In 2023, would you have recommended someone for the job of Syracuse’s HC? If you have a hesitant smile on your face, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. Syracuse dropped out of national importance a long time ago. But Fran Brown now has the nation looking up to the former Northeast dominator. “I know you’re hearing a lot about me, but the best way to find out about me is through me… Let me tell you who I am,” Brown told Adam Breneman about the time of his hiring. “And, I said, I just need 10 minutes.” And the rest is history. To win over another former coach, it took Brown just six.
The last time Syracuse finished with double-digit wins was in 2001. The last time Syracuse did anything great was also many years ago. All of that stood to change when Fran Brown was hired to run a program that struggled to break free from losses. It was a serious risk for him to take hold of such a program. But Brown seriously wanted to coach the Orange. “What John [Wildhack] said he was looking for early on, experience and all these things, I’m like, ‘He doesn’t really know what he’s looking for. He’s looking for me,’” Brown told ESPN about his hiring.
It seems a little impossible to think about what Fran Brown has achieved with Syracuse, despite this being his first-ever head coaching gig. There was something about the man that had the top brass brave enough to place their bets on Brown. Former Syracuse star and LB coach Dan Conley, who lost faith in Syracuse’s success, was also one of the guys whom Brown managed to swing over. He told The Orange Zone that he personally told a friend who wanted to invest in Syracuse’s NIL that this was not that kind of a program. “Before Fran got here… I said, ‘I’ve lost hope with our team.’ And that’s a big statement coming from me because, you know, I bled orange,” Conley said.
Former Syracuse linebacker and coach Dan Conley talks about head coach Fran Brown getting hired:
“He had me hooked in six minutes”
New episode drops Wednesday pic.twitter.com/ztLUih0Hkc
— The Orange Zone (@TheOZpod) July 29, 2025
His statement paints a sorry picture of the state of Syracuse football before Brown. Conley was an Orange star during the 90s as a linebacker and held the record for the most tackles made by a freshman. Later on, from 2008 to 2011, he joined the school as an LB coach. “I just, with the last years that Dino Babers’ seen it fall apart, I didn’t know if there was anybody who could bring it back,” he said, heartbreakingly. Post the Syracuse job, Conley became involved in finance and insurance. He is now an insurance specialist.
And then came the man who revolutionized Syracuse. “I was in the profession for 14 years, you know, four of them at Syracuse. And then Fran Brown gets hired, who’s a young guy… all of a sudden, I get a phone call in six days from Fran Brown, as he’s been hired. He had me hooked in six minutes.”
What Fran Brown did with winning Dan Conley’s favor was just a precipice of what was about to come. Brown earned the whole country’s favor after what he did with Syracuse in just one year. A top 20 finish in the polls and a 10-3 season—these were enough for fans to get their hopes back up for the success of Syracuse football.
Fran Brown’s new energy helped in improving Syracuse recruiting
Fran Brown’s biggest test in 2023 was putting together a 2024 team that would bring good results for Syracuse. A double-digit finish was still a pipe dream. What fans wanted was a respectable finish as the bare minimum for Brown’s debut season. And boy did Brown deliver on those expectations. He got to work and overhauled the way Syracuse recruited. It had someone like Kyle McCord, who had a breakout season with Ohio State, to consider Syracuse for his last season. McCord, in 2024, ended up leading the FBS in passing yards.
Brown’s 2026 class stands at No. 28, jumping up more than 20 places from its last standings in the 2025 cycle. How he was attacking recruiting was also a reason why former Syracuse stakeholders were impressed. Brown made them see Syracuse as a program worthy of being in future prospects’ line of sight. “Everybody’s got a guy in high school. I have a guy. And who do I send a film to?… We didn’t offer many of those people, if any of them at all. It’s not like that with Fran,” Conley said.
“Fran’s like, ‘You have to have a guy. You’ve got to know somebody that we don’t know of. So find that guy. Find that diamond in the rough and send it to us. We’ll evaluate it within the next couple of days and get right back to you at it.’ That made a lot of guys feel special. Like their input mattered again,” the former LB coach added. That’s how Fran Brown is changing Syracuse football; the Orange is a program that matters. Brown’s Syracuse era has only just begun, and the success of Syracuse football rests on how he leads the squad in the future.
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