[ WARRIOR FOOTBALL ]
Hawaii football coach June Jones examined tape of an opposing team at the UH offices last week.
Tale of the Tape
Studying video is an important
part of June Jones' success
TALK to any successful football player or coach, and the subject comes up quickly.
Tape. Film. Video.
And then, usually, the subject is changed just as quickly to something else more exciting. Something like trainer's tape or how much the kicker can bench press.
How does the (perceived as) passive activity of sitting in front of a screen for hours fit into a game of split-second decision-making, controlled violence and spectacular athleticism?
Watching tape can be tedious. But it is one of the most important aspects of football.
Winning players normally spend at least as much time watching themselves and their opponents on the screen as they do actually practicing. Coaches, twice as much.
June Jones' Hawaii teams are 40-25 in his five years at Manoa. He and players said studying videotape is one of the biggest reasons they win consistently.
"This is where the players and coaches see if they're doing their assignments, if they're correctly using the techniques of doing their job. It's about being able to make sure they're doing the right things," Jones said.
The Warriors normally practice in the morning, and video coordinator Lopaka Ornellas or assistant Wes Dodd tapes every minute of it. The tape is then processed with a computer program that provides what are called cut-ups. The cut-ups allow the coaches and players to see what they and their opponents tend to do in various situations.
"It's a lot better than before with the 16mm film," Jones said. "You didn't have the cut-ups then."
Several of the UH football meeting rooms have screens of various sizes, and coaches can view tapes on TVs in their offices. The hundreds of videotapes around the offices did not cost the program financially; they are provided by Fuji in exchange for promotional considerations.
The team, usually in position groups, views tape each afternoon after practice. In the spring, they are mostly looking at their own technique, seeing where they can improve.
"Tape is the greatest teacher in the entire game of football," junior quarterback Kainoa Akina said. "I found that when I'm in the pocket and I start to step up, my ball starts to drop. And that's why sometimes people see me throw sidearm. That's something I'm working on a lot because there's a place for sidearm sometimes, but normally you want to keep the ball cocked for a quick release."
Senior quarterback Tim Chang and senior cornerback Abraham Elimimian are two players who spend a lot of additional time critiquing themselves in the video room, Jones said.
"You never stop looking at tape. It's essential. It helps you correct your mistakes," said Chang, who watches about eight to 10 hours each week. "Things like where I release the ball, where my feet are. And the tape never lies. It tells you what you're really doing out there."
Elimimian said the spring and summer are when veteran players brush up on basics.
"During the season you don't have time because it's more watching the other guys and what they do and what you need to learn to beat him," he said. "It helps you continue to do your fundamentals well, because you always go back to the basics."
When preparing to attack other teams' defenses, Jones has a problem few other coaches do. Because his run-and-shoot offense is unique, he has to play a guessing game.
"We don't play this formation," Jones said, while watching a game tape of season-opening opponent Florida Atlantic's defense against a standard offensive formation. "So I have to guess what they would do if the offense has four wideouts instead of two backs and a tight end. We try to anticipate what might happen. Sometimes you guess right, sometimes you don't. By and large I've done it for so long I guess right more than wrong."
That's one of the reasons Jones spends more time on preparing his own offensive schemes rather than worrying too much about what the opponents' defense does.
"I'm of the mind-set where I'm more concerned about us doing the right thing than worrying about what the other team does to us. Because we know what we're doing (on offense), it doesn't really matter what the other team is doing to us," he said. "Other teams take different philosophies, people spend more time on watching the opponent and game-planning ways to stop them, or making up new plays to deal with their scheme. I'm not of that mind-set. John Wooden, in his book, he said he never scouted any opponents. Defensively, I think we spend more time on game-planning. But on offense we worry about what we do."
Not that Jones ignores the opposition's tendencies, especially as the season gets closer.
"Anybody who is committed to winning studies his opponent. The good players always know what their opponent is going to do before they do it," he said. "Those that really study their opponents play the game at a different level."
Former UH linebacker Jeff Ulbrich, now of the San Francisco 49ers, was famous for limping into the football offices the morning after games to study tape. Kurt Gouveia, who will likely be a graduate assistant on the UH staff in the fall, intercepted a pass for the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXVI because he anticipated a pass through tape study.
A lot of plays that look instinctive or like lucky guesses are actually the product of grinding it out in dark rooms watching tape.
"Timmy watches a lot of film. Cav (offensive line coach Mike Cavanaugh) does a great job with our offensive line studying the opponent," Jones said. "Travis LaBoy watched a lot of tape for individual technique on the opponent.
"The more a player looks at it, the more he can anticipate what the other guy's going to do."
