The Rise and the Fall of Carl Franks

The lone man stood and sometimes crouched on the sideline. The players kept their distance, as he had kept his distance from them. Even the coaches hung back, not talking to the man who had been their leader for almost five years, not eliciting any folksy sayings in his North Carolina drawl. Although if they had to talk to him, they wouldn't know what he might say. The man whose shoulders sustained the gridiron hopes of a University, who held the pedigree and the love for the school, who had been hand-picked by the athletic director to motivate, to inspire and to succeed, Carl Franks was looking back and forth between his clipboard and the scoreboard. Wake Forest was winning 42-0. And it wasn't even halftime.

  

 It had finally become unbearable. Though his team had improved over the previous year to obtain a 4-7 win-loss record, Duke head football coach Fred Goldsmith had to go. His team had sucked all the vigor out of Wallace Wade on autumn Saturdays. It was during his fifth season, 1998, when it became clear to almost everyone that Goldsmith was not the long-term answer for a program that ranked among the nation's elite in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.

  

 Goldsmith nearly saved his career by starting that last season 4-4, but the Blue Devils then lost their last three games in repugnant fashion. Nevertheless, Athletic Director Joe Alleva's issue with Goldsmith was not solely with losing. In the season's last game, at home against North Carolina, the Blue Devils fell 28-6 in a game even the most enthusiastic Triangle-area football fans found boring. Goldsmith's football team was so painful to watch that even Tar Heel fans did not bother to travel nine miles to see their beloved team pummel the hated Duke squad on its home turf.

  

 Alleva could not stand to see his football program grow staler and fired Goldsmith immediately following the season. The move was popular at the time, because after Goldsmith won ACC and national coach of the year honors by leading Duke to an 8-4 record and a trip to the Hall of Fame Bowl during his first season, his record over the next four years dropped to a paltry 10-39. Those years included the 0-11 1996 season and a then-record 21-game ACC losing streak. His tenure also included a lawsuit regarding his handling of a female student who tried out for the football team as a kicker.

  

 It isn't hard to see why Alleva offered Franks the job just a day after he dismissed Goldsmith.

  

 Franks was a bruising tight end at Duke from 1980 to 1982, while also being one of the most popular players on the team. He was named an academic All-ACC performer in 1982 and won the Mike Suglia Award, an honor given to Duke's top sophomore scholar-athlete in 1981. Franks graduated from Duke in 1983 with a B.S. in psychology.

  

 After switching jobs each of his first few years after graduating--from assistant coach of Garner High School, to running backs coach for the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League, to receivers coach at the Virginia Military Institute--Franks' first semi-permanent tenure as an assistant coach was at his alma mater. Serving under the now legendary Steve Spurrier, Franks was the running backs coach at Duke from 1987 to 1989--some of the most offensively prolific and successful years in Duke football history, including the ACC-Championship-winning 1989 campaign that ended at the All American Bowl. That team averaged an outstanding 31.4 points per game in Spurrier's "Air Ball" system.

  

 At the time of his hiring, no one doubted Franks' knowledge of the University. Though he had been away from Duke for 10 years, Franks' supposed knowledge of how Duke athletics works, and his ability to win within its strict academic guidelines, had many convinced Franks was the man for the job.

  

 "Carl is a Duke man, and we are very grateful that he's such a deep-down Duke man, that he is so enthusiastic about returning to his alma mater," Keohane said when Franks returned for the top spot. "He has been part of winning at Duke, both as a player and as a coach. He knows you can win at Duke; he's excited about the way that feels; all of us are excited to be there with him. We're looking forward to having a lot of fun in Wallace Wade in the years ahead."

  

 Franks also always said the right things in regards to bringing excitement back to Duke football. As assistant offensive coordinator and running backs coach for Spurrier at Florida throughout the 1990s, Franks coached some of the most prolific offenses college football had ever seen. He coached running backs Errict Rhett and Fred Taylor, who combined rushed for more than 7,000 yards in college.

  

 Franks promised to bring the expertise he learned under Spurrier--particularly in wide-open offense--to Duke. "There is no reason it can't be as much fun at Wallace Wade Stadium as it is inside Cameron Indoor Stadium," Franks said to the Greensboro News and Record. "We've got to go out and prove ourselves [to the Duke fans] and give them a reason to come and see us. We'll do whatever's necessary to move the ball.   

 Whatever is exciting for fans to watch and fun for players to play. We've got to get those people to come to the games, give them hope that Duke football can be successful."

  

 The players were quickly impressed by Franks' methods, and seemed eager to try their hand in the new wide-open offense rather than the droning sets Goldsmith ran.

