Pros vs. Joes No. 7: If June Jones isn’t coaching in the XFL next year, start an investigation
June Jones
June Sheldon Jones III may be 69, but his spirit is 39.
The Grant High graduate is a football coaching lifer, and there is plenty of life in him yet.
When we last saw Jones on a sideline, it was as head coach of the XFL Houston Roughnecks. When the spring pro league went dark due to COVID in April 2020, the Roughnecks were 5-0.
“Second undefeated team in pro football history behind the (1972 Miami) Dolphins,” Jones told me at the time.
Jones even quipped that he was going to buy championship rings for each of his players. I asked him Friday night: Has he done it yet?
“It’s funny you ask that,” Jones said from his home in Honolulu. “I’m going to. I’m going to design them for the coaches and the players. Just the other day, I contacted the ring guy to find out what the expense was. (It’s $550 a pop). As soon as we get going again, I’ll do it.”
The XFL is getting ready to crank it up again during the spring of 2023, partnered for the first time with the NFL. The Vince McMahon-driven was purchased out of bankruptcy by a group that included Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for about $5 million in August 2020. Details about the 2023 season — including naming of the head coaches of the eight teams — are expected to be released next week.
Though there is nothing official, Jones has been given reason to believe he will be coaching the Roughnecks again. If he’s not, an investigation should take place. One of the game’s most fertile offensive minds, Jones shouldn’t have any more proving to do.
“I would look forward to doing it again,” he said Friday night from his home in Honolulu. “We had the best team (in 2020). We would have won the damn thing if we had finished the season. Now it’s starting all over from scratch again.”
To prepare for what he hopes is ahead, Jones has been watching hours of game video. He’s not focusing on defensive linemen.
“You can’t win unless you have the right quarterback,” he says. “I’ve been watching (video of) a lot of quarterbacks. I have a couple in mind.”
Jones’ resume is as complete and well-rounded as any football coach this side of Mike Riley. The former Portland State and NFL quarterback (Atlanta Falcons 1977-81) is perhaps the foremost disciple of Mouse Davis’ wide-open run-and-shoot offense. June’s 40-year coaching career includes two stints as an NFL head coach (Atlanta 1994-96 and San Diego 1998) and 16 years as a Division I college head coach, including a glorious nine-year run at Hawaii in which his teams went 76-41 overall and 47-24 in Western Athletic Conference action. Jones also served as offensive coordinator under Davis with the Denver Gold of the USFL in 1985.
Prior to his XFL gig, Jones was head coach of the CFL Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2017 and ’18, his first real coaching job since resigning at Southern Methodist during the 2014 season. Jones took over the Tiger-Cats when they were 0-5 in ’17 and went 14-9 over two seasons, getting them to the Eastern Conference finals in ’18.
It appeared that Jones might be getting another term as Hawaii’s head coach after Todd Graham’s resignation in January. Athletic director David Matlin offered Jones the job, but with stipulations: The contract would be for only two years (the offer was later lengthened to three).
“(Matlin) is a little guy with a little man’s syndrome,” Jones told me. “I said, ‘Dave, How am I going to convince recruits to come here on a two-year contract?’ There are high school kids who want to know you’ll be there for four years.
“I told him, ‘I’ll do it for free, but I want a five-year contract. If I do what I say I’m going to do in the first three (years), you can pay me for years four and five.’ ”
Jones says Matlin told him he couldn’t hire Rich Miano, who played 10 years in the NFL as a safety, including a year under Jones in Atlanta, then coached with Jones during his entire tenure at Hawaii. In recent years, Miano had worked as analyst on the Warriors’ radio network.
“He criticized (Graham) and put (Matlin) on edge all the time,” Jones says.
Jones says Matlin also told him he had to hire Timmy Chang, who wound up getting the head job. Chang, 40, was a record-setting quarterback at Hawaii under Jones. He was wide receivers coach at Nevada last season.
“I would have hired Timmy had I gotten the job,” Jones says. “He’s one of my guys. But I told Dave, ‘You’re not telling me who is on my staff.’ No coach would take that.”
Matlin wanted Jones to hire Chang as his in-waiting successor, “which I have no problem with,” Jones says. “But they’re not going to tell me who I have to hire.”
Jones wants to make it clear he has a good relationship with Chang.
“I’m going to support Timmy,” he says. “I met with him for 2 1/2 hours on Sunday, helping him to get going. I want him to do well.
