JJ talks about SMU

HSB Note: "Mark Wangrin, a freelance writer who has covered the national college football scene for more than two decades, sat down with Jones recently in the coach's office on the idyllic Dallas campus. The result is a package of exclusive stories in the Star-Bulletin today and tomorrow. It also includes photos of Jones and the assistant coaches who went with him from the Warriors to the Mustangs."

About how JJ was during his interview, Mark Wangrin said:
"He was very open and engaging. He seems very happy." (HSB)

HSB Note: "It was 70 degrees and sunny in Dallas on Jan. 7, the day that Jones was introduced as SMU coach. Some omen. Then the first day of spring practice gets snowed out. So does the second. The next week a practice gets washed out by a rainstorm of near-biblical proportions. The only question seemingly then facing Jones was when the locusts would arrive.

In the grand scheme of things, all that was incidental, simply a nuisance. The former Hawaii coach's new mission -- which is to revive a team that went 1-11 last year, was once wiped out by the NCAA's infamous Death Penalty and has had only one winning season in the last 19 -- wasn't going to be derailed so easily. Even if it is a far cry from what Jones gave up -- being 12-1, BCS-worthy and deified, up there close to Kane, Ku and Lono."

HSB Note: "Paradise lost? Depends on your point of view. For the 55-year-old Jones, this is nirvana. This is the ideal place for a guy who nearly died in a horrific car crash in 2001; who's using the run-and shoot, an offense most football cognoscenti think is part dinosaur, part gimmick; and, who's trying to revive a program that didn't even play for two years in the late 1980s because of the severest sanctions the NCAA has ever handed down. It's a guy given up for dead, using an offense given up for dead trying to breathe life into a football program given up for dead. In other words, it's perfect."

HSB Note: "Eric Dickerson sounded almost apologetic, as if he was bound by duty to inquire to his old friend in early December if he'd consider entering the bottomless pit that was SMU football. But he just had to ask."

Eric Dickerson told SMU AD Steve Orsini that:
"I run with Marcus Allen, Ronnie Lott, all those SC guys. They're killing me. They keep saying, 'What'd the Mustangs do today?' " (HSB)

HSB Note: "Dickerson wanted a better answer than the one he had been stuck with the last 20 years. So, June, Dickerson began, you think maybe you'd be interested in the SMU job? The answer was a quick yes. But it came with a caveat. Hawaii was preparing for the Sugar Bowl against Georgia, its first ever BCS appearance, and if word got out Jones was trolling the waters ... well, we'll talk later.

Hawaii lost the Sugar Bowl to a more talented Georgia team, 41-10. Word had leaked that Jones was being wooed. A whole state mobilized to keep Jones, but they didn't know in his heart he'd already decided. He didn't need money, a new locker room, a swankier office, more trinkets and baubles. June Jones, as always, wanted a challenge. SMU offered him just that."

HSB Note: "When Bennett's contract was not renewed on Oct. 28, Orsini went looking for the next new savior. It figured to come from the usual suspects -- an up-and-coming young coach trying to make a name or a once-successful, recently fired coach trying to recapture glory. Orsini waited 71 days to make a hire. For 71 days alums fretted, media criticized, recruits were puzzled. Orsini, thanks to a call from Dickerson, knew something nobody else did. Something even he found hard to believe."

About how he hadn't even had JJ on his list of realistic candidates for coach, Orsini said:
"The day we told Phil we weren't renewing his contract, I had drawn up a list. I knew who we could target; I knew who we could end up with. June Jones wasn't on that list." (HSB)

HSB Note: "Gary Cogill's eyes are weary from previewing dozens of films for an upcoming festival in Dallas. So, wearing a black wool overcoat and low-top white Chuck Taylor's, the celebrated movie critic for Dallas TV station WFAA goes for a change of scenery. He heads down the block to SMU's practice field, where his old high school teammate, June Jones, is trying for his own Hollywood ending.

