Official Fran Vendetta: Epilogue

Part 1

It was a rainy day. It wasn't one of those days where the rain came down in buckets, but it was pervasively wet. And it should have been miserable, not just because of the weather.

It was October of 2003, my junior year at A&M, and we were well on our way to losing--very badly--to Oklahoma State. I had seen us beat The Lesser Okies my freshman year, on September 22, 2001, though that game was entirely dwarfed by its context. And by t-shirts. I had gone to Stillwater to see us lose the next year (another, much colder rainy day). I had a great time on that, especially when our vocal Aggie minority had fed off of (and, I think, bolstered) a second half revival of our Wrecking Crew.

However, this day . . . this day was a very different loss in the rain. We had already lost four of our seven games that season, and it wasn't going to get any easier. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, fans (including students) were leaving in droves. It's hard to blame even Aggies for leaving when their team is down 31-0.

Nevertheless, many of us stayed, and were treated to 10 pity points and, of course, the usual Kyle Field jumbotron advertisements. When they played the ad--the one with the jubilant voice announcing to us all the slogan that had been blared all season, a variation of which had been plastered even across that year's stadium cups: "The Coach Fran Era Has Arrived!!!"--what could we do but laugh? Cry, I guess. But we laughed instead. We laughed and laughed, there on first deck, sopping wet, ready to wait out the game . . . the season . . . the next four seasons with our Aggies. The Coach Fran Era had arrived, indeed.

Now, the Coach Fran Era Has Ended.

. . . !!!

Part 2

If Fran had coached all his games like he'd coached on Friday, he would still have a job. That was a great game.

Of course, any boneheaded fan would have coached the Ags like Fran did on Friday. "You know what you dudes should do? Like, McGee should throw it and stuff sometimes. Like, sometimes to, you know, Martellus? Cuz like he's good? But, yeah, also, sometimes Steve, you should hand it off. And sometimes you should hand it off to Goodson, cuz he's real fast, but sometimess--a lot, really--you should give it to the J-Train. Totally give it to the J-Train." (But, oh wait, a boneheaded fan would have yanked Syzmanski about a month ago. Whatever. You get my point.) The t.u. game just proved how good this team should have been all year and wasn't because he was holding them back.

But hey, why am I still arguing this case? So many people agree with me, in fact, that Fran does not get to coach the Aggies anymore.

. . . !!!

Part 3

Apparently--and this is, of course, news to me--I tell a lot of grandiose Aggie stories. Is it my fault that we have the largest dining hall in the entire country (second-largest in the world), or that our Dixie Chicken on Northgate sells more beer per square foot than any other bar on Earth, or that our ability of any group of Aggies anywhere to perform unison yells approaches the appearance of mass mind-meld?

No. No it is not.

Yet I am subject to completely unfair mockery by my gentleman caller, such as that in the following exchange:
Gentleman Caller: So, I thought that when Fran got fired, your ring would glow red, and maybe a holograph of Reveille would appear, and he--
me: She.
Gentleman Caller: --she would speak in this commanding voice and tell you that Fran had stepped down. That was what I was expecting. . . . But instead it was a text message from your dad.
me: Which is also magical in its own way.
Gentleman Caller: True.

Part 4

Ah, the future. What a lovely place it might turn out to be. At least now there's hope. Hope is great.

Sadly, the near future is marred by the promise of Gary Darnell coaching the bowl game. Ugh.

As for the more distant future, if you're expecting coach predictions out of this girl, you are going to be disappointed. Due to a perfect storm of Thanksgiving travel, school busyness, and my near-unshakeable faith in Bill Byrne, I haven't been keeping up with coaching rumors or speculation. Bill Byrne has (at least in my imagination) some incredibly complex calculus of proven ability, promising talent, and price tag, and he's using this equation to hone in on somebody who I may or may not have heard of and who may or may not (hopefully may) be awesome.

This is what I think: I don't care if he "shows emotion," I don't care if he has a funny accent, I don't even care if he has pre-existing Aggie ties. I have two demands of The New Coach: 1. don't cheat 2. win. Seriously. Win some games, man. And by "some" I don't mean 5.5 a year. Give us a shot at some division/conference titles, and you and I will get along.

Gig 'em, New Coach. And gig 'em Aggies.

. . . !!!!!