Syracuse players know Fran Brown as a man of many mottos -- and he lives by them all

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Fran Brown never strays too far from home. 

There's a good chance whenever you're reading this, a few things about him are true: He woke up around 5 am and kissed his wife and three kids before leaving the house. He prayed over his home, got in the car and listened to a daily devotional on the way to the Syracuse football facility. If you're on his mind, he may send you a snippet of what he thinks you need to hear from "the man above."

He works out in the team's new weight room, opened this spring, then walks through the locker room to make sure it's clean (if it's not, his players are sure to hear about it). Then he's upstairs in his office, ready to start the workday. These things are probably true because there's a consistency, an honesty, a spirit of servitude and a dogged determination that Fran Brown brings to everything he does. DART (detailed, accountable, relentless and tough) and CCT (committed, caring and trusting) are the mantras that drive the program's daily culture. It's clear he practices what he preaches.

But what makes him tick? When you ask colleagues who have known him for years what he does for fun away from football, they smile. Does he fish? Does he golf?

"How I'ma play golf? I can't be a professional," Brown tells CBS Sports. "I'm not good at it. I'll try it when we have an event, and I might get a good lucky hit and hit a 200-yard drive or something like that, but I don't have time. I won't be able to get good enough at it because I can't put the time into it. I'm focused on this."

He enters Year 2 of his Syracuse tenure after being one of college football's pleasant surprises in 2024. The Orange finished 10-3 behind the nation's most prolific passing attack.

Brown has produced endearing soundbites throughout his tenure. After one loss, he explained they linger with him so much he doesn't shower with soap for days because only "winners get washed" -- prompting his players to later gift him a bottle of Old Spice. When receiver Trebor Peña transferred to Penn State, Brown brushed off NIL speculation, noting the only wideout worth $2 million was "the lil homie at Ohio State [Jeremiah Smith]." 

All of it stems from a coach who is true to himself.

"I'm gonna give this everything I have and I'm gonna do it my way," Brown said. "Because I see so many people try and do stuff like other people, and then it don't work. And it's like that ain't even you that got fired, it's that mask you got on that got fired -- you weren't being yourself. I ask everybody's opinion, but I can't be the other coaches I've worked with. I can only be me."

Brown's house in Syracuse is four minutes from the dorms where his players live, by design. He's not much for overseas travel, though he's enjoyed trips to the Bahamas and Florida. More often, he spends time with family in his native New Jersey.

"I go used all the things that I have in my backyard, and what I notice is the same things I have in my yard is what's on vacation," he said. "So why would I pay for this vacation when this is the same things, right? That's my cheap side, I guess."

He quickly corrected himself: "I'm very frugal -- I gotta use that word more."

Vacation, for Brown, once meant his mother taking him and his brothers by train from Camden, New Jersey, to Atlantic City for a picnic. It wasn't much, but it was what she could manage. Brown now understands the effort it took -- his mother working two jobs, as a nurse assistant and at a laundromat -- so that he and his three brothers wouldn't have to remain on welfare. The memory is so ingrained that he still recalls the number on the EBT card: 5145.

When he drives around town now, it's not in a flashy sports car, but a 2017 Cadillac CTS. Why not something like a Maybach?

"If I ain't got 10-plus million in the bank that will be sitting there, and I know I'm growing off of it forever, there will be no way you'll see me in the Maybach unless somebody let me drive their car," he said. "What would I get that for? What would I be teaching the youngins? These kids look up to me."

Then he grinned: "If I was 50 Cent, then I would have a Maybach."

To Brown, 50 Cent isn't just another artist. Although they've never met, Brown credits the rapper's hustle for shaping his mindset. He said he made it out of junior college in one year because of 50's debut album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'".

"I form my own self, but 50 Cent plays a major part into who I am and where I'm at, because I watched him grind through adversity," Brown said. "The man got hit nine times and overcame it and just kept moving and still wasn't afraid. He just kept going and he kept pushing. He keeps fighting. And I just love the way that he works."

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Lessons from 'Pops'

Without a father in the picture, Brown leaned on his uncles and high school coaches as father figures. Camden High offensive coordinator Mark Pease was especially influential. Pease remembers trying to get his quarterback to wear a tie to school the day before games. Now, at Syracuse home games, he sees Brown leading his players on the quad walk -- all dressed in full suits.

Brown still calls Pease "Pops," and Pease's then-wife "Mom Gail." One summer, Brown asked if he could live with the Pease family to make summer school easier.

"I said, well, listen, you're gonna have to get permission from your mom, and it's gotta be okay with her, and so he basically organized a meeting one day after practice," Pease said. "She thought it was a good idea. And so it was a real good chance for me to get close to him and really instill in him some of the things that I needed from him as a leader of our team. I have three other sons that Francis kind of grew up with, and he was the oldest. So I kind of gave him some of the expectations that I have for my sons, and he bought into those expectations."

Late bloomer

Brown was a football star in high school, but struggled academically, finishing his senior year without enough credits to graduate. He transferred to Eastside High, repeated his senior year without football and finally graduated.

At Hudson Valley Community College, everything changed. Pease often says kids bloom in different seasons. Brown's season came later, but when it did, his drive was unmatched.

"I went to class when everybody wanted to cut," Brown said. "I wasn't doing all that stuff with them. I was on some other stuff. They wanted to go to the parties. I went across the street to the little field right across from the manor at Hudson Valley. I'm sprinting with a sled crying just because I can't go back. I ain't gonna be regular."

Walking the walk

He moved on to Western Carolina in 2003, starring as a defensive back before a brief NFL stint with the Bengals in 2007-08. By then, Brown and his wife, Teara, had a young son, Fran Jr. Brown worked odd jobs in Camden, including high school coaching, before volunteering at Temple in 2011. A year later, he had a $27,000 staff position. He worked his way up to graduate assistant, then assistant coach under Matt Rhule. By 2016, he was associate head coach, a key figure on back-to-back 10-win teams.

That year, personal tragedy struck. His mother, Marla Brown-Johnson, passed away. Despite his grief, Brown pressed on.

"I remember us being in the middle of an official visit weekend at Temple University," said Elijah Robinson, now a defensive coordinator. "He left mid-visit to go check on his mother at the hospital. His mother passed, and he left the hospital and came back to work. I said that's one of the strongest things I ever saw. I couldn't even imagine what it means to lose a mother, but to come back right after seeing her take her last breath to finish out a visit weekend -- and you know how attention to detail you gotta be for a recruit, you get one shot at him -- to see him finish that out, man that was strong. So when he talks about DART and CCT, he shows that every day."

Brown's external quotes make headlines, but his internal message is all about family and giving back. On a hot June day, his daughter Ivy runs the halls of the football facility. Mason Pease, Pops' youngest son, is on the equipment staff. Fran Jr. is a long snapper for Syracuse -- tuition paid by his father to free up a scholarship.

"I get to look at the best version of who I could have been," Brown said. "I get to see that in him as a young man -- as a son, as a brother -- just like everything that I could have been, he is just better. And I'm so thankful and happy that me and my wife were able to do that together. Between them white lines, he gets the same treatment everybody else gets. But when you gets off [the field], I'll be giving him a kiss. He'll be mad. I'm still kissing his forehead on the field in front of everybody."

Stack up the experiences of Brown's life and it's clear why football is family for him. Home comes with him every day inside the Syracuse football facility -- and he's never truly that far from it.