“But I’m going to be honest with you. After thinking about it, (not getting the job) is a blessing in disguise. It’s going to be a very hard turnaround. They lost 20 players — 13 starters — off a (6-7) team. That’s going to be hard to deal with.”
Jones’ nine-year reign at Hawaii ended with a flourish. In 2006 and ’07, the Rainbow Warriors went a combined 23-4 behind quarterback Colt Brennan, who as a junior threw for 5,549 yards and 58 touchdowns (72.6 completion percentage) with 12 interceptions. Brennan also ran for 366 yards and five TDs. As a senior, he threw for 38 TDs with 17 picks and finished third in Heisman Trophy balloting as the Warriors went 12-0 before losing to Matthew Stafford and No. 2-ranked Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
“I’ve never seen a quarterback at any level play like Colt did those two seasons,” Jones says. “That’s including all the NFL guys I coached (among them, Hall of Famers Jim Kelly and Warren Moon, plus Chris Miller and Jeff George). If you look at all of the highlights, no quarterback has ever played that well.”
Brennan never played a down in a regular-season game in the NFL. In ensuing years, he dealt with legal issues and drug problems. Last May, he died of an apparent drug overdose at age 37. Last week, results of the autopsy showed he was suffering from stage 1 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
“We’re going to have a paddle-out to spread his ashes (in the ocean) on March 20,” Jones says. “It’s going to be quite an event here.”
Jones says Brennan’s death hit Hawaiians as did the death of Eddie Aikau in 1978. Aikau was a beloved lifeguard who saved more than 500 people on his surfboard. He died at age 31 trying to get help for a capsized boat. The catch phrase when people talk about Aikau is “Eddie Would Go.”
“With Colt, it’s “Colt Would Throw,’ ” Jones says. “We’re tying them together. They’re probably the two biggest names in Hawaiian history.”
Since his time playing for Davis at Portland State in 1975 and ’76, Jones has been an advocate and administrator of the run-and-shoot. Does he still follow the same tenets of the offense today that he did more than 45 years ago?
“Yes,” he says, “but every year, you update.”
Jones had a splendid mentor in that regard in Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh, the Godfather of the West Coast offense.
“The last 10 years or so of Bill’s life, he visited Hawaii every year,” Jones says. “He loved the islands. We’d play golf, go to dinner almost every night for a couple of months. Bill kept telling me, ‘June, you have to keep tweaking what you do or the defenses will catch up to you.’
“I’ve tried to do that through my career. Bill showed me a lot of things from the West Coast offense. We’d sit there for hours and he’d give me some ideas on how to improve the stuff I was doing. What I run now is a lot of the same stuff I did with Mouse, but I’ve added so much of Bill Walsh through the years.”
Jones is at a happy time in his life. Divorced to his wife, Diane, in 2002, they remarried in 2017 and are still together. Their son, June IV, is an airline pilot who lives in Honolulu. Their youngest daughter, Niki Jones, is an event planner in San Diego. The other two daughters, Kelli Moir and Jenni Meskel, run a hair salon in Gresham. Together, they have given June and Diane a run of grandchildren — 10 girls and a boy. “I’m surrounded by women,” he says with a chuckle.
The entire Jones clan: daughter Nikki, June, wife Diane, daughters Kelli and Jenni, son June IV (courtesy June Jones)
Jones is an all-sports enthusiast who will need no help filling out his bracket in the “Pros vs. Joes” competition picking winners in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. I’ll go out on a limb and designate him as one of the favorites to claim the top prize in our contest at kerryeggers.com.
Perhaps the most important question I asked Jones during our conversation: Where did the name “June” originate?
“When I was a kid, I wondered that, too,” he says. “I asked my grandfather (June Jones Sr.). He said my great grandfather was a rancher in Louisville. He had horses. His best friend had a racehorse. My great grandfather had a racehorse. They made a deal. They raced the two thoroughbreds. The winner got to name the next child of the other. My great grandfather lost the race. His friend said, ‘If you have a boy, you’re going to your name him ‘June.’ ”
Did Jones ever get razzed by schoolmates about it?
“Always,” Jones says, quickly amending his answer. “Because I was a top athlete, I didn’t take a lot of shit. Funny, though, I have found only one other guy named ‘June’ spelled the same way — June Jermany.”
Jermany, a former three-sport athlete at Roosevelt High, was a right-handed pitcher who threw for the University of Washington and the Portland Mavericks during his career.
“When I was with the Falcons, I’d do offseason camps for kids in Portland,” Jones says. “I found him and introduced myself and had him talk to the kids at Grant High one year.”
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