June Jones leaving Hawaii

Facilities are so important to recruiting.

I can see where Jones is coming from.


Indiana football, pre-Hoeppner, was like that too. A change in attitude, and the building of some new facilities, and hopefully IU becomes preinnal bowl attendees.

Hawaii is even more behind the 8-ball


We never know the situation behind these things, but I sure as heck would've given Jones his own island (you want Maui? sure thing.) if I were admin. after the job he has done

This is really not that surprising. I've been to the islands twice over the past four years and their facilities are just an abomination. I think that after the Sugar Bowl Jones realized that he had probably taken the program as far as he could with what he has to work with.

Although Jones loves Hawai'i, I think that we have to remember that he is something of a prophet type coach. A big part of his M.O as a football coach is spreading the gospel of the Run-N-Shoot. Although he will never say it out loud, part of what makes him tick is a desire to demonstrate to all that you can win at the highest levels with this system. SMU is hardly a great program, but they lots of things that Hawai'i never will - money and location. SMU has the money to build facilities that are comprable to any of the major BCS schools. In terms of cash on hand they are in a much better position than any of the other Conference USA schools; moveover, because of their cash and location, they are probably the one Conference USA school that with a few years of success could make a legit bid to move into a bigger conference.

I don't want to analyze this too much, but I also think that the loss to Georgia revealed some things to Jones about the type of athletes that they are able to recruit to the islands. As has been noted in previous posts, the most glaring problems were along the line. Although they are solid, well-coached group, they lack the athleticism of Texas-Tech's oline. In order to kick your splits out like Tech does and widen the corner you need to have access to real athletes. Hawai's tackles look more like guards. Texas Tech essentially plays with four tackles and one guard, which is the type of athlete you need if you are going to do what they do with their protections. On the islands your just not going to get that type of athlete.

Most big programs will not take a chance on a guy like Jones. That's part of the reason, I believe, that Jones would want to go to SMU. Established programs will not take a chance on something that is perceived as heretical as the Run-N-Shoot. Even in the new era of the spread, the Run-N-Shoot is perceived by many of the establishment as being to loosy-goosey and flimsy. All they will do is point to the Sugar Bowl. Naturally, this is short sighted, but its the reality. Rodriguez and Myer are appealing to bigger schools because although they preach the spread, they are nonetheless committed to running the football. Even the pure triple option as practiced by Paul Johnson is more palatable to most of the football establishment because it is predicated upon running the ball. Football administrators listen to the establishment are terrified by the possibility of debacles like the Sugar Bowl in which a teams philosophy by its very nature exposes all of its deficiencies.

Why do you think that Mike Leach never gets serious consideration from bigger schools whenever there is an opening. Similar to Jones, Leach is a prophet whose gospels are to the establishment akin to the apocryphal gnostic texts.

For Jones, losing the way they did in the Sugar Bowl was similar to Houston's crushing defeat during the Jenkins era on ESPN versus the University of Miami. Just when the offense had the opportunity to become legitimate in the eyes of mainstream America it fell short, not because of scheme, but deficiencies in talent.

I think one of the major problems was his recruiting budget, his budget was ridiculously low, like 50,000 compared to BCS schools of like 2 to 2.5 milliion. With a low budget like that you can't expect to be able to do the kind of recruiting you need to be able to do. You can not compare to the BCS schools so therefore you are getting a much lesser athlete, for the most part!

Not sure if he is interested, but the defensive coordinator, Greg McMackin is a very logical choice to be the head coach. Interestingly enough he is a run and shoot coach with very close ties to Mouse Davis. Greg would definately keep the Run and Shoot offense and if you look at the success Hawaii had in the first year June was the coach and this past season, those were the only 2 years Coach McMackin was the Defensive Coordinator - He also has an NFL pedigree and is an outstanding Junior College recruiter, which will attract the type of players they will need to sustain their success.

Oh yeah, hear's the person who the Administration chose to keep (sniveling Athletic Director Herman Frazier who's responsible of screwing up their baseball, swimming, and now football programs):

Someone posted a part of Jones' resignation letter on
www.ncaabbs.com/forums/....php?tid=272780 .

"It is been very hard the last few days thinking about the decision to leave a place that I love greatly -- but you and I have talked many times about things that have concerned me -- None of those things that concerned me were addressed in this offer...

I guess all I can say is that the way my contract talks have been handled, is kind of the reason I am tired and why I just need to go. He says it is a generous offer. But, it would have meant a lot to me, had this offer come after the bowl game last year or even before the season -- or had it come to me as late as the Washington game it would have said to me 'thanks June for a job well done'

There would have been no negotiating -- I probably would have signed it and never let it get to this point.

Hawaii will always have my heart and that is why this is so hard for me -- but just the fact I am going to get on that plane to Dallas says it all.

I do not want to go -- believe me -- but it is time to go. Mahalo, June."

In his letter, Jones also lists five people as possible replacements: Kevin Gilbride, Dick Tomey, Duane Akina, Norm Chow and Cal Lee.

Here's some more interesting comments about Frazier (above the post with Jones' letter). If this is the case, I'm going to assume that the Hawaii guys will be LIVID!!!

Glad he threw the AD under the bus.
They have done nothing to help him. Hawaiian airlines was going to donate seats to bring kids to HNL on trips, but the ath dept squashed that deal for reasons they didn't explain to his satisfaction.
Their facilities are awful.
They would not even give him paint to spruce up his offices/building last year. They told him to take it out of his FB budget. This from an acquaintance of mine who is a UH student trainer.