Francesa

[beast of the east]

Just said: No reason why St. John's can't be as good a program as Villanova.

we are making progress. at least two fat guys agree on that. now if we can just convince Beast.

Actually, I do think we can be a great organization again. We should always look at what other schools are doing right and try to emulate that. Villanova happened to hit a home run with Wright, and it wasn't exactly an accident. His wife was a Nova cheerleader, he's a PA guy, and he was an assistant there with Rollie for I think 7 years before following him to UNLV. My point was that they have a much bigger budget for this sort of thing. Their administration jumped Wright's salary before he went out and tested the waters, before someone blew him away with an offer too good to refuse.

Imagine had SJU done the same with Fraschilla, instead of trying to hold his feet to the fire on his original contract and be insulted by his attempt to raise the ante by inquiring about other jobs. There's a good chance the Jarvis and Roberts eras would never have occurred.

To be big you have to think big, plan big, and unfortunately, spend big. Everyone else can have little riffs of success. But in general, college basketball is dominated by programs that can and do spend a lot of money - and that just isn't the SJU way.

Correct on the surface, however if you look deeply you will see that Fr. Harrington did not like Fran and Looie did not like SJU being used as a stepping stone buy a hot (at the time) young coach. Perfect storm for his dismissal which no one still knows the facts about. Great recruiter that had the vision and stated that he was here to win a championship with St. John's. Loved his passion and fire but that was frowned upon by the old guard here.

Fran was kind of a dumbass, and didn't know how to finesse around his bosses. He didn't realize that he reported to Ed Manetta, and also then to Harrington. By pissing both of them off, he wrote his own firing, almost from day 1. Still and all, had they paid and kept him, our program would not have gone into the dumper.

What really ticked off SJU was a fact that is well known now. They thought Fran should honor his full contract, even though he was underpaid based on his success. A contract only binds the school to a coach. If a coach wants to leave, he listens to offers, and then negotiates his exit. No school can have a coach who doesn't want to be there, so there are no handcuffs binding the coach to his contract.

 

[Red.Fans]

Fran was kind of a dumbass, and didn't know how to finesse around his bosses. He didn't realize that he reported to Ed Manetta, and also then to Harrington. By pissing both of them off, he wrote his own firing, almost from day 1. Still and all, had they paid and kept him, our program would not have gone into the dumper.

What really ticked off SJU was a fact that is well known now. They thought Fran should honor his full contract, even though he was underpaid based on his success. A contract only binds the school to a coach. If a coach wants to leave, he listens to offers, and then negotiates his exit. No school can have a coach who doesn't want to be there, so there are no handcuffs binding the coach to his contract.

correct on point 1 but that is not all that transpired and it is not at all accurate to simply paint St Johns as being inept. He was out of control burning bridges all over the place. Parents of players were complaining about him and he was mistreating people who were otherwise his supporters and people working for him. For example calling up a (very friendly) female reporter in the middle of the night and screaming at her and of course there was the exposing himself incident.

 

[SI1996]

Fran was kind of a dumbass, and didn't know how to finesse around his bosses. He didn't realize that he reported to Ed Manetta, and also then to Harrington. By pissing both of them off, he wrote his own firing, almost from day 1. Still and all, had they paid and kept him, our program would not have gone into the dumper.

What really ticked off SJU was a fact that is well known now. They thought Fran should honor his full contract, even though he was underpaid based on his success. A contract only binds the school to a coach. If a coach wants to leave, he listens to offers, and then negotiates his exit. No school can have a coach who doesn't want to be there, so there are no handcuffs binding the coach to his contract.

correct on point 1 but that is not all that transpired and it is not at all accurate to simply paint St Johns as being inept. He was out of control burning bridges all over the place. Parents of players were complaining about him and he was mistreating people who were otherwise his supporters and people working for him. For example calling up a (very friendly) female reporter in the middle of the night and screaming at her and of course there was the exposing himself incident.

That's the creepiest avatar I have ever seen and that includes anything Fun or '72 have posted. Kudos.

 

[Section3]

H

Just said: No reason why St. John's can't be as good a program as Villanova.

Shame is the question would have been reversed years ago...we really blew it

 

[jr49]

I get mixed up on the history. At the time Fran was hired would McKillop or Beilein taken the job?

 

[beast of the east]

Fran was kind of a dumbass, and didn't know how to finesse around his bosses. He didn't realize that he reported to Ed Manetta, and also then to Harrington. By pissing both of them off, he wrote his own firing, almost from day 1. Still and all, had they paid and kept him, our program would not have gone into the dumper.

What really ticked off SJU was a fact that is well known now. They thought Fran should honor his full contract, even though he was underpaid based on his success. A contract only binds the school to a coach. If a coach wants to leave, he listens to offers, and then negotiates his exit. No school can have a coach who doesn't want to be there, so there are no handcuffs binding the coach to his contract.

correct on point 1 but that is not all that transpired and it is not at all accurate to simply paint St Johns as being inept. He was out of control burning bridges all over the place. Parents of players were complaining about him and he was mistreating people who were otherwise his supporters and people working for him. For example calling up a (very friendly) female reporter in the middle of the night and screaming at her and of course there was the exposing himself incident.

If you recall, St. John's only released those "reasons" for firing Fran after Fran was dismissed and bad mouthed the school. If you recall, there were two incidents noted: one was a player's mother complaining to Fraschilla about her son's playing time. At the college level, it's a ridiculous thing to have a parent complain to a coach. Fran's response was something on the order of, "Look who's playing ahead of him. Your son isn't good enough to get time over _____ " The second story about dropping his pants in a fit of rage against his players was also leaked by the school.

Fran rubbed people the wrong way, but the way I see it, if he had not attempted to renegotiate his salary he would not have been fired. Before he coached a single game he angered Manetta by announcing his coaching staff publicly when Manetta asked Fran privately that Tom Pecora be hired as an assistant. Manetta and Pecora grew up together in QV.

It is amazing that Fran was here only 2 seasons, and was looking for a big raise after getting us back to the NCAA's in season 2 (1st round exit). All in all, Fran coached just 9 seasons, going to 5 NITs and 3 NCAAs.