June Jones, the winningest coach in University of Hawaii football history, died in Oregon on Thursday at age 73. Jones led the Warriors from 1999 through 2007, compiling 76 victories, six bowl appearances and two Western Athletic Conference titles during a tenure that transformed a struggling program into a national name.
Jones had suffered health issues this year and entered hospice about two weeks before his death, according to a close family friend, as reported by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. A former UH quarterback who played for the Rainbow Warriors in 1973 and 1974, Jones returned decades later as head coach, turning down an opportunity to become head coach of the San Diego Chargers to accept the Hawaii job in December 1998, per the same report.
From 0-12 to National Coach of the Year
The program Jones inherited had finished 0-12 the season before he arrived. In his first year at the helm, he led the Warriors to a 9-4 record and a share of first place in the Western Athletic Conference, a turnaround that earned him National Coach of the Year honors, according to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The same source notes that UH had won just 12 games total and had no player drafted into the NFL in the five years before Jones took over.
Hawaii's rise under Jones was not a one-season fluke. The Star-Advertiser's report notes that he guided the Rainbow Warriors to six bowl games, three seasons with at least 10 wins and two WAC championships over his nine years in charge. SMU Athletics adds that Hawaii ranked in the nation's top 40 in seven of those nine seasons, including a top-10 finish in 2007.
The Undefeated Season and the Sugar Bowl
That 2007 campaign remains the signature achievement of Jones's Hawaii tenure. The Warriors went 12-0 in the regular season, won the WAC title and earned a berth in the Bowl Championship Series Sugar Bowl, where they lost to Georgia, according to the Star-Advertiser's account. It capped a run-and-shoot era that reshaped expectations for the program on the national stage.
Jones's system also became known for developing prolific quarterbacks. He helped produce record-breaking passers Timmy Chang and Heisman Trophy finalist Colt Brennan, the Star-Advertiser reports. Jones's connection with Chang went back to the start of his Hawaii tenure — he targeted Chang as a recruit in 1999, his first season as UH coach, and later mentored him as a coaching colleague, including offering him a graduate-assistant position at SMU in 2012, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.
A Legacy Measured in Draft Picks and Honors
Beyond the win totals, Jones's Hawaii teams produced five All-Americans, 52 all-conference performers and 16 NFL Draft picks, according to Hawaii News Now. That stood in stark contrast to the program's pre-Jones drought, when it went five years without a single player drafted. Jones was inducted into the Hawaii Circle of Honor in 2024, a recognition of the program he had rebuilt a quarter-century earlier.
Jones went on to coach at Southern Methodist University, though accounts differ on the exact span of his tenure there. Hawaii News Now reports he coached at SMU from 2008 until resigning in 2014, while SMU's own athletics department describes his run as six seasons from 2008 through 2013, crediting him with 35 wins and three bowl championships. In his resignation statement at the time, Jones cited personal issues and said he had made SMU relevant again by reaching four bowl games in his six years as head coach there, per SMU's announcement.
Jones is remembered in Hawaii as the architect of one of college football's most dramatic program turnarounds — a coach who inherited a winless team and, within a decade, had it playing for a national championship-tier bowl berth undefeated.
