June Jones made fun of the play. Even his staunchest supporters considered him crazy.
It was 1998. The University of Hawaii football team had just gone 0-12. Jones, then the interim head coach of the NFL’s San Diego Chargers, was offered the permanent job. He refused.
Instead, he took a $250,000-a-year job coaching the Rainbow Warriors, sacrificing millions to take over a team that lost more than every other Division I football team in the country in 1998. His vision in taking over wasn’t just to get the team back to bowling — it was to take the program to new heights.
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which debuted in 1998, was the new frontier for college football’s elite. On his first day on the job, Jones said it was only a matter of time before Hawaii got there.
“We all thought this man was a little eccentric, a little crazy,” Rich Miano, Jones’ former player and coach at UH, told the Aloha State Daily. “The press thought he was crazy. The fans thought he was crazy because you follow a program that has been at the bottom of college football thinking about BCS games and being great.”
In less than a decade, Jones’ bold claim became reality. Less than a decade after going 0-12, Hawai’i went a perfect 12-0 during the 2007 regular season, earning a bid to the Sugar Bowl, one of five BCS bowl games at the time. Although he left for SMU after the season, Jones left an indelible mark on the Isles. He remains the winningest head coach in Hawaii history at 76-41, as well as one of the most beloved.
After a battle with stage 4 cancer, Jones died Thursday morning at an Oregon hospice center. He was 73 years old.
“It really is Hawaii’s lost state,” Miano said Thursday. “He’s a fighter. For 43 years, he’s been like a father and like a mentor and someone that I totally admire in so many aspects of life. … I’ve never seen anyone as a coach or an administrator have such a positive impact and boost this state like he has.”
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Jones began his college football playing career as a quarterback at Oregon from 1971 to 1972. He then transferred to the University of Hawaii, where he joined the Rainbows in 1973 and 1974.
June Jones played for the University of Hawaii from 1973 to 1974. (Courtesy of Hawai’i Athletics) 
June Jones remains the winningest head coach in Hawaiian soccer history with 76-41. (Courtesy of Hawai‘i Athletics)
Although he transferred to Portland State for the 1975 and 1976 seasons, it was there that he was first introduced to the run and shoot offense by Mouse Davis – a system that Jones would eventually revolutionize and make his own, using it with great success during his stops at the college and professional levels.
The first stop in Jones’ coaching career took him back to UH, where he served as the team’s quarterbacks coach in 1983. From there, he coached quarterbacks and wide receivers in the USFL, CFL and NFL. His first offensive coordinator position on an NFL team was with the Atlanta Falcons from 1991 to 1993. He was head coach of the Falcons from 1994 to 1996, going 19-29. After being hired as the Chargers’ quarterbacks coach in 1998, he was named interim coach midway through the season. Then Hawai’i came calling. After its winless season in 1998, UH went 9-4 in Jones’ first year at Mānoa, finishing with a 9-4 mark that culminated with a 23-17 victory over Oregon State in the 1999 O’ahu Bowl.
“In terms of going through a struggling program that was literally the worst in college football and then having the greatest turnaround in NCAA history. Nobody else could convince the players,” said Miano, who was hired by Jones as secondary coach before the 1999 season. “They’re basically the same players. Nobody else could convince the coaches.”
Jones’ impact spans generations. Five of his former players at Hawai’i are on the current team’s coaching staff, including head coach Timmy Chang, who set the NCAA passing yardage record at 17,072 under Jones’ tutelage.
On Thursday, an emotional Chang was in tears and had to compose himself before answering a question about his former coach and mentor. It was also Jones who gave Chang his collegiate coaching start at SMU as a graduate assistant in 2012.
“Acting is one thing, but when you start a new life, a new chapter, there are only so many doors that open for you,” Chang said Thursday. “June was that door for me. Not only as a player, but as a coach, he helped me and gave me an opportunity. What I get and I love doing now, there’s so much that when I look back as a player and as a coach, how great he was and how much that meant to me, a lot of decisions that I make and a lot of the fundamentals of who we fundamentally are as a team come from there I was able to express it and talk about it with the team today, and that’s what he is. He’s a foundation builder, and I think that’s where I really appreciate everything he’s done, not just for me, but for the school, the state and football.
Hawaii associate head coach Chris Brown was the first player to sign under Jones in 1999. When it was his turn to speak about Jones on Thursday, he too wiped away a stream of tears before recalling some of the permanent marks his former coach left on the program. The green “H” logo and tapa trim that the entire athletic department uses today was inspired by a rebranding led by Jones in 2000. So was the concept of all-black uniforms.
“All the lessons and everything he taught us, all we’re trying to do is just replicate them in our time,” Brown said. “It’s not easy. You know where college football is these days, but you can never forget the foundations. You can never forget the foundation of everything, and that’s Hawai’i – real Hawaiian football. Let’s go score some points. Let’s go play some tough defense. Let’s put some excitement and fire in the stands, and when you see that black jersey running, you know it’s something that was started by Coach Jones, and you, I’m very, very proud that this team is I still perpetuate this legacy.
Hawaii offensive line coach Derek Faavi was the center and bridge between the program’s two most prolific quarterbacks of all time, Chang and Colt Brennan. He left Campbell High School in 2001 and became the team’s MVP as a senior in 2005, thanks in large part to the trust Jones placed in him. When Jones was in attendance at a live demolition event at Aloha Stadium in April, Faavi approached his former coach and thanked him for all the memories.
“I said, ‘Coach, all these memories at Aloha Stadium are because of you,’” Faavi said Thursday. “When you peel back all those layers and think about everything I’ve been through with Hawaiian football, it’s because of him. It’s a sad day. Sad day for all of us Warriors, and we love him.”
After his time at SMU from 2008 to 2014, Jones briefly returned to the Isles, where he served as offensive coordinator at Kapolei High School in 2016 and athletic director at Saint Louis in 2017. He returned to coaching as head coach of the CFL’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats from 2017 to 2018, then went 5-0 as as head coach of the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks in 2020 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut the season short.
Jones made one last attempt at the Hawaii job when it opened in 2022, turning down a two-year offer from then-athletic director David Matlin. Despite his dissatisfaction with the number of years he was offered, he vowed to be a resource to Chang as he adjusted to the position.
“He always loved watching University of Hawaii football,” Chang said. “He loved watching that team play. He was very complimentary. As the season went on this year, he always talked about how hard the boys were playing, and he said to keep sticking with it, stick with it, it will come, and he was very encouraging throughout my time here, so I love him, and he will be missed.”
Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
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