  

 "I know I have a biased opinion, but I'm excited to run the Florida-style offense," wide receiver Richmond Flowers said immediately after Franks' hiring. "What receiver wouldn't be excited about that? It gives myself and the other players a chance to go out and make plays."

  

 Although it became apparent after only a few sentences of his hiring press conference that Franks was a simple man both in his words and coaching philosophy, the folksy native of Garner, N.C., was a winner at nearly every organization where he had coached or played. Franks was a part of back-to-back winning seasons as a player. Adding those seasons up with his three years as an assistant for Duke, Franks was part of four of the last five winning seasons in Blue Devil football. Franks won five more conference championships in the SEC with Florida, where he also won the 1996 National Championship.

  

 The Duke alum played no small part in Florida's impressive run in the 1990s. Franks was considered Florida's best recruiter, and served as the official recruiting coordinator for the Gators from 1991 to 1993. He pulled in three top-10 recruiting classes, and in 1992 Super Prep and Blue Chip Report named Florida's recruits the top class in the nation.

  

 Combining his track record of success with the exciting form of football he promised to bring and his status as an alumnus, Franks was not just seen as a sure-shot, but a possible savior of the Duke football program.

  

 In the same week Franks left Florida, the Gators' defensive coordinator Bob Stoops also left to become the head coach at Oklahoma. When the two high profile assistants left Gainesville, Franks was arguably the bigger catch of the two. Florida was known for its experimental offense more than its defense, and Franks had better recruiting credentials. The two were also inheriting two similar situations. Oklahoma is a school of substantial football tradition, winning six national titles before the school hired Stoops. Though finding success in Duke football requires a bit more digging, the Blue Devils have 18 conference championships to their credit and still have more ACC Players of the Year (10) than any other team in the conference. Oklahoma had not had a winning season since 1993, going 23-33-1 in five seasons before Stoops was hired. Duke also only had one winning season in the 1990s, and Franks was expected to reverse that trend.

  

 In his short time as a Sooner, Stoops has created a thriving program, winning the National Championship in 2000 and leading his team to the National Championship game in 2003. Franks' accomplishments were somewhat less admirable.

  

 Franks' debut game showed his tenure was going to be filled with many more growing pains than expected, as East Carolina whacked the Blue Devils in the first contest of the 1999 season 27-9. Just as in the Goldsmith era, the problem was not just that Duke lost, but how it lost. This was not Spurrier football. The team showed no more creativity than it had under Goldsmith, and it did not appear that Franks had any immediate answers. Duke went on to finish a disappointing 3-8 that season, but all three wins were against ACC opponents (Virginia, Maryland, Wake Forest), giving Duke hope for the future.

  

 Needless to say, the next few years did not go as planned for the Blue Devils. Duke went 0-11 in 2000 and repeated the feat in 2001. The team showed some improvement in 2002, losing five games by five points or less to quality opponents, but Franks' team still finished a paltry 2-10. Returning more than 20 starters from the 2002 team, the 2003 team was supposed to have a breakthrough year. Players spoke about qualifying for a bowl game with straight faces, and many analysts predicted more than six wins for the team. But the Blue Devils sputtered out to a 2-5 start, and found themselves facing a 42-0 deficit to the unintimidating Wake Forest on homecoming weekend. Alleva fired Franks the day after the Wake debacle.

  

 The Blue Devils had found a man with every attribute they desired in a football coach, and he wanted to stay at Duke forever. Franks was not trying to use Durham as a lily pad from which to leapfrog into a job at a major football school like Spurrier did. Franks was a Duke alumnus who seemed to genuinely love the University. This was his dream job and he would stay as long as he was welcomed.

  

 But Franks' love for the school did not mean he had a real familiarity with the University's athletic program. The Duke athletic department in 1999 was far different from how it had been in 1982 and in 1989. Franks' first stints at the school predated Duke's basketball national championships. For this reason, Franks did not clearly comprehend the hegemony Duke basketball held over his diminished football squad. By the late 1980s, Mike Krzyzewski had already built up quite a program, but the basketball team's popularity simply exceeded the football teams. By the time Duke hired Franks as its football head coach, the basketball team completely dominated the football team in public awareness.

  

 As an assistant to Spurrier, Franks seemed to view the football coach as being in competition with Krzyzewski, rather than as a subordinate. It was common knowledge amongst the beat writers that Krzyzewski and Franks never had a completely healthy relationship--an accord essential in obtaining success in a revenue sport at Duke. Attempting to compete with Krzyzewski's status only alienated many people around the athletics department. There was never a deep-rooted hatred for Franks, but without total support from the athletic department, it was impossible for Franks to achieve the type of success he envisioned.

