Syracuse coach Fran Brown is changing the team’s culture by making losing and not competing unacceptable.
Brown has led the once-struggling program to significant wins, including a 10-win season in his first year.
Brown’s coaching philosophy, influenced by his time under Georgia’s Kirby Smart, focuses on relentless competition.
Before he became the next big thing in the college football coaching fraternity, before he won 13 of his first 17 games at forgotten Syracuse, Fran Brown had to change what was acceptable.
Two things stood above all else, he told USA TODAY Sports in April: it’s not acceptable to lose and not acceptable to avoid competing.
“I never told anyone this, but when I first got to Syracuse, someone asked me, ‘What would be a good record, 8-4?’” Brown said, and now he’s getting agitated because this is the source of his frustration. “So you want me to pick four teams that are going to beat us? Then who am I?”
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He waited for the answer, and there’s no reason to even attempt a response.
“No one practices to lose games,” Brown continued. “So I stopped talking to that person.”
And started working on redefining what winning looked like at Syracuse.
It didn’t take long to see why Brown, only two years into his head coaching career, will be the hottest prospect in this year’s hiring cycle. If you can win big at Syracuse, you can win big anywhere.
Winning looks like taking a wayward program lost in the shuffle of big-time college football, and winning 10 games out of the gate. This from a team that, before Brown arrived in 2024, was using a tight end at quarterback because it had no one else.
Winning looks like taking a beaten down player from the transfer portal, and turning quarterback Kyle McCord – unfairly blamed for all of Ohio State’s problems in 2023 – into the nation’s leader in passing yards per game.
It looks like following a 10-win season in 2024 with three wins in four games this season, including a road rout of Clemson last week. Two weeks earlier, after an overtime win over UConn, Brown had his team running gassers after the game, in front of the home crowd, because he didn’t think they were competing hard enough.
That’s what winning looks like.
It looks like the unrelenting philosophy Kirby Smart – Brown’s mentor from his time as an assistant coach in Athens under the game’s best – used to build Georgia into a national power.
“We were trying to win the national title, and we didn’t do that,” Brown said of his first Syracuse team. “We were trying to win the conference championship, and we didn’t. We were just an average football team, when you look at it. When people get excited about fourth or fifth place, you’re messing with competition.”
That’s why no one complained about running gassers after playing 60 minutes. Why the Orange, two weeks later, played their best game under Brown.
But it’s more than winning, it’s the buildout and framework and ability to sustain. It’s believing in your values, and never wavering.
It’s not paying a million dollars for a wide receiver when your total NIL budget is about twice that amount. So when Syracuse’s All-ACC wideout Trebor Pena wanted his, Brown told him to find it somewhere else.
Four games into this season, Syracuse wideouts Justus Ross-Simmons and Darrell Gill Jr. have combined to catch 28 passes for 528 yards (18.9 ypc.) and eight touchdowns. Pena transferred to Penn State, and has 13 catches for 166 yards and one touchdown.
And a fat NIL contract.
“Nothing can be bigger than Syracuse, because once players start looking elsewhere, you forget what humble confidence is,” Brown said. “As a coach, I have to be genuine. Players know when you’re fake. You’re not going to get them to fight in the fourth quarter because they know you’re soft.”
They’re not going to keep fighting in the fourth quarter when their starting quarterback sustains a season-ending injury. Not this group, not this time.
They’re finding answers, not looking for excuses.
So when Rickie Collins takes over as the starting quarterback this week for Syracuse, he’ll build on what was expected of him when he entered the Clemson game late in the third quarter after starter Steve Angeli sustained a season-ending Achilles injury.
Collins threw a touchdown pass in his first full series while protecting a 13-point lead and completed two third-down throws in the fourth quarter to extend drives and bleed clock. He competed at a high level.
Basically, what Brown teaches from the jump.
“You have to be ready to go when it’s your turn,” Brown said earlier this week. “We have lot of kids on the team that are upset because they’re not playing. You just hope they can see it when it happens so close. You hope it’s contagious. Not, ‘I’m going to the (transfer) portal.’”
It all comes back to what’s acceptable. In a free-flowing, player-friendly world of malleable rules and easy exits, that non-negotiable foundation too often gets lost.
Angeli arrived from Notre Dame in April, and said the first thing Brown told him was he could lead the nation in passing — if he competed and sold out and reached his ceiling.
Before Angeli left the Clemson game, he was leading the nation in passing yards per game.
“When you eliminate competing, you eliminate the reward,“ Brown said. “And then it becomes acceptable to lose.”
Instead of being unacceptable to relinquish one win.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.