Posted on: Wednesday, August 30, 2006

UH head coach
June Jones

Video Inteview: June Jones

UH coach June Jones says the exposure the Warriors will receive playing Alabama is going to be "exciting for all our players and coaches." GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

Jones' success 1 Western Athletic Conference co-championship 1 National Football Coach of the Year honor in 1999 4 bowl games 7 consecutive seasons finishing in top 5 nationally in passing 11 players drafted by NFL, including the school’s first player to be drafted in the first round (Ashley Lelie in 2002)

He's revived a program from the depths and himself has come back from near death from a car accident five years ago. He's changed logos and nicknames, piped in music and switched uniform color schemes. University of Hawai'i football coach June Jones has been a controversial figure, but there's no arguing one point: His teams win. Expect no different this season as Jones thinks UH can have a "special" season this year.

You're going up up to play Alabama, probably one of the biggest road games in the school's history. (We're) wondering what's that like for your players and your program? Also, how big will this be for yourself, just because this might be the biggest crowd (93,000 expected) you ever coached in front of or played in front of.

"It's actually a real honor to be able to go up there and open a new stadium. It's going to be a thrill and a thrilling journey for our guys. You're talking about the place basically where a lot of football strategies began and were founded. To have 92,000 people, our kids really don't know what they are walking into yet but they will as soon as they go in that stadium. The exposure of a national game will probably be in every newspaper and it's gonna be pretty exciting for all our players and coaches."

(Facing what might be the biggest crowd)

"I think a couple of times in the NFL, in New Orleans we sold out and it was right around this number. But for college, no question, it's the biggest crowd. And we're going to have to overcome a lot of things. We'll have to overcome some calls that you don't get on the road from officials. You have to overcome crowd noise. There's going to be a lot of things that we have to overcome. But it's a very special time for us, too. For Jerry (Glanville) and I to go back to the south. We're going to be in Atlanta for two days where we both were head coaches. I'm sure there will be a lot of media, local media from Atlanta, and national media from some of the network sports companies. So it's going to be an exciting time."