  

 There were several side effects to the lack of commitment behind Franks, the foremost being the lack of improvement of Duke's practice field. While donations allowed the University to build the state-of-the-art Yoh Football Center, few renovations were made to the Blue Devils' out-of-date practice fields behind Wallace Wade Stadium. Although Yoh was and will be instrumental in attracting young talent to Durham, the facility is more for off-season strength and agility training. The indoor 50-yard field is too small for the entire team to practice on, thus making it even more necessary for improvements on the practice field. The Blue Devils could compete with other ACCs schools' with their training techniques in the summer, but not during the fall when stakes were at their highest.

  

 Another reason for Franks' lack of success was the absence of real experience in his offensive coaching career. Franks worked hard in his role as running backs coach and assistant offensive coordinator at Florida, but Spurrier was an offensive dictator, creating and calling all the plays. He delegated very little of the offensive decision making to his assistants. Franks most likely gained valuable experience coaching under Spurrier, but his exposure with the 'old ball coach' did little to prepare him for the giant responsibility that is a head coaching position at a major Division I conference.

  

 From his first game at Duke, it was apparent that Franks' "Airborne" offense was far inferior to Spurrier's "Air Ball" offense from which it derived. In Franks' opening loss to ECU Blue Devil quarterback Spencer Romine had trouble just getting off a pass, let alone throwing deep balls for touchdowns in creative offensive sets.

"That quarterback, Romine, Ramen noodles or something, that's what we turned him into," Pirate linebacker Jeff Kerr, who sacked Romine twice, said after the game. "He did an excellent job of looking up at his receivers, but he had so many receivers out there to look at, that he wasn't able to look at the defensive line coming at him."

  

 The Blue Devils did not score a touchdown in a game that was supposed to feature explosive offense, and at the six-minute mark of the second quarter, Duke had more turnovers than first downs. The Blue Devils had a few break-out offensive performances that year, including a 48-35 win over Wake Forest, but mostly the offense sputtered without signs of improvement. Duke averaged only 14.7 points in the year of "Airborne," with the most embarrassing performance coming in a 38-0 loss to North Carolina in the final game of the season.

  

 Franks never figured out how to score like his mentor, as the Blue Devils averaged 14.1 points per game during the 2000 season, 19.3 in another winless year in 2001, 18.9 a game in 2002, and 15.1 a game before Franks was fired in 2003. Though Franks used the rhetoric of a confident offensive strategist and had the endorsement of Spurrier, he never was able to get close to what Alleva imagined for the program.

  

 Franks also had, according to some observers, certain personal and character problems that prevented him from achieving lasting success at Duke. Hired at the relatively young age of 38, no one expected Franks to demand a grandfatherly respect from his team, but also few anticipated that Franks would be lacking in gravitas even in comparison to other 38-year olds. According to one knowledgeable observer, Franks mixed and mingled at many local bars that catered to a rough crowd of bikers. Although Franks surely spent enough hours at the office preparing for his duties and there was never any suspicion of alcoholism or drug use, Franks' night-life did not do him any favors in gaining respect from the University and the football program.

  

 He also had a back condition that necessitated surgery. Franks held off with the operation for years, as the lengthy rehabilitation time was too much to sacrifice for the extremely consuming position of head football coach. It was not until recently that Franks recently had surgery on his spine. The condition surely affected his moods and overall effectiveness in his attempt to be an energetic head football coach.

  

 Franks' ego also proved to be a barrier in achieving his ambitions for the football team. Perhaps because of the Napoleon-like manner in which Spurrier ruled Gainesville, Franks seemed to fear having assistant coaches around him who were possibly smarter than he. When Franks hired an offensive coordinator before the 2003 season after doing the job himself for the first four years of his career, he simply promoted quarterbacks coach Jim Pry to the position. Just a year earlier Franks brought in defensive coordinator Ted Roof from Georgia Tech, and the defense immediately improved, leading the ACC in rush defense in 2002. But Franks did not search the nation for a similarly talented offensive coordinator the very next season, leaving many wondering if Franks was merely hiring yes-men to help him do jobs in areas where he had expertise himself.

  

 "There were times when things took place where you had to wonder what was happening, where people wondered what was going on after getting Pry as O-coordinator," says quarterback Adam Smith, who is transferring from the University after starting every game in 2002. "You look at how much the defense improved with Roof, and how much improvement can be made with a quality coach. It just seemed at the time it was interesting when he wouldn't make a change when he was presented with an option."

  

 Franks' aura of arrogance also seemed to hurt his relationships with players. Interestingly, the players felt that Franks had a more than sound understanding of the game of football. But somehow, he was not able to adequately share his ideas about the gridiron.

  

 "I think that he is a good coach, on the field he knows what to talk about," Smith says. "He knew what he was doing. Very smart when it comes to football. He knew everything. I don't know if he knows how to convey [his ideas about football]."

