COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Four months into his tenure at Texas A&M, head coach Dennis Franchione has adapted his button-down, knuckle-down style to his new home with few hitches.

The button-down part of him, the organizer who tries to cram 16 hours into every workday, has learned to say "Howdy," the all-purpose Aggie greeting. The knuckle-down part of him, the coach who demands that his team be more physical than its opponent, has introduced his new players to the weight room, where a 400-pound bench press is not so much celebrated as expected. One month after he arrived at Alabama, 16 players could bench 400. Before last season, that number had risen to 30.

"I've done this long enough to know when the numbers are good, we'll have a pretty good team," Franchione said. "It's not just about being strong. It's also about commitment, sacrifice, work ethic, team togetherness. Most games will be decided in the fourth quarter. This team led three games in the fourth quarter and lost them. It's like a prizefight. You throw body punches for 12 rounds so that you can knock them out. The first three quarters are body punches."

	Dennis Franchione is happy with what he has seen so far at Texas A&M.

In the spring practice that just concluded last Saturday, Franchione set a pace more suited for the Aggie track team.

"In our early team periods of practice, we try to run 90 plays in 24 minutes," Franchione said. "We came pretty close. I think next year's spring practice will be better. When you compare springs, compare a year one to a year one (at his previous jobs), it went pretty well."

With the end of spring ball, the first phase of the transition has concluded. The Maroon team beat the White, 28-22, in the spring game last Saturday. When the team held a celebratory tailgate Tuesday night before a Texas A&M baseball game, the winning players ate barbecue. The losers ate beans. Though that could be a cause for friction, Franchione said the players have been eager to learn his way of playing football.

"We moved their cheese," he said, referring to Spencer Johnson's best-selling book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" "Some people don't manage change well. Our players have done very well. They have tried very hard to do what we've asked them to do. It's probably as good a situation as I've been through."

He's been through a few. Franchione has installed his program at seven different schools over a 20-year period as a head coach. At the Division I-A level he turned losers into winners at New Mexico, TCU and Alabama, where he took a 3-8 team and in two years made it 10-3.

His coaching staff, which came with him intact from Alabama, has learned what its new players can do. After the May evaluation period of next year's high school seniors, the coaches will sit down and begin to tailor their playbooks to their players.

Texas A&M has two talented quarterbacks in junior Dustin Long and sophomore Reggie McNeal, the hero of the upset of No. 1 Oklahoma last season. The Aggies have talent at wide receiver, where Terrence Murphy, Terrence Thomas, and Jamaar Taylor all had good springs. Jason Carter, switched from the bottom of the quarterback depth chart to "A" back, gained 181 all-purpose yards in the Maroon-White game.

The kicking game is strong, with punter Cody Scales, another hero of the 30-26 upset of the Sooners because he continually pinned them inside their 20-yard line, and placekicker Todd Pegram. There is some depth at defensive tackle, too.

However, if the Aggies had a lot of talent, then longtime coach R.C. Slocum wouldn't have become a fund-raiser. Though Aggie fans continue to respect Slocum, they fumed at Texas A&M's 6-6 record last year, and its 29-19 record since the Aggies won the 1998 Big 12 Conference championship.

Franchione's arrival set off a celebration on campus and among Aggies across the nation.

It set off a firestorm of criticism everywhere else, all of it directed at Franchione.

Months after his juniors and seniors decided not to transfer from Alabama without having to sit out a year, an escape clause offered to players on a team put on NCAA probation, Franchione transferred. He became the poster child for the lack of loyalty in the coaching business. His decision not to return to Tuscaloosa to inform the Crimson Tide players in person only increased the criticism.

First, he dammed the Tide. Then he damned it.

Franchione meets most inquiries about his one-way ticket out of Tuscaloosa by saying he wants to focus on the future. However, in a recent hour-long interview in his office, Franchione explained for the first time what made him decide to look elsewhere.

When the subject turns to his departure from Alabama, Franchione's body language changes. He leans forward, resting his elbow on his desk, cupping his chin in hand. He sits back, angling his body across his chair. His voice softens. Pardon the expression, there's an elephant in the room.

"I never had any intention of hurting Alabama," Franchione said. "If I had said something (last winter), you can dang well bet those SEC coaches would have put something in front of those recruits."

He knew when he arrived in Tuscaloosa in December 2000 that the NCAA had begun to investigate the Crimson Tide. He understood, he said, that the school's appeal of its NCAA penalties (21 scholarships, two-year postseason ban) would fail.

However, when testimony in the federal trial last year of a Memphis high school coach suggested more NCAA violations by former Alabama coaches, Franchione recoiled.

"It wore on me," he said. "That was when I said, 'Gosh, I have to recruit a third season with this out there?'"

While the NCAA issue simmered, Franchione and his agent, Craig Kelly, attempted to negotiate a contract extension with the university. At a school with a rich tradition of success, and an equally rich tradition of trustees and alumni meddling in athletic affairs, Franchione prized his independence.

Rumors of Texas A&M's interest in Franchione began to appear in Texas newspapers in the third week of November. He put out a statement denying them. He has friends in Fort Worth, where he coached TCU for three years before he arrived at Alabama, who say he had decided by then that he was going to Texas A&M. He laughs at the notion.

"That is not true," he said. "I did not know that. I didn't know I was coming to A&M until Wednesday night (Dec. 4)."

Franchione officially took the job the following day. The decision he most regrets is not returning to Tuscaloosa to tell his team.

"Maybe I'd do it a little differently," he said. "When I walked out of the room, I called my son, I called my daughters, and then I called Carl Torbush (his defensive coordinator) and told him to get the players together right now because this was going to get out."

The atmosphere in Tuscaloosa was so charged, Franchione said, that he believed it smarter not to go back.

"We received threats," he said. "My daughter got calls on her cell phone."

The Franchiones hired private security to remain in front of their home for the next 10 days.

A couple of days after his family arrived in College Station, Kim Franchione turned to her husband and said, "Thank you for bringing me back to Texas." If Franchione had any doubt about the move, that put it to rest.

In the mid-19th century, settlers in Alabama heard of the riches to their west and took off. Before they left, they nailed a sign on their property that said, "Gone to Texas." Franchione, like the great Alamo hero William Travis himself, left Alabama and headed west.

"The only place you can leave Alabama for," Franchione said, "is heaven." A slow smile spread across his face.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.