HONOLULU — June Jones declined an offer to return as head coach of the University of Hawaii football program on Friday afternoon.
UH athletic director David Matlin put out a statement acknowledging widespread community support for Jones’ return but noted that a succession plan for Jones was a sticking point.
The specifics of the offer for the 68-year-old Jones, the winningest coach in program history at 76-41, were not immediately known, but Jones tweeted a little after 6 p.m. that it was only a two-year contract offer.
Jones said: "I am still interested in this job for the people of Hawaii but the job offered to me today there is no way I could accept with the conditions offered me ...No coach in their right mind would accept!"
He continued: "Dictating who can be on my staff and only 2 year contract..What recruit would come if I was here for 2 years???..this has never been about money-but it is about giving me the ability to turn our program around and not have people tell me who is on my staff or how to coach my team".
Matlin’s statement read: “We met with Coach Jones earlier today and, unfortunately, could not come to terms with an agreement for him to be our next football coach. I understand that there has been a lot of support for Coach Jones this past week but he has declined our offer. I respect his decision and we need to move forward in our search. At the end of the day we couldn’t agree on a succession plan that I felt was important for our student-athletes and supporters of Rainbow Warrior football. We are working tirelessly to get a head coach on board to lead our program and are fully aware of the sensitivity to national signing day on Feb. 2.”
The other known leading candidates for the job as of Friday were former UH quarterback Timmy Chang and former offensive coordinator Brian Smith.
Chang is a receivers coach at Colorado State and Smith served the 2021 season as offensive coordinator at Washington State.
Less than a week after Todd Graham resigned amid controversy about his treatment of his players, many of whom left the program for the NCAA transfer portal, Jones emerged as a leading candidate to fix a broken program for the second time in his career.
As of Friday morning, he looked to be close to a lock. The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported that Jones was “close to becoming the head coach” again.
Jones is widely remembered locally for leading UH football out of the wilderness in the late 1990s and to the Sugar Bowl following the undefeated 2007 regular season.
Rich Miano, who took himself out of the running for the job to back Jones, was in play to be the associate head coach. Chang was in discussion to be Jones’ offensive coordinator.
When Jones, an ex-NFL head coach and former UH quarterback, took the reins in 1999, UH was coming off its lowest point: an 0-12 season under Fred von Appen. Jones and his staff oversaw one of the biggest turnarounds in NCAA history, to 9-4, including a win over Oregon State in the Oahu Bowl.
Jones is synonymous with the run-and-shoot style of pass-happy offense, under which quarterbacks like Chang, Nick Rolovich and Colt Brennan flourished.
By 2007, after finding success recruiting locally and taking fliers on Mainland players with checkered pasts, including Brennan, Jones led the football program to its pinnacle — an appearance in the Allstate Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day to face Georgia following a 12-0 regular season.
UH was shellacked 41-10 in that game and Jones left less than a week later to take a more lucrative head job at Southern Methodist University, where he lasted seven seasons before resigning with “personal issues” in 2014. Since then, he had head coaching stints with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League and the Houston franchise in the XFL.
But he remained known as “the fixer” in Hawaii.