  

 Smith was far from the only player who had these thoughts.

  

 "I think if he could work on his people skills, motivational skills he could get players to perform better," says graduating safety Terrell Smith, who is currently working out for this year's NFL draft. "He was distant."

  

  His inability to connect with his players also hurt in his efforts at motivating the team. Players described Franks' pregame speeches as "forced" and "not genuine," which greatly detracted from their effectiveness. Franks' players were certainly hard-working individuals, but in many games the opposing team would start a game with more fire and passion than the Blue Devils, leading to large deficits that Duke had no chance of dwindling. Franks' final game was probably the best example of this, as similarly talented Wake Forest blasted into Wallace Wade and dominated the lethargic Blue Devils.

  

 Franks' struggles with communication skills belied his relationship with the media. For a coach that had a career 7-52 record, one can hardly imagine a person with a better relationship with reporters. He would constantly joke with them, making press conferences analogous to friends getting together talking about sports rather than the tense, professional environment that often characterizes such interactions.

  

 Although Franks' light-hearted behavior is perplexing in comparison to his cold demeanor towards his players, there does seem to be some logic behind it. Franks seemed to desire a dictator-like respect from his players, while warm treatment towards the media could only lead to positive coverage.

  

 Franks' braggadocio seemed to stem more from a lack of self confidence rather than a surplus of it. This problem only multiplied as Franks' win-loss record continued to worsen. His ego seemed to be the root cause of nearly all of his difficulties: His inability to form an alliance with Krzyzewski; his people skills with players; and his decision to hire Jim Pry as offensive coordinator.

  

 Though ultimate responsibility falls on the head coach, not every problem was Franks' fault. The coach had to deal with strict academic standards in recruiting, cutting down the eligible talent pool to about 30 percent of Florida's. Though Franks made the best of recruiting--there are no less than six Duke players with legitimate chances of being selected in this year's NFL draft--perhaps he simply did not have the talent for his offensive system to be successful.

  

 "I just think what he was trying to do didn't really work for us," Terrell Smith says. "Maybe it could have worked somewhere else. Maybe we had the coaching strategies, but we didn't have the personnel to run it. Coaching is sometimes overrated. It's what the players do that matters. If Franks was at a school like Miami, he would probably win a championship."

  

  Alleva's role in Duke's 7-45 record over the four-and-a-half years when Franks was in control should not be underplayed, either. In retrospect, it appears Franks was not the candidate he appeared to be at first glance, having a less clear understanding of the University and much less offensive genius than his credentials would lead one to conclude. Alleva also stuck with Franks throughout his tenure, not making changes when Franks' teams were improving at a snail's pace, if at all. Alleva also did not take action when Franks hired Pry as his offensive coordinator without a nationwide search for a more qualified candidate.

  

 Franks' tenure was not solely wrought with failure, either. Franks' team had the highest graduation rate in the country, largely thanks to the coach's emphasis on study halls. The Yoh Football Center, the most important piece of infrastructure for the future of the football program, was also constructed during the Franks era.

  

 The Garner, N.C., native also did a more than satisfactory job of uniting former Duke players with the program. As a former player himself, Franks kept Duke football alumni in touch with the current team, doing a better job than other recent coaches of returning phone calls to players of the past. The red-haired man also created a golf tournament of enormous popularity for former players.

  

 To his unlucky detriment, the years Franks coached Duke also witnessed a significant improvement in ACC football. Maryland, Virginia and N.C. State all jumped from solid teams to perennial top-25 squads, negating the Blue Devils' a fair litmus test for their improvement.

  

 "The league is getting tougher and tougher," says assistant Fred Chatham, who has been at Duke since the days of Spurrier. "We made great strides here at Duke, but so did everybody else."

  

 He brought in Roof as defensive coordinator, possibly the highest profile assistant coach at Duke since Spurrier was an offensive coordinator in the early '80s. Roof landed as Franks' replacement by finishing the 2003 season 2-3, including wins over Georgia Tech and UNC. Roof seems to have learned from his predecessor's mistakes as well. The former Georgia Tech defensive coordinator immediately shored up a positive relationship with Krzyzewski, and is already far more of a players' coach than Franks ever was. Instead of communicating with coaches in the booth, Roof patrols the sideline, shouting instructions to his players, much like a basketball coach.

  

 While the Duke football team appears headed towards a brighter future, Franks' fate seems less certain. Though his record at Duke is a massive blemish on his resume, Franks still has impressive credentials as an assistant.

  

 "It's easy to point fingers when we lose," Terrell Smith says. "If we were 6-6, Coach Franks would still have have a job. He'd probably get a lifetime contract like Coach K. He's a good coach, and he helped the Duke football program. I just wish things could have worked out better. He'll get another job as a coach."