|
Sidelines Kalani Simpson |
Jones thrives on
pushing the envelopeWELL, wrong again. It turns out you really don't need a defensive coordinator in place to get through spring practice.
Which brings us to the latest chapter in June Jones, Football Maverick.
Basketball players, a volleyball player.
Oh, my.
It sounds like a too-good-to-be-true self-help bestseller, a "Thin Thighs in 30 Days." Just a few short sessions, a few minutes a week, and he can turn a promising unknown quantity into a Saturday night difference maker.
Yeah, why waste a scholarship on someone who has actually played the sport before?
But again Jones is acting as if he knows something no one else does, and history says that it's not a bad bet that he's right. That's what this is, after all. A bet. He's gambling again. Gambling always.
It's his philosophy, his mantra, his way of coaching life. If Jones has said anything more often in his UH tenure than "to be perfectly honest with you," it's been, "you've got to roll the dice."
And roll them he does. Sometimes he's won big. Taking over an 0-12 program. Recruiting Pisa Tinoisamoa. Calling for a fake punt at UTEP last season, and watching it go for 70 yards.
You should have heard the lilt in his voice when he talked about calling that fake.
There's nothing in the world like the feeling of going against the grain and turning out to be right, while all around you are proven wrong.
Jones lives on that feeling.
And that's why he'll stay here. That's why Hawaii is his perfect job. Here he can gamble, and turn out to be right. Here he has that rare freedom to coach football the way he's always dreamed.
There are people who are different and they just are. And there are those who are different deliberately, reveling in the rebellion. Always pointing out just how different they are.
Not many coaches in that second group.
Sure, coaches love the image of the riverboat gambler. But coaches who gamble too much are NFL -- to steal a line from Jones' freewheeling mentor Jerry Glanville, "Not For Long."
And they know it, which is why coaches are a cautious bunch, relying on percentages and tendencies and playing it safe. Coaches know the hard way that the house always wins.
Gamblers are the comets that burn brightly, then fade quickly. Brilliant streaks across the sky and then they're gone. Fun while it lasted, but just as gone, much like Jones' own NFL experience as coach of the Falcons. The odds catch them all.
Gamblers make ADs and GMs nervous. Understandably so.
But here he's making it work, somehow. He's on a hot streak here, and even when he's wrong he simply shrugs it off and gambles again. No naysayers to hold him back. No second-guessers to cool his mojo. It's working now. He's showing them all.
But his situation is almost too perfect, here. It's hard to be different when everyone says you're right. And so he's always at the edge of that envelope, prodding, pushing.
Bring on the volleyball players. Bring them on.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com