Cogill watches the fast movement, no-time-to-waste attitude that permeates the practice and recalls how June succeeded him as class president at Ulysses S. Grant High School in Portland, Ore.; how he caught a no-hitter June threw and somehow still lost in PONY League baseball; how popular and athletically gifted his former classmate was -- and still is."

Asked how he would pitch a movie about JJ, Cogill said:
"It hasn't been written. Think about it. If you could've hired any coach to turn it around, you would have hired June. It's a rock star hire." (HSB)

HSB Note: "On the surface, though, it's Springsteen playing the local VFW Post. Why SMU? Why now? Why not the pros? Why not stay at Hawaii, keep winning big, and join the pantheon of island gods and goddesses? In a world of increasing virtual reality, why risk virtual immortality?"

Asked why he left UH for SMU, JJ said:
"I think because I've had a lot of adversity, I think I know how to deal with it. I can turn things around." (HSB)

About how his SMU rebuilding project is like the previous jobs he has taken, JJ said:
"Every position I've been in has been similar to this situation. When we put our offense in Canada, the Toronto Argonauts were 2-14. The next year we went to the Grey Cup. In the USFL it was the same thing -- an expansion team and we win 13 games and go to the playoffs. Then with the (Houston) Oilers, they hadn't won in 10 years, and we went to the playoffs the first year. I went to Detroit and we're in the (NFC) championship game in three years." (HSB)

About another reason why rebuilding a program appeals to him, JJ said:
"When you're at Ohio State or Michigan or Georgia or someplace like that, when you try something different they say, 'That's not the way so-and-so did it.' I like going to places you can do different. At SMU, they were 1-11. Different is good." (HSB)

Enthusiastic about the hiring of JJ, SMU booster Gerald Ford said:
"For those of us long-suffering supporters of SMU football who believe in the school, as much as we've hoped it would happen before, we're enthusiastic he can make it happen. This is a low-risk proposition. At this time, I don't think there's anybody better for SMU." (HSB)

HSB Note: "The Ponies are counting on it. They've got the renovated stadium, two large practice fields, state-of-the-art locker rooms, offices and facilities."

About how they have the facilities needed to win, Orsini said:
"We're not on our hands and knees begging, because we believe we have the pieces together. Maybe the layman can't see that. But I believe June Jones is the one who can put it all together." (HSB)

HSB Note: "So far so good. Fundraising is already up 33 percent and season tickets, mired around 4,000 last year, are up almost 45 percent, Orsini said. On the field, Jones said the team's stronger than he expected at every position except quarterback, but that figures to change if 2007 starter Justin Willis returns from a disciplinary suspension that cost him the spring and new recruit Bo Levi Mitchell from Katy, Texas, is as good as advertised. Once upon a time, the Mustangs battled the Cowboys for headlines in the Dallas newspapers. Now, they're lucky to get a couple of inside stories a week. Jones is doing his best glad-handing, chamber-of-commerce schmoozing to change that. He wore wireless microphones for all four major Metropolis television stations on the first day of spring ball -- though they've returned only sparingly since --- and was planning to hit the rubber-chicken circuit full time after yesterday's spring game."

About how he has been very accommodating to the Dallas media, JJ said:
"The vision is to become the big story. If we win they will come. They've come before." (HSB)

About how hiring JJ gave them a buzz, Orsini said:
"His hiring was the 'wow' factor we were trying for. You know, the 'SMU hired June Jones? How can that be?' " (HSB)

HSB Note: "For years, June Jones kept a purple orchid in his Manoa office, a gift from close friend Wesley Park when he took over the Hawaii program. For nine years, it, like the Warriors program, grew and prospered. It never withered. It kept pace. When Jones left for SMU everything got packed up. Framed photos of Clint Eastwood and Pete Rose. A model outrigger canoe. A line of five stone elephants. Proclamations from the Governor. A letter from President Bush. A toy Harley Davidson motorcycle. It was all duly packed, all duly delivered. The orchid stayed behind. Weeks into Jones' tenure at SMU, Park sent him a replacement. It's small but hardy, with plenty of room to grow. It sits on an end table, next to a window in the SMU head coach's office."