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Jimcs50
10-20-2004, 09:20 AM
By MICKEY HERSKOWITZ
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
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CHRONICLE COVERAGE:
• College Football Notebook: Taking on frat a way for Zook to get blackballed

In this worried little world of craven, conforming, no-risk, no-frills football coaches, I give you a notable exception.


I give you Dennis Franchione.

In an upset win over Oklahoma State, on the road, the Aggies' trail boss had his quarterback throw a Hail Mary with six seconds left in the first half, rather than take a knee.

True, the Aggies were leading 20-6, and it is much easier to be bold and even brazen when you have a 14-point cushion. But up or down, most coaches today would run out the clock and head for the showers, content to get off the field without risking a mistake, heaven forbid.

The fans boo, of course, but the coach and the players just jog a bit faster, because the important thing is that nobody picked off a pass in the end zone or scooped up a fumble and ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown.


Laughing at the odds
If you want to play it safe, there is no play as dependable as having your quarterback take a knee. He would have to be a world-class klutz to mess it up.

And never mind that Coach Fran admits he would have let the clock run out if Oklahoma State hadn't called a timeout with 13 seconds left in the half. To the riverboat gambler in each of us, that just makes the result sweeter. The Aggies not only completed a 55-yard prayer of a pass, but they did it a la carte, which is French for "in your face."

The line of scrimmage was the A&M 45. And when Reggie McNeal let the ball fly, he was practically standing at his own 35. So the ball traveled about 65 yards yards in the air, and in a jump ball at the goal line, Terrence Murphy tipped it to DeQawn Mobley for the score.

The ecstatic Aggies went to the lockers up 27-6 and wound up knocking off the unbeaten Cowboys. If the score had been closer, if the play had won the game, you would be watching it on SportsCenter around the clock for the rest of your life.

So Coach Fran earns a get-out-of-jail-free pass for having the nerve, and the sense of adventure, to let his surprising young team roll the dice. The Aggies are 5-1 and ranked 17th. We personally want to apologize for any doubts we might have harbored when the Aggies went 4-8 in his first season and after a 20-point loss to Utah in this year's opener.


Who's doubting A&M now?
And we regret making fun of a prediction in a preseason football magazine that tabbed the Aggies as the top contender for the biggest turnaround in 2004. And a candidate to finish in the Top 20. It appears the magazine may have underestimated them, along with the rest of us.

The forecast was based almost entirely on Franchione's reputation as a rebuilder whose big payoff occurs in his second season, wherever he may be. His record at TCU and Alabama and now A&M surely supports this point. It makes you wonder whatever happened to the five-year plan.

Coach Fran isn't likely to surpass the school's previous best improvement — from one win in 1954 to seven and a tie in '55. That was the heyday of Paul Bryant and the Junction Boys, not bad company.


The Dean of A&M
Franchione is an interesting study, a coach who doesn't work terribly hard at creating a mystique. He doesn't strike you as a tyrant or taskmaster, but his system is sound, whatever it is. We haven't pinned him down yet as a character type, but he has moments of happy-go-luckiness. He also has a strong resemblance to Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and presidential candidate.

How much credit to give him — Coach Fran, not Dean — for the emergence of McNeal is hard to say. Clearly, Reggie surprised him with his recovery from shoulder surgery and with the depth and variety of his talents.

The Aggies are getting hefty contributions from players who were virtually forgotten a year ago — fullback Keith Joseph and tackle Geoff Hangartner, to name two. It is remarkable how easily players are overlooked on teams that get blown out by 40 or more points most weeks.

But McNeal has emerged as one of the three or four best quarterbacks in the nation and a candidate for the Heisman Trophy. He is having the kind of year Jason White of Oklahoma and Vince Young of Texas were supposed to have.


Impressive streak
You hate to keep bringing it up for fear of jinxing him, but McNeal hasn't been intercepted in his last 157 passes, and A&M hasn't turned the ball over in five of its six games this year.

The Hail Mary pass won't be McNeal's defining moment, but if that one had been picked off, we surely could have found it in our hearts to forgive him — and his coach.

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