June Jones was laughed out of the room. Even his most staunch supporters thought he was crazy.
The year was 1998. The University of Hawai‘i football team had just gone 0-12. Jones, then the interim head coach of the NFL's San Diego Chargers, was offered the permanent role. He declined.
Instead, he took a $250,000-a-year job to coach 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 getting the team back to bowl contention — it was about taking the program to new heights.
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which debuted in 1998, was the new frontier for college football's elite. In his first day on the job, Jones said it was just a matter of time until Hawai‘i would get there.
"All of us thought this man was a little bit eccentric, a little bit crazy," Rich Miano, a former player and coach under Jones at UH, told Aloha State Daily. "The press thought he was crazy. The fans thought he was crazy because you're taking a program that has been in 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 the five BCS bowl games at the time. Though he departed for SMU following the season, Jones left an indelible mark on the Islands. He remains the winningest head coach in Hawai‘i history at 76-41, as well as one of its most beloved.
After a battle with Stage 4 cancer, Jones died in hospice care in Oregon on Thursday morning. He was 73.
"It's really the state of Hawai‘i's loss," Miano said on Thursday. "He's a fighter. For 43 years he's been like a dad and like a mentor and somebody I totally looked up to in so many aspects of life. ... I've never seen anybody as a coach or an administrator make such a positive impact and stimulate this state like he did."
Born and raised in Portland, Ore., Jones began his college football playing career as a quarterback at Oregon from 1971 to 1972. He then transferred to the University of Hawai‘i, suiting up for the Rainbows in 1973 and 1974.
June Jones played for the University of Hawai‘i from 1973 to 1974. (Courtesy Hawai‘i Athletics) 
June Jones remains the winningest head coach in Hawai‘i football history at 76-41. (Courtesy Hawai‘i Athletics)
Though 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 scheme Jones would eventually revolutionize and make his own, using it to much success across his stops at the college and pro levels.
The first stop in Jones' coaching career brought him back to UH, where he was the team's quarterbacks coach in 1983. From there, he coached quarterbacks and receivers in the USFL, CFL and NFL. His first offensive coordinator job with an NFL team was with the Atlanta Falcons from 1991 to 1993. He was head coach for the Falcons from 1994 to 1996, going 19-29. After getting hired as quarterbacks coach for the Chargers in 1998, he was named interim coach halfway through the season. Then Hawai‘i came calling. After its winless 1998 season, UH went 9-4 in Jones' first year in Mānoa, finishing with a 9-4 mark that culminated with a 23-17 victory over Oregon State at the 1999 Oʻahu Bowl.
"In terms of taking a struggling program that was literally the worst in college football, then having the biggest turnaround in NCAA history. There's no other person that could convince the players," said Miano, who was hired by Jones as the secondary coach before the 1999 season. "They're basically the same players. There's no other person that could convince coaches."
Jones' impact spans generations. Five of his former players at Hawai‘i are on the coaching staff for the current team, including head coach Timmy Chang, who set the NCAA passing yardage record at 17,072 under the tutelage of Jones.
On Thursday, an emotional Chang was in tears and had to collect himself before answering a question about his former coach and mentor. It was also Jones who gave Chang his start in collegiate coaching at SMU as a graduate assistant in 2012.
"Playing is one thing, but when you're starting a new life, a new chapter, there's only so many doors that open for you," Chang said on Thursday. "June was that door for me. Not only as a player, but also as a coach, helping me and giving me an opportunity. What I get and love to do now, there's so many things that when I get to look back as a player and as a coach, how great he was, and how much that meant to me, a lot of the decisions I make and a lot of the base principles of who we are foundationally as a team come from there. I got to express that and talk about that with the team today, and that's what he is. He's a foundation builder, and I think that's where I really truly appreciate everything that he has done, not just for me, but for the school, the state, and football."
Hawai‘i 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 a stream of tears away before recalling some of the permanent marks his former coach left on the program. The green "H" and tapa trim logo the entire athletics department uses today was inspired by a rebrand spearheaded by Jones in 2000. So was the concept of all-black uniforms.
"All the lessons and the stuff that he taught us, all we're trying to do is just replicate it in this day and age," Brown said. "It's not easy. You know where college football is these days, but you can never forget the foundation. You can never forget, the base of everything, and that is Hawai‘i — true Hawaiʻi football. Let's go score some points. Let's go play some some rugged defense. Let's put some excitement and fire in the stands, and when you see that black jersey come running, you know it's something that was started from coach Jones, and you I'm very, very proud that this team is still carrying on that legacy."
Hawai‘i offensive line coach Derek Faavi was the center and bridge between the program's two most prolific quarterbacks of all time in Chang and Colt Brennan. He walked on out of Campbell High School in 2001 and became team MVP as a senior in 2005, thanks in large part to the faith Jones put in him. When Jones was present 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 of these memories in Aloha Stadium is because of you,'" Faavi said on Thursday. "When you strip all of those layers back and kind of think about everything that I went through with Hawai‘i football, it's because of him. It's a sad day. Sad day for all of us Warriors, and we love him."
Following his 2008-2014 stint at SMU, Jones briefly moved back to the Islands, where he was the offensive coordinator at Kapolei High School in 2016 and athletic director at Saint Louis in 2017. He returned to coaching as the head coach of the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats from 2017 to 2018, then went 5-0 as the head coach for the XFL's Houston Roughnecks in 2020 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic cut the season short.
Jones made one last run at the Hawai‘i job when it opened in 2022, turning down a two-year offer from then-athletics director David Matlin. Despite his displeasure in the amount of years he was offered, he vowed to be a resource for Chang as he adjusted to the gig.
"He always loved watching University of Hawai‘i football," Chang said. "He loved watching this team play. He was very complimentary. As the season went on this year, he always talked about how hard the boys played, and he said just keep sticking with it, keep staying with it, it'll come, and he was very encouraging along the whole way that I've been here, and so I love him, and we'll miss him."
Christian Shimabuku can be reached at christian@alohastatedaily.com.
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