 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori and it's Monday which means we are going beyond the lines. We are in downtown Honolulu, broadcasting live from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza. This show directly relates to my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and building winning teams. Today's special guest has been the head football coach for the Atlanta Falcons, SMU, and the University of Hawaii and he is the winningest coach in UH football history. He is the legendary coach June Jones and today we are going beyond football. Coach June, great to have you here. Good to see you. How's everything been? Well, everything's going good just in between the seasons and the CFL, I'm glad to be in Hawaii. Nice. I know you grew up in Oregon. When did you first start playing football? I didn't start playing football until I was 12 years old. I played every sport, hockey, golf, baseball, basketball. I was a sports junkie basically. I read every newspaper. I knew every stat. I just wanted my whole life since I was four or five years old to be a professional athlete and I didn't start playing football until I saw ABC television one day. Jim Plunkett was playing quarterback and he was tall, six foot four, which I am. I kind of realized when I got to that 12-year-old age I was good at a lot of sports, but I knew that it was going to take speed. You had to be able to run to ever make it to the next level in any sport and I knew I couldn't run. So what happened was I said, well, maybe I can be a quarterback. Okay. When I was 13 I started, my mom got me a couple of footballs, about four or five, actually had them in a bag. And in those days nobody was really passing the ball so I couldn't even have any receivers. I just drew circles on the grade school brick wall and I would throw balls by the hour. In fact, I remember in the summer my fingers would actually start to bleed as I threw so many balls. I just got to the point where I could hit any dot and so I was lucky enough to eventually get a chance to play in high school. I didn't have a lot of scholarships coming out, but the University of Oregon, University of Hawaii, Portland State, a couple of smaller schools offered me and I chose the University of Oregon first, went there, found out that they had Dan Fouts and a bunch of other quarterbacks. Oh, really? So Norville Turner was one of the quarterbacks there. So I decided to transfer to the University of Hawaii where I sat on the bench for another three years and never really got to play. Really made a decision that I was not even going to play football anymore. I'd get my degree and go to work for my father in the securities business. So I passed my securities exam, the principal's exam, and then I got a call one day late in the summer from Mouse Davis who remembered me in high school and said, would you want to play at Portland State? I told him no like three times. And then at the last minute I saw the college football all-star game before the camp and I kind of got the itch again. So I called him and said, would you take me back out there? And so a receiver, Mel DeLaura, who was my teammate here at UH, was in Eastern Washington at the time, was going to go to Eastern Washington and I talked him in to come to Portland State. And so the rest was history. We met, set records, and I set the all-time passing record in the history of NCAA Division II that year, but going from not playing for basically four and a half years. So that was pretty amazing. Just if you don't quit, you just stay after it. Yeah. I find that really interesting just because you almost didn't continue on with football. And then you got offered to be on the Atlanta Falcons. Yeah, well, what happened was, I didn't get drafted, but everybody was wondering, well, what's wrong with this guy? He went to Oregon, Hawaii, and he finished at Portland State. Jerry Glanville happened to watch a tape that I had played against Montana, and I threw like seven touchdowns or something, and completed 43 out of 52 or whatever. The ball never hit the ground. And he took it to Eddie LaBurne, who was the general manager at that time. And so they flew me to Atlanta. And I signed as a free agent with them. Mel signed also with the Falcons. And it ended up, I was lucky enough to make the team. Mel got hurt. And wow, I mean, you think about it going for all those times and never getting to play hardly at down, and then all of a sudden you get a chance to be a pro, which I've dreamed about my whole life. So what did you learn playing in the NFL? What was the biggest thing you learned? The biggest thing I probably learned was that at that time, how blessed I was to be around mouse and have a passing offense and knew a passing background. And I'm not saying this for any other reason. When I got to Atlanta, it was like our cake. I mean, I was so far ahead of the other quarterback. I wasn't physically better than those guys. But mentally, I could see and grasp, because I had played in a wide open pass offense. And so the things that they were having me to do, we didn't even practice at Portland State. I mean, you just read them and knew it before the ball was snapped, where the ball was going to go. So I was just blessed that I was around