Donation a bonus
for UH coaches

A donation "out of the clear blue" will help the Hawaii athletic department pay last year's bowl-game bonuses due assistant football coaches, athletic director Herman Frazier said.

Frazier declined to specify the amount of the check from the Ed Wong Foundation, but said it is earmarked "to go toward us fulfilling some past bonuses for our coaches."

Ed Wong was a Honolulu businessman and Hawaii football booster who died in 2001, two years after serving on the search committee that brought June Jones to UH as head coach. UH received the check from the Wong foundation at Sunday's football banquet.

"I just found out about it then. Obviously we're very grateful," Jones said.

The Warriors assistant coaches did not receive their bonuses for last year's Sheraton Hawaii Bowl, in which Hawaii beat Houston 54-48 in triple overtime.

The bowl bonuses for assistants are for one-month of the average salary of the assistants, which comes out to around $8,000 each before taxes.

Per his contract, Jones receives a $20,000 bonus for his team getting into a non-BCS bowl game and an additional $10,000 if UH wins the game.

Jones makes a base salary of $800,000 (half of which comes from private sources) per year.

The football assistant coaches' annual salaries range from $50,160 to $125,988.

The assistants have not received a raise since most of them came on staff when Jones was named head coach before the 1999 season.

The UH athletic department has operated at a deficit the past three fiscal years, but Jones and Frazier said they see the department turning a financial corner.

Frazier said yesterday it is too early to tell if the football team will meet projected income for this year.

After beating Michigan State 41-38 on Saturday, the Warriors (7-5) accepted an invitation to the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl on Dec. 24. UH receives a minimum $750,000 appearance fee, but anything over expenses must be shared with other Western Athletic Conference schools.

You can look now: Jones didn't see Tim Chang's fourth-down, 6-inch, second-effort quarterback sneak that gave UH the lead in the fourth quarter Saturday until he was watching a tape of season highlights at Sunday's banquet.

"I couldn't watch (during the game)," he said.

The drama leading up to the play was like the scene in "Hoosiers," when the players talk the coach into staying with something simple they know will work.

Jones said he wanted to go with Chang running a naked bootleg play instead of sneaking up the middle, but offensive linemen Samson Satele and Uriah Moenoa got him to change his mind ... twice, the second time after Jones had third thoughts, and called a timeout to call the bootleg once again. But the players talked him out of it again.

"I still can't believe we won that game," Jones said yesterday.

New territory: Alabama-Birmingham, UH's opponent for the Hawaii Bowl, got back to work yesterday with its first practice in preparation for its first bowl game.

"Everything related to this bowl game does so much for the image of your program," UAB coach Watson Brown said. "I have said many times over, what if in the last four years we had been to three bowls like we could have, and how much further along would we be than we are.

"It helps practice and it helps recruiting, and as far as the game itself, we get to play in a beautiful place on Christmas Eve and we are also the only game on TV that day," Brown said. "We are really excited."

The Blazers are led by the passing combination of 6-foot-2, 235-pound Darrell Hackney (2,653 yards, 24 touchdowns and seven interceptions) and 6-3, 205-pound Roddy White (65 catches, 1,339 yards, 13 TDs).

Short yardage: Jones said a "couple of guys (coaches) will go to the mainland and come back Sunday or Monday," for recruiting this week. ... The Warriors' most critical needs appear to be offensive and defensive linemen, receivers and linebackers. Jones said they will go the junior-college route more than in past years for some immediate help. "It will be hard to replace those guys," he said of this year's seniors. "But nobody thought we could replace Nick Rolovich or Ashley Lelie," an obvious reference to the hot streak of Chang and receiver Chad Owens. ... Jones was still working out a Hawaii Bowl practice schedule yesterday.