Seven months into his job as head coach at Alabama, Dennis Franchione still sounds like a new sheriff hell-bent on cleaning up the town. Good thing, because the Crimson Tide program is one big mess.

A week hardly goes by in Bear Country without some new bit of ugliness popping up. The Alleged Memphis Connection Scandal (Bama booster buying players). The Alleged Prep School Scam (Tide recruits rolling through eligibility factory). The Bogus Test Sham (DB Harold James leaving after ACT score is invalidated). Not the kind of breaking news a team coming off a 3-8 season needs.

The NCAA has been sniffing around Tuscaloosa for almost a year. School officials expect an official letter of inquiry to arrive in July. Next, a meeting with the NCAA's infractions committee. And then ... ?

Franchione compares the dark cloud hanging over Alabama to the weather: "I can't do anything about it, so I don't spend much time worrying about it." Good attitude, but don't forget your umbrella.

The football part of the silver-haired Kansan's job may be the least of his worries. Two seasons ago, Bama was 10-3 and much of that team's nucleus (WR Freddie Milons, LB Saleem Rasheed, DE Kenny King) is still around. The team's self-esteem is shaken, but Franchione thinks if he can whip the Tide into tip-top shape, a new positive attitude will follow. Can winning be far behind?

That was Step1 in Franchione's turnaround of TCU, where strength coach Ben Pollard transformed the Horned Frogs into college football's strongest team. Pollard accompanied Franchione to Tuscaloosa and put in a conditioning program worthy of Parris Island. It's working. In January, only seven players could hang clean 300 pounds. By April, that number had swelled to 49.

Franchione claims not to have watched a single frame of film: "Everyone's going in with a clean slate." He'd love to get one from some old friends with the NCAA. In the mid-1980s, he coached with Mark Jones, the NCAA's director of enforcement, at Tennessee Tech. Later he was buddies with Rich Johanningmeier, an investigator on the Alabama case, who was AD at Washburn in Topeka when Fran coached at Pittsburg (Kan.) State. "They know me," he says. "They know I'm going to do things the right way."

He'd better -- and fast, too. The Bama faithful aren't known for their patience.

This article appears in the June 25 issue of ESPN The Magazine.