work. He charged strength coach Mark Paulsen with building a program that would beef the Lobos up. Franchione hurried first recruiting class included defensive back Ray Wilson, who went on to have a cup of coffee in the NFL. Moments after the final game of the 1992 season, Franchione stuck a shovel in the ground just south of the stadium field in a ceremony that heralded the building of the Tow Diehm Facility. Among UNM’s signature wins was a 1994 defeat of No. 8 Utah.
In 1997, he accompanied the Lobos to their first bowl game since 1961. And that was in an era when only 20 bowl games were played.
Epilogue
Earlier this week Franchione announced his retirement from coaching. He has traveled a long coach’s highway, beginning at Miller (Mo.) High School and ending at Texas State.
There were 11 stops along the way, and there was a bitterness to most of his departures. But wherever he was, he tried to keep in mind the work ethic his father instilled in him.
Franchione told me once that if he had not gone into coaching he might have become a sports writer. Perhaps now he has the time to write. It would be an entertaining read.