Jones and Hill did it their way

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

There are some people who will tell you with a disbelieving shake of the head that Pat Hill and June Jones have been going about this coaching thing all wrong.

That somewhere along the line they must have gotten the cords on their headsets crossed or misread the coaches' manual.

For when the head coaches of Fresno State and Hawai'i stand on opposing sidelines tomorrow at Aloha Stadium, they will have come from the NFL to get there, throwing something of a fourth-and-one pass at coaching convention in the process.

Theirs is the reverse of the well-worn career track that has traditionally considered the pros a step up from college.

In that, Hill and Jones share a near-uniqueness in their fraternity as men for whom the NFL, even with its big money and bright lights, wasn't the ultimate target, but a means to get to reach the college jobs they had long coveted.

"They're kind of a rarity in how they set their career goals," said Jim Sweeney, the former Fresno State coach who has followed both men's careers. "In fact, I'm still not convinced June would pass a mental exam on what he did."

That a sitting NFL head coach would take a whopping pay cut to run what had been an 0-12 team as Jones did when he left the San Diego Chargers in 1998 isn't the kind of career model they cite at coaches' conventions.

As teammates on the 1977 Atlanta Falcons, Steve Bartkowski and Jones, "were discussing where we'd like to be and June says he wants to be the head coach at Hawai'i," Bartkowski recalled. "It seemed kind of weird, especially since Hawai'i wasn't exactly a college power. I had to laugh. But after coming over for the Pro Bowl, seeing the place and meeting his friends and the people, I understood where he was coming from."

Similarly, Sweeney said he was surprised when, on a recruiting trip in 1988, he asked Hill about his career goal and the young assistant told him, "it was to replace me as the head coach at FSU."

FSU wasn't Hill's alma mater, but in six years with the Bulldogs as offensive line coach and recruiting coordinator, he'd sunk roots into the fertile San Joaquin Valley soil and seen promise in the school's future.

Sweeney said, "I told him there were older, more experienced guys ahead of him and he needed to leave and put some 'pow' in his resume."

Off to Arizona (under Dick Tomey), the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens, Hill went — all the while with an eye on Fresno. And while he didn't make it to head coach in the pros, people in the business say Hill could have moved into an NFL front office as a personnel director.

In plotting their careers, Hill and Jones long ago departed from the norm. Which is just fine with a lot of people in Fresno and Hawai'i these days.