mouse. Yeah. And if we fast forward, you became the head coach for the Atlanta Falcons for three years, and then you were the, for one year, the interim head coach for the San Diego Chargers. What did you learn, or what do you feel is the biggest differences between coaching NFL and coaching college players? Well, I get asked that question quite a bit. And to me, there is no difference. I coached our Kapolei high school kids for in 2000, whatever I was there, 14 or 15, I can't remember. The same way that I asked them to do the same things I asked my Atlanta Falcons to do. And I think a lot of times people aren't asked to do things, go beyond what the realm is. They say, well, how is a 16-year-old or 17-year-old going to learn this, what you're doing in Atlanta? Well, guess what? They've never been asked to do it before. Are they any smarter at 17 or 18? And they are at 19 or 20 or 21. They've got the same intelligence. They've just never been asked to do those things. So it was really fun to see that. And I think the biggest difference that I find now in the pros you're in situations where the players that you're given, you can't cut them. Some of them have guaranteed contracts. So you have to be more of a way to get the most out of each individual. And it might be different for you. It might be different for him. So you've got to be a little bit more of a psychologist that way. Whereas in college, if you don't have a kid, you can just sit him down and don't worry about it. You're not going to get a call from the president and the owner. Why is he not playing? You make those decisions. So from college, at least you make the decisions as a coach as to who plays in the game. Yeah. All right. Now, coach, in 1998, UH went winless. 0 and 12, they actually had an 18 game losing streak in 98. You come in in 1999, the same players. Now, in my book, I talk about how everything starts with the head coach or the CEO of a company. You come in in 99. You have a 9 and 4 record. Your team wins a share of the WAC championship. You have the same players. Just you as the head coach. Why did that happen? Well, it happens because your players end up reflecting the coaches. I hired a very good staff that believed in the things that I believed in. Ron Lee has been running our offense forever. Dan Morrison was at Punahou, ran a lot of my camps and believed in what we're doing. And so having a belief in the system of execution is mandatory. And the other thing that I think that I have always done differently, and I think people are figuring it out now, but back, you're talking 20 some years ago now, that I believed in positive reinforcement more than a kick in the rear. Now, some guys need to kick in the rear, but that's why I hire coaches that can do that kind of thing because that's not my personality. My personality is put my arm around them, I'm completely positive and encourage them and love them. And I think that that has been probably why I've had success. And the other part of that is I've always been on the leading edge of doing things offensively. When we took the offense to the 1980s, we were running four wide receivers. Nobody was doing that. And it was the communist way to play the game. And we had to beat the press. We had to beat everybody to continue to do what we did. Well, now, I watched the Super Bowl. I watched New England play. They were running everything that we ran in 1987. Now it's OK. But to do what we did, we were on a leading edge all the time of different ideas. And if you're not tweaking those ideas, like going to Hamilton, I've tweaked and done some things. If you're not changing, and I think that 13% to 18% of what we do offensively every year, then they're catching up with you. And so I watched. I watched Kansas City this year a whole lot, because I thought they were the most innovative team in the game doing things a little differently. And so you always got to watch and be ready to adjust. I bet you would love to be coaching Mahomes from Kansas City. I would love to be coaching him. He's a good player. Now, every leader has a culture of excellence. Every great leader has a culture of excellence. You've shared a few of them. What do you feel is your culture of excellence like? Well, I don't talk about results. I always, well, everybody knows we want to be the best we can be. We want to win the great cup this year. We want to win the Super Bowl, whatever it is. But I believe the culture is that you have to be able in a team setting to put the other guy before yourself. Team success has to be a prerequisite to personal success. If it's not, you're never going to be as good as you can be. And so that's easy to say, but in this day and age with the egos and the different personalities and the selfishness, the guys that win are the ones that everybody come together and doesn't care who has success. That you're pushing together, that you're positive, that they love each other, that I tell the guys all around, I tell the University of Hawaii guys this. They're going to forget the games. I don't know scores. You can ask me about a game. I don't remember a score at all. But you ask me about the players and ask the guys that were in that room. I can tell you everything about them. Yeah. Well, trust and loyalty and respect is