This past week, June Jones, the head football coach of the UH football team, has resigned and became the head football coach at Southern Methodist University (SMU)
1) June Jones started the coaching at UH the same year I started attending UH. (1999). At the university, you can sense the pride being restored at the school.
In the previous year, the football team was coached by Fred von Appen, and the team was 0-12! That was the last of 6 straight loosing seasons. Top high school football players preferred to play on the mainland rather than be humiliated as a member of a loosing team. Even high school students who didn't play sports stated that they don't want to go to UH because of it's "junk football team". Some people even thought it wasn't even worth it for UH to have a football team if it kept loosing like this!
However, in the June Jones era, the UH football team is a source of pride. 7 out of 9 seasons under June Jones were winning teams. UH football team won 2 WAC championships and was able to make it to a major mainland bowl game, the Sugar Bowl!
Now, even people who never attended UH are wearing UH shirts, UH football jerseys, and other UH merchandise.
Many top high school football players now want to play for UH, and in recent years, even some football players from the continental US have sent unsolicited videos to the UH football staff hoping that they'll get a scholarship!
2) Though June Jones grew up in Oregon, he has become a "local boy".
He first came to Hawaii as a visitor with his high-school basketball team playing in a local tournament. His teammate was Artie Wilson who later joined the UH basketball team and is now a well-known real-estate agent and a sports radio talk show host.
Jones later played football for UH for 2 years, then left for Portland State. However, he loved Hawaii so much, it was his second home.
June Jones is loved by many in Hawaii because he is comfortable with diverse cultures.
While the stereotypical European-American (called "haoles" in Hawaii) is seen as an arrogant outsider who doesn't respect the local culture, June Jones is a European-American known to have great respect for the many local cultures here.
He is seen as someone who would show up at local plate lunch places and eat Hawaiian food or the popular local-style Asian plate lunches. He is seen as someone who is as comfortable being in various communities in Hawaii from the rich Kahala, to middle class Pearl City, inner city Kalihi, as well as the rural areas of the Neighbor Islands. He is known for taking his shoes off when entering someone else's home, which is a sign of respect in Hawaii.
He was able to recruit local boys from various communities in Hawaii, as well as from American Samoa. He was also able to recruit mainland players of various ancestries, including Polynesian, African-American and European-American. His mainland players came from areas like California, Texas, Mississippi, Virginia, etc.
Jones ability to adapt to various cultures is what me and many other people of Hawaii will miss most about June Jones.
3) Those who hate sports view June Jones as greedy for signing a $800,000 a year contract in 2003, and for accepting a $ 2million a year contract at SMU!
Is Jones really a greedy person? Let's look at a few paragraphs from Stephen Tsai's article from 1/8/08 Honolulu Advertiser. This was about what June Jones requested from UH Athletic Director Herman Frazier in March 2006
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Jan/08/ln/hawaii801080344.html
Jones wanted to rehire Dennis McKnight, who left the program in 2000, to become the offensive line coach. Jones also wanted to create a fundraising position for his mentor, Darrell "Mouse" Davis, who had served as offensive assistant coach in 2005.
Jones approached Athletics Director Herman Frazier with a unique offer. Jones was entering the fourth season of a five-year contract in which he earned $800,016 annually, half of which was paid from donations.
Jones offered to sign a new five-year contract, taking a large pay cut that would reduce his annual salary to $500,000. The savings, Jones said, would be used to hire McKnight, create a non-coaching position for Davis, and boost the recruiting budget. The only stipulation was the deal needed to be completed in time for the start of spring practice in April.
Frazier rejected Jones' offer.
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To all the June Jones haters, READ THAT AGAIN!
Jones offered to take a pay-cut so that the Athletic Department can hire 2 people, and fund football recruiting. Herman Frazier rejected those ideas!
If anything, the recruiting budget should be increased. Georgia has a larger recruiting budget, though the coaches don't have to travel thousands of miles for out-of-state players! A lot of their players are from the South (though their running back that scored multiple touchdowns in the recent Sugar Bowl is from outside the South, he's from New Jersey) so they don't need the large recruiting budget that UH needs.
While Hawaii has plenty of college-football prospects, UH also wants to invite athletes from other places that want to be a part of the Hawaii atmosphere as well! There will always be a few Hawaii-raised athletes that want to have the "mainland college experience", so why not take a few players from the continental US, as well as American Samoa as well from foreign lands?
4) The size of the paychecks wasn't even the main reason June Jones left. While he is grateful for the $ 2 million he'll be getting from SMU, the more important reason he left UH was that he was tired of dealing with Herman Frazier!
The rejected deal mentioned above was one issue!
