HONOLULU — June Jones, the coach whose pass-happy run-and-shoot teams rewrote record books at Hawaii and helped revive SMU, died Thursday. He was 73.
The University of Hawaii, where Jones once played quarterback and later coached from 1999 through 2007, confirmed his death. He had entered hospice care two weeks earlier after health problems earlier in the year.
Jones learned the run-and-shoot as a player under offensive coordinator Mouse Davis and carried it through the USFL and CFL before the Atlanta Falcons hired him to lead the team, a job he held from 1994 to 1996. As a player he had signed with Atlanta as an undrafted free agent and spent four seasons there backing up Steve Bartkowski. In 1998 he finished the season as interim head coach of the Chargers in San Diego.
His name was made in Honolulu. Jones took over a Hawaii program riding an 18-game losing streak and went 9-4 in his first year with a share of the WAC title, at the time the biggest one-season turnaround in the sport. That season earned him national coach of the year honors.
His offenses produced Timmy Chang, who left school as the career passing leader in major college football and now coaches Hawaii, and the late Colt Brennan. The 2007 team opened 12-0 and reached the Sugar Bowl, the school’s first BCS game, where it lost to Georgia.
Jones went 76-41 at Hawaii, then moved to SMU, which had just finished 1-11. By his second season the Mustangs posted their first winning record in 12 years, and he stayed through 2014.
He later coached the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the CFL and the Houston Roughnecks in the XFL. Across his career he won two WAC titles and finished 112-84 in college and 22-36 in the NFL.
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