huge. So how do you get all of your team members to buy into your philosophy? Well, you've got to speak it every day. And what you do and what you say has to be the same. And if you see things, you have to identify them right away in front of the group. I mean, if something happened in a game or something happened on the practice field, I would address it in front of everybody else. Good and positive. Good and bad and negative. And so if you do it that way, everybody starts to understand why for us to be as good as we can be, you have to understand that team success has to be a prerequisite to personal success. And if it isn't that way, you're never going to win it all. Yeah. Now in 2007, you take universe. This is your last year coaching UH football. You take the team through the regular season undefeated. The team is ranked number 10 in the United States. You take them to the sugar bowl first time UH has ever been in a major bowl game. Why did that happen? Well, I think it happened because of the previous years that we've built the culture. You know, we were a very good team that year, but I to this day think the year before was the best football team I had. And I think because of the success we had the year before and the disappointment of losing three games. I mean, I tell people this and it's funny. We won, I think we ended up, you have to go back and look. See, I can't remember now. I think we were 12, 11 and three, I think in 206. And the three losses, we had the ball in our hand to win the game on all three of those losses, including at Alabama to tie the score and maybe put it into overtime. And I say that had as big an impact because the culture was being laid and then O17 benefited from that confidence, from that belief, from hanging together and nobody caring who caught the ball. You had four receivers and you couldn't have a guy, Devon best catch 15 and Ryan Grice-Mullen catch three and he'd be upset that he didn't catch the ball as many times as Devon. And so that culture was laid and I think that our O17 benefited from all the things that we've been talking about. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, having the players be selfless and really thinking about the team versus is absolutely paramount. Absolutely. Now you trained, you've mentored Nick Rolovich, Timmy Chang, Colt Brennan, they were good players but you made them great. What did you do to make them great? Well, I believe that to be the best you can be that it's a repetition of doing the same thing over and over and over again so you deal with unconscious competence. In other words, you've thrown that flat route in your sleep a thousand times and you put it 18 inches out front and you can catch it and turn up the field. And I think the execution of doing those things over and over and over. I always get this ass all the time. Coach, your receivers always catch the ball in their hands but we demand it that they don't catch it in their body. You catch it by the news, catch it in the hands and we live by that for every day. In fact, Hamilton kids, they're listening to this, they're gonna hear it right now but they become better receivers and they become that they can make great plays catching it in their hands. Well, if they're body catchers, they never really reach up and try to catch it in their hands. And so to be the best you can be, I believe it's repetitive, go doing the same things over and over again so you can do them without thinking about them. Because when the pressure's on and it's fourth and one, you don't have time to be thinking about technique, about drops, anything else. It's gotta just happen. And they do that via repetition. Yeah, repetition and fundamentals. And I love hearing that. Coach, we're gonna take a quick break and then when we come back, we're gonna continue going beyond football. All right, sounds good. You're watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest, Coach June Jones. We will be back in 60 seconds. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just gonna scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktechawai.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube, just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hi, Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay and Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest today is a former NFL head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and the legendary former head coach of our University of Hawaii football team. He is the one and only Coach June Jones and today we are going beyond football. Coach June, you are currently coaching in the Canadian football league, the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Last year you had Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel on your team. What were you doing specifically to help him? Well, that's a good question. I've been a believer that Johnny was one of those rare guys that could lead and could be a winner. I think that he found himself in a situation where nobody really believed that he was that guy. Even though he was drafted in the first round, they didn't, to me, put around him the where for all that I would have done to make him successful. You have to be put in that situation. That happens a lot with quarterbacks. Look