Syracuse Football: Fran Brown named one of 2024's most exciting head-coaching debuts

Syracuse football first-year head coach Fran Brown is deemed one of the 10 most exciting head-coaching debuts among power-four conference teams in the upcoming season, per an article this week from 247Sports national writer Carter Bahns.

That's awesome stuff.

This off-season, as usual, there were a lot of head-coaching changes around the country, and some of those moves involved heavyweight programs in the sport.

In his top 10 rankings, Bahns placed ace recruiter Brown, who is also a first-time head coach and most recently served as Georgia's defensive backs coach, at No. 9 overall.

Others in the 247Sports ratings include head-coaching debuts at Duke, Indiana, Houston, Washington, Arizona, Michigan State, Texas A&M, defending national champion Michigan and Alabama.

There's a palpable buzz on the Hill for the debut of Syracuse football head coach Fran Brown.

SU Athletics officially introduced Brown as the Orange's new head coach in early December of last year, replacing former head coach Dino Babers.

Brown, this off-season, did retain some assistants from Babers' staff, although Brown also brought in a bunch of top-flight assistants to fill out his own staff. The 'Cuse did a wonderful job with its 2024 recruiting class, inclusive of high school seniors and college transfers.

Looking further out, Brown and his staff have a large 2025 cycle and are off to a fast start with their 2026 class. Naturally, recruiting is one thing, but how the program fares on the field beginning in late August at the onset of the 2024 term is something for which all of Orange Nation is curious.

Here's what Bahns wrote about the 'Cuse in his recent article: "Syracuse is not, historically, a major talent destination. But arguably the most impressive recruiting work among first-year coaches came thus far from Fran Brown, who ranked as the nation's top recruiter for the 2024 cycle and carried that momentum into his first offseason as a head man. The former Georgia defensive backs coach is on pace to build the best high school class in program history, and the transfer additions of quarterback Kyle McCord and edge rusher Fadil Diggs give the Orange an impactful talent influx that could help Brown's debut squad make a decent bit of noise in the ACC."

That's a fair assessment from the 247Sports writer. As I mentioned, 'Cuse coaches were fabulous with their recruiting efforts out of the portal. The roster has talent on both sides of the field, whether we're talking about returning players, incoming freshmen or transfers such as McCord and Diggs.

The Orange's 2024 docket, on paper, is manageable. Preseason prognostications from national and Atlantic Coast Conference pundits are a mixed bag. Some forecast Syracuse football to finish in the bottom half of the league standings, while other projections have the 'Cuse as a lock to make a third straight bowl game and perhaps contend as a sleeper for the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

One thing I feel pretty confident in saying is that while we'll have to see how Brown and his squad play in actual games in the 2024 season, the excitement that has been built up over the past few months is abundantly clear.