Fran Brown wants to get Syracuse football back to the eras of 'Cuse 1959, 1987 teams

Syracuse football first-year head coach Fran Brown has made no secret of his plans for the 'Cuse program now that he's leading the way.

Brown and several Orange players, in recent days, represented Syracuse football at the 2024 ACC Kickoff event in Charlotte, N.C.

In his press conference at the ACC Kickoff, per a transcript provided by top 247Sports analyst Mike McAllister, Brown touched on a variety of topics, including the transfer portal, high school recruiting, roster retention, playing games on the West Coast, and building the program's culture, among other things.

It's true that Syracuse football has made back-to-back bowl contests. National and Atlantic Coast Conference pundits project that the Orange will return to a post-season bowl game in 2024.

Yet the 'Cuse has only sported an overall mark of 13-13 during the past two seasons, and Syracuse football wasn't particularly relevant in the ACC or on a national scale in the tenure of former head coach Dino Babers.

I mean no disrespect to Babers, who is a fabulous person; my point here is that first-year head coach Brown and his top-flight staff want to get the Orange back to where it was decades ago.

New head coach Fran Brown is confident that Syracuse football will return to its glory days.

At his press conference in Charlotte, Brown was asked about his seemingly fast-paced recruiting efforts in the most recent cycle, given that he was officially introduced by SU Athletics as the team's new head coach in early December of last year and then quickly assembled an excellent 2024 class inclusive of numerous four-star commits at both the high school level and via the portal.

Here is Brown's response to that question. "I just want to win. Like I want to win. I want to make sure that Syracuse gets back to where they belong, where it was, where football kind of started at, in my opinion. You're going back to Jim Brown, Ernie Davis, Floyd Little, Rob Zonka, all those guys that played, Tom Kaufman. I want to get back to those same eras, 1959, 1987 team. You had Donovan McNabb, Dwight Freeney, Marvin Harrison, Donovan Harris. All those guys are important to me. It's like a non-stop race for us to make sure we actually continue to go and try to accomplish greatness. To just have these young men have an opportunity to show the country who they are football-wise. Everything I do, I try to make sure we just follow all the way through. We have a saying, how you do anything is how you'll do everything. Just make sure I'm locked in because those guys are watching what I'm doing not only as a football coach, but as a father, a husband, with my faith."

Now, Brown's mentioning of 1959 and 1987 is noteworthy to me. The only national championship in Orange program history occurred in 1959 when the 'Cuse went undefeated. In 1987, Syracuse football was 11-0-1 and finished that term ranked No. 4 nationwide in both the Associated Press and Coaches top-25 polls.

I'm really excited for the upcoming campaign, which begins for the Orange when Syracuse football welcomes Ohio to the Hill in late August. Brown and his assistants, undeniably, have shown that they can recruit with the top programs out there in college football, and that's evidenced by the 'Cuse faring well in the 2024 cycle while also putting together a large 2025 class and getting off to a fast start in 2026.

However, as I've stated many times, and an abundance of Syracuse football fans has opined of late, it remains to be seen how Brown does as a head coach. He's an elite recruiter and has been a high-quality assistant at several other strong college squads, including most recently at Georgia.

It also seems to be a relative consensus that, on paper, the 'Cuse has a favorable 2024 schedule. Some experts think Syracuse football can contend for the ACC's upper tier and perhaps be a dark-horse candidate for the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

Other commentators believe the Orange will attain a half-dozen victories to reach post-season bowl eligibility again but reside in the bottom half of the ACC pecking order.

We'll have to see how this all pans out in year one of the Fran Brown era, and beyond. One facet is crystal clear, though: Brown is highly confident in what he's building in Central New York, and if the 'Cuse can get back to its glory years of 1959 and 1987, for example, that would delight Syracuse football fans to no end.