Syracuse Football: 247Sports names Fran Brown national recruiter of year

Following the early signing period’s first and primary day of action on Wednesday, Syracuse football head coach Fran Brown and his staff hauled in 24 official commitments, consisting of 18 high school seniors and six college transfers.

What’s more, Brown in his prior role as the defensive backs coach at Southeastern Conference powerhouse Georgia did a lot of terrific things on the recruiting trail.

To that end, in a piece by 247Sports director of recruiting Steve Wiltfong, that recruiting service and media outlet has named Brown its national recruiter of the year, as of the early signing period.

When I wrote this article on Thursday, within the 247Sports recruiter rankings for the 2024 cycle, Brown checked in at No. 1 across the country.

Earlier this month, 247Sports also named Brown its national defensive backs coach of the year for the 2023 season. Suffice it to say, Orange Nation is extremely lucky to have Fran Brown guiding the ‘Cuse program, a post he was officially named to on December 4, replacing Dino Babers.

Syracuse football head coach Fran Brown, at present, is the country’s top recruiter.

In his story, Wiltfong discussed Brown’s recruiting efforts both at Georgia and also in his relatively new role as the head coach of the Orange.

I thought this nugget in Wiltfong’s piece is illustrative of the type of coach, recruiter and person that Brown is.

Brown, while at Georgia, was the primary recruiter for 2024 five-star safety KJ Bolden.

The 6-foot-1, 185-pound Bolden, a senior at Buford High School in Buford, Ga., even took an official visit to Syracuse football after Brown came on board at the ‘Cuse, although various national recruiting analysts didn’t think that the Orange was necessarily a big contender for Bolden.

In any event, Bolden had been verbally committed to fellow Atlantic Coast Conference school Florida State, while others such as Auburn and Georgia continued to push hard for him ahead of National Signing Day on Wednesday, Dec. 20.

Per Wiltfong, “even after Brown took over the corner office in the Orange facility, he was still communicating good things to Bolden about why the Bulldogs are a great place. Bolden flipped from Florida State,” and that helped propel Brown to the top of the 247Sports national recruiter rankings for the 2024 class.

To me, even though Bolden didn’t end up heading to Syracuse football, Brown’s integrity here speaks wonders. He’s the kind of human being I want leading the Orange program for years to come.

And, by extension, in a short period of time, Brown and his assistants have done stellar things on the recruiting trail at the ‘Cuse, picking up “new” commitments from high school seniors, reaffirming pledges from 2024 players who had verbally committed to the team when Babers was in charge, and landing numerous top-flight college transfers.

Case in point, at the time of this writing, the Orange’s 2024 class, per the 247Sports Web site, arrived at No. 34 overall, No. 46 in the high school senior class, and No. 15 in the transfer cycle.

Given where Syracuse football has resided with its recruiting in recent years, this is a monumental accomplishment, and Brown has said he expects those sorts of rankings to prove even higher on the Hill in the future.

Just love it.