at Steve Young. Steve Young, everybody said he can't play. Well, guess what? He gets with Bill Walsh and he's a Hall of Famer. So I kind of always had that feeling about Johnny. I was lucky enough to be around him for six weeks. I told him from day one what I was expected of him, what I expected him to be. I mean, everything from the practice to the media, to how to handle himself after games, all those type of things. I'm not sure that he's ever really been coached that way before. He played for me for only six weeks and we traded him after the first game and I look back and it gets back to the repetition thing that I said. I was trying to give him repetitions but I had Jeremiah Mazzoli and Johnny in pre-season, and I want to say it completed like 72% of his passes. I don't know, maybe had six or seven touchdowns, no interceptions and we traded him. I wish that I could have had him the whole time because he's doing that without the repetitions, without, that was just natural. And had he been in our system long enough, I hate to think what the numbers might have been. I have a lot of Aloha for Jeremiah Mazzoli because he does have all those same skills. He's a leader, he's a winner, he's accurate with the ball, can run and so Johnny was not gonna get on the field for a while and so we traded him and he's in Montreal and I texted him back and forth and root him on and hope that he makes it and you never know and this pro football, you may be back with him one day so you never know. Well, Mazzoli is doing fantastic like you said and he must be so happy to have you there and I wish Johnny Manziel had you longer. Yeah, well, it's like you say, when you're in college, you sign up for five years and if I had Johnny for five years, in the pros you're not as lucky as that. Now, unfortunately it was that way when I was playing, if you were drafting the first round as a quarterback, you might not get on the NFL field for three years but now the money has changed so much, they give you so much money and the media, everybody's driving, well, let's put Johnny in the game, well, he may not be ready to play and then you never know what damage may happen. I think that happened to a young kid named Garrett Gilbert who's playing in the Alliance Football League and played very well last week for Spurrier. He was booed off the field at 18 years old after winning a national championship at Texas. Well, he comes to SMU his last two years and it took me almost a year to get him to play what was at that time pretty flawlessly in his last year so it just takes time. Yeah, Coach, let's talk about adversity. In my book, I talk about welcoming adversity and looking forward to challenges. How would you get your players in the right mindset to do the same? Well, again, in football you gotta talk about it. You know, if a kid, you're down by three touchdowns, for example, I constantly say, guys, we've scored three touchdowns in six plays about 10 times this year. There's no lead that we can't overcome. And so you gotta have a belief, number one, that you can and you have to be able to understand the personalities, the different guys that can make plays, who are the guys that can make the play? Who are the guys that make a difference in the game? I remember Jerry Glanville used to, when I was calling plays, he just looked at me and he goes, throw the ball to Andre Riser. Now, I've got my mind, but then I call a play and guess what, Andre make play, you know? And so you have to, I changed how I thought about it. You know, even when I was with Cole, I said, get the ball, let's get it to Devon. And then I call a play that I, well, you know, the coverage is gonna dictate where the ball goes, but he knew why, you know, we were throwing that route and get it to Devon, you know? Now, speaking of challenges, what's been your biggest adversity, your biggest challenge in your life that you have to overcome? Well, there's probably two things. Number one, the biggest one was after my accident. I tore my aorta and I was lying in bed, I couldn't move my legs and- Like paralyzed? Paralyzed and I didn't, I was unaware of this, but when you tear your aorta, nine out of 10 people never walk again because the blood flows cut off to the lower extremities and so they're paralyzed for the rest of their life. And so I couldn't walk and I couldn't move my legs and didn't feel anything. And I remember the doctor telling me, when I asked him about it after I was in a coma for two or three weeks and I remember him saying, coach, you put his head down, he said, you're probably never gonna walk again. And of course that was really hard. Wow. And for that day forward, the only thing I could do for the next, I had wires and tubes going everywhere. I said, I gotta stand up, I gotta walk again. So finally I took a couple of steps and grabbed a bar of soap and I see the doctor, a heart guy, one time a day and I came in and I remember showing him the soap and he said, what is that? I said, I walked in and got the soap and he said, wow, okay. And so then I was just on a commitment for probably three and a half years that I was gonna get my legs back to normal. Well, I got him as good as I can get him via some help of some great guys, L. Ray Chong being one of them, Pat Ariki being another