Jones also felt Frazier didn't do enough to get the facilities renovated. Ironically, when the state legislators took a tour of the athletic facilities earlier this week, they said that they didn't even hear any requests from the Athletic Department for additional funding. This makes Frazier look like someone who wasn't proactive enough to take the initiative to get things done!
Jones wasn't the only coach who had a problem with Frazier. Former men's basketball coach Riley Wallace said that Frazier lacked people skills, and hardly did anything to maintain facilities.
In December 2006, (in the middle of basketball season), Wallace announced he was going to retire after the season's over. The local gossip was that Frazier pressured Wallace into retirement (or "fired" Wallace, depending on who you ask). When asked about it Wallace said he wasn't pressured into retirement, and that he was going to retire anyways.
When Wallace announced his retirement, he said he wanted his assistant coach Bob Nash to be his replacement.
That was in December 2006. What did Fazier do? He waited until March 2007 to officially announce the job vacancy for head basketball coach ! He waited until March 2007 to start a committee that will screen and interview candidates for head coach for men's basketball!
You would think if someone announced their retirement that will take place in a few months, you'll start searching for replacement now!
While Nash was hired, it wasn't even officially announced on April 13, 2007.
To make problems worse, that was after the recruiting period started. Some basketball players who were interested in playing for Hawaii didn't want to wait any longer to find out who was going to be their coach, so they ended up signing up with other colleges.
It took 4 months to hire someone?
5) Frazier also had controversy over the scheduling of weak non-conference opponents in the 2007 football season. However, Frazier was able to schedule big-name opponents for the 2008 season!
But the bigger controversy that got many fans upset at Frazier was the Sugar Bowl tickets.
For bowl games, the 2 universities involved get a certain amount of tickets to sell. Both Georgia and Hawaii were offered to sell 17,000 tickets to their fans.
However, Sugar Bowl officials doubted that many Hawaii fans would be able to show up in New Orleans to watch the game.
Frazier apparently agreed with them, and decided to just take 13,000 tickets. This was before UH even started to sell any tickets. Those 13,000 tickets sold out fast! And Hawaii fans were ANGRY that Frazier didn't bother to take the maximum # of tickets to sell to UH fans. As one fan yelled to the TV cameras "He didn't even give us a chance!"
6) June Jones quitting UH was the last straw. With all those controversies, people got fed up with Herman Frazier. Because of that , Frazier was terminated from the Athletic Director position.
Now UH is looking for an Athletic Director and head football coach.
Gregg McMackin, who was last year's football defensive co-ordinator, has applied for the head coach position. I think he should be the one! Since most of the other assistant coaches say they'll stick around if McMackin is hired, UH should hire him!
The current players are accustomed to those assistant coaches, they already have a tradition of winning with those assistant coaches! So there's no need to hire any outsider to head football coach position.
This also make recruiting easier. High school football players will know, if McMackin is hired, that the same system that went 12-1 in 2007 will still be in place for the 2008 season.
Some say that Norm Chow should be head football coach. Chow was born & raised in Hawaii, he was an assistant coach at BYU & USC, and is an assistant at the NFL's Tennessee Titans.
However, hiring Chow will likely be expensive! He's making $ 2 million as offensive co-ordinator for the Titans. Imagine how much he'll get paid as head coach. People already complained about Jone's $800,000 a year contract signed in 2003.
I'd rather have Gregg McMackin.
7) Artie Wilson said on the radio that UH needs to spend $$$ to make $$$. Meaning, if UH spends big-money on a coach, they can make profits in the long-run.
Wilson mentions that Georgia pays it head football coach about $3 million a year, and the team brings in so much revenue that taxpayers don't have to pay any athletic department's expenses.
People whine about Jone's UH contract! But while UH football doesn't bring in as much $$$ as Georgia does, it still bring revenues in indirect ways.
For example, all the UH merchandise(including those obviously connected to athletics) . All revenues from such merchandise goes into UH's general fund. It doesn't go straight into the athletic department! So that $$$ goes into academics, maintenance, etc.
What drives sales of UH merchandise? The success of UH athletic teams drives sales of UH merchandise!
You see a lot more UH shirts, jerseys, etc being worn these days. It's not a coincidence. The successful 2007 football season has contributed so much to sales of merchandise, that $$$ goes into the general fund.
Plus, UH will get $4 million from the Sugar Bowl.
Do you think the UH general fund will get all that revenue by paying it's football coach $1 a year?
Be grateful that June Jones rejected a $1.5 million a year contract from the NFL's San Diego Chargers for the lower paying UH football contract in 1999.
8) June Jones did a great job at UH! While he moves on to a new challenge, I hope the next coach can continue the winning tradition that June Jones has started!
