Seeing Rainbows : No Man Is an Island, but June Jones Enjoys the Challenge of Reviving Hapless Hawaii

By ROBYN NORWOOD

Sept. 3, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

HONOLULU — Paradise can be hell.

Or at least it sometimes must seem that way to Hawaii’s football players, losers of 18 consecutive games. That’s why it has been so hard for people to understand why June Jones, an NFL head coach with the Atlanta Falcons and San Diego Chargers, would take the Hawaii coaching job and the headaches that accompany it.

Jones has a ready answer for that.

“If it wasn’t Hawaii, I wouldn’t have come back,” he said. “Hawaii was a job I wanted to do for a long time. It was not just a quick decision. I was married here, two of my children were born here, so this was almost my second home.”

Jones played for Hawaii in 1974, and started his coaching career at the school in 1983 as the quarterback coach under Dick Tomey, now at Arizona.

When Hawaii called last year, Jones was the interim coach of the Chargers, having replaced Kevin Gilbride at midseason.

The Chargers made an effort to keep him before hiring Mike Riley, but Jones--who was 3-7 with the Chargers and 19-29 with the Falcons--was headed for the islands.

“It’s something I’ve thought about for 20 to 25 years, since I had first been here,” said Jones, who had kept a condominium in Hawaii for many years. “Since I got into coaching, it was something I’ve wanted to do. It’s a great place to live and raise a family. People are so supportive.

“This is Hawaii’s team, not just the university’s team.”

People like to call Hawaii football the only game in town.

It’s the only game in thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.

But even though Hawaii’s team hasn’t been very good lately, the Rainbows were ranked in the Associated Press poll as recently as 1992, when they were 20th after beating Illinois in the Holiday Bowl, and the state produces plenty of players.

Denver Bronco kicker Jason Elam and defensive lineman Maa Tanuvasa, both former Rainbows, have won two Super Bowls.

The Noga brothers--Falaniko, Pete and Al--all made it to the NFL as defensive players. Jesse Sapolu, the former San Francisco 49er lineman, was once a Rainbow Warrior.

The good old days started under Tomey, who had a 9-2 team in 1981. Bob Wagner followed Tomey as coach in 1987, and the 1989 team was ranked in the top 25 for five weeks.

In 1992, Hawaii was 11-2 and shared the Western Athletic Conference championship.

And three times under Wagner, the Rainbows beat nationally ranked Brigham Young--once on the day BYU quarterback Ty Detmer won the Heisman Trophy in 1990.

But Wagner was fired in 1995 after posting 3-8-1 and 4-8 seasons, and after complaining about academic requirements and budget restraints brought on by a recession caused by declining Asian tourism.

His successor, Fred vonAppen, went 5-31 in three seasons and won only two WAC games.

Nor did he endear himself to the Rainbows’ self-proclaimed No. 1 fan, Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, when he didn’t show at a football fund-raiser the governor hosted after vonAppen had complained about the team’s budget.

And now Hawaii is part of what’s left of the WAC since the football powers defected.

But Jones has some advantages the last couple of coaches didn’t have: The school has spent $2 million on the weight room, locker room and field, and academic standards have been loosened.

The problem these days is that too many of Hawaii’s best players are playing on the mainland.

Arizona--coached by Tomey--has seven Hawaiians on the roster of its 15th-ranked team. Three starters on the Arizona offensive or defensive lines are from Hawaii, and Wagner, the architect of so much of Hawaii’s success, is an Arizona assistant.

The lesson is, if Hawaii doesn’t sign its own players, somebody else will.

“You’ve got to recruit the locals,” said USC defensive coordinator Bill Young, who was interviewed by Hawaii Athletic Director Hugh Yoshida for the job last year in Southern California but wasn’t even interested enough to travel to Hawaii and take a look.

“It’s a tough job,” Young said. “I was surprised Coach Jones decided to do that.”

Others closer to him weren’t, because they understand Jones looks at his career a little differently, and they know that while he was in San Diego, his wife, Diane--a survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma--was still in Georgia with three of their four children.

After that, reviving Hawaii football doesn’t seem like such a monumental task, and Jones sees it as a retirement job--one he can keep for 20 years if he gets it going in the next three or four.

To do that, he’ll have to keep home-grown players home--and bring mainland players to the islands. His roster lists 48 Californians, but you can bet that a lot of other players who never had any intention of signing enjoyed the recruiting visit.

“When you recruit players from other places, you’ve got to watch out for the ones who just want to take the trip on you,” Young said. “You only get 50.”

That sort of attitude among players, on a much larger scale in pro football, seems to be part of what brought Jones back to college coaching.

“Just comparing it to the pro game right now, the college game is like the pro game was when I was playing,” Jones said.

“The players are hungry. They listen. They try to do it the way you tell them.

“But free agency has changed pro football. You have to be a little bit more of a psychologist now than a coach. Everybody’s got an answer. Guys don’t want to do it the way you want to do it. They think they have a better way because they’re getting paid so much money. They don’t listen as well.”

He never mentioned Ryan Leaf, but he didn’t have to.

“I think the exciting thing about college kids is, they listen,” Jones said. “They want to know. They try to do it the way you ask them to do it. And at the same time, with the one-on-one relationship with a younger player, I think you can impact their life maybe a little more than you can on the pro level. And I think that’s basically the reason a lot of coaches got into coaching anyway, to be able to impact the life of one of the players, not just on the field but off the field.”

For Hawaii, there’s been enough to deal with just on the field.

“I don’t feel pressure,” Jones said. “The people of Hawaii have been great. They know this is not going to happen overnight. They know it’s a process of getting it turned around. The governor has given me great support since I’ve been here. We’ve played golf two or three times.

“Everybody’s a football fan here. That’s what makes this job a little more unique than other college jobs. It’s the only game in town.

“UH football is the only game the people of Hawaii have.”

USC at HAWAII

9:30 p.m. Saturday, FSW2

Keeping Up With Jones

A closer look at first-year Hawaii Coach June Jones:

BACKGROUND

* Born: Feb. 19, 1953

* Hometown: Portland, Ore.

* Family: Wife Diane, four children.

* Record with San Diego Chargers: 3-7.

* Record with Atlanta Falcons: 19-29.