one. And I got where I could at least function. I can't run, hard for me to walk up a hill, but I'm lucky to be alive. So that was probably one of them. The other one was when I left SMU, I had a mental overload that just blew me away. I mean, I had some things happen. I was contemplating not going back for my last year. I wasn't sleeping and I had like three or four times where I couldn't remember where I was. I got in my car and drive home and I went 20 miles past my exit and didn't realize it until I came around. And I just was overloaded with the game, all the things that you're doing in football and then not getting enough sleep. And so basically, I read like Dick Vermeel had that same thing happen where he had basically a breakdown. I think that's what happened to me. So those two things, being able to overcome them, I guess everybody has those issues in life. You just got to fight through them. Wow, that's like really deep stuff right there too. I mean, the first example, I mean, you had mind over matter for sure. Yeah, no, there's definitely, I know that's what that was because after not being able to even move or feel my legs for Kali a long time. That's scary. Yeah, that I just was gonna figure out how to get this done. And like I said, I worked, I lifted weights, I ran, I jogged, I did everything, but now I don't do that anymore. I just walk and like if I'm playing golf, if I'm on a hilly lie, I can't hit it very good. But like I said, hey, everybody has issues. I got my issues now. Not my handicaps hire, I'm winning more money. Now, Coach June, what's an important lesson you've learned in your life when you look back? Well, I think the biggest thing is never giving up on what you wanna do. I had a vision, I remember Steve Barkowski telling me when ESPN was doing a story about me. And I find out these things just watching ESPN one day. I heard Bart say that he asked me in 1977, what did I wanna do in my life? And he said, I told him I'm gonna be the head coach at the University of Hawaii. That was in 1977. And I know that I always wanted to do that, but for him to recall that I said that to him the first time he asked me. So I set goals that way. I remember walking into the first meeting at the University of Hawaii, also on an ESPN deal. They were interviewing a couple of my players and they said, well, when he came in, the first thing he said, we were 118 out of 118. He said, next year we're gonna be the number one offense in the NCAA. And all the kids commented, is this guy nuts? So I probably was a little bit nuts, but I had high expectations. Yeah, high expectations. There's nothing wrong with high expectations. Now, coach, who's a coach when you were playing that had such a big positive impact on you and why? Well, I'm gonna stay on a positive way. I have another guy that I've mentioned, but I'm not gonna choose to do that right now. Miles Davis and Jerry Glanville had the biggest impact on how I do things. I'll give you an example. Miles, I think everything I do offensively and the way I treat people, the way I handle the situations, I copied from Miles. Jerry Glanville, the same way, and I'll tell you a Jerry Glanville story that I've kind of brought into every locker room that I had. We're getting ready to play the Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving Day. And I got Warren Moon as my quarterback and it's a big game. And you only have, really, you only have two days to practice because you have Monday, they gotta give them a one off. And so I'm scrambling, trying to get the game plan ready. And so I kind of push everything forward to Wednesday night before the Thursday afternoon game. And so I'm thinking I'm gonna get this done in the meeting the night before. Well, Jerry Glanville says, hey guys, boom, boom, closes the door, in walks, Travis Tritt and Jerry Jeff Walker and a couple of other guys. And they start playing and singing and we don't have a meeting. And so I go out and I'm thinking, what, you know, this is crazy. What is this about? Boom, we blow them out of the water the next day. And first time I think they had won ever in Dallas. And so that showed me that the camaraderie and the chemistry and all those intangible things are more important than the X's and O's. And Jerry taught me that. Mouse was that way too. And then Bill Walsh had a big influence on me. Also in the last 10 years of his life, he would come spend time here with Elroy. And I get the opportunity to play golf with him and go out to dinner at night. And I had to ask him, and he came talk to our team. Well, Coach June, you inspire so many people, you know, currently and in the past. Well, I don't know about that. No, you do. And I'm one that, you know, you inspire me. And I really have to say that you definitely go beyond the lines. And I really wanna thank you for being on the show today. My pleasure, Rusty. Good to see you. Thank you, June. And thank you for joining us on this episode of Beyond the Lines. And a special thank you to my clothing sponsor, Ilani Incorporated. For more information, please visit my website, RustyKamori.com. And my book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all Costco stores in Hawaii. I hope that Coach June and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.