New York Times-SMU

[ALEX LIFESON]

November 16, 2009, 6:54 pm
S.M.U. Is Ready for a Luau
By THAYER EVANS
When Southern Methodist Coach June Jones lured the former Kansas City Chiefs coach Frank Gansz out of retirement last year to be his special teams coordinator, he made him a promise.

Jones pledged to take his team to Pearl Harbor if S.M.U. ever made the Hawaii Bowl. That was important to Gansz, who played at the Naval Academy from 1957 to 1959 and graduated in 1960. He served in the Air Force for nearly seven years.

But while Gansz died in April at the age of 70 from complications after knee replacement surgery, Jones will now have a chance to follow through on his promise. With its 35-31 victory Saturday against Texas-El Paso, surprising S.M.U. (6-4, 5-1 Conference USA) is now bowl eligible and will likely make its first bowl appearance since 1984 at the Hawaii Bowl on Dec. 24.

“The first thing he wanted to do was to go to Pearl Harbor with the guys,” Jones said of Gansz in a telephone interview. “I told them that in August that we were going to do that and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Yet with S.M.U. first in Conference USA’s West Division, it would host the league championship game on Dec. 5 by winning its two remaining games. The winner of the league title game plays in the Liberty Bowl. But Jones, who is in his second season at S.M.U., is intent on playing in the Hawaii Bowl. It would be a homecoming for him. He was the coach of Hawaii for nine seasons before being hired at S.M.U. in January 2008.

“I’m locked in,” Jones said of the Hawaii Bowl. “I don’t know about everybody else, but that’s where we’re going.”


Jones said his team being bowl eligible happened a year ahead of the schedule that he had for rebuilding S.M.U., which had a 1-11 record in his first season last year.

“Everybody’s going crazy,” he said. “The excitement is at a level that I don’t know how to really compare it to anything.”

And Jones has done it with a youthful team. In a road win at Tulsa last month, 48 of the 66 S.M.U. players who made the trip were either freshmen or sophomores, he said.

“This is basically happening because the kids are finally starting to believe that they can win,” Jones said. “We’ve beaten probably five teams that are better than us this year. Everybody’s probably more talented than we are, but the kids have just believed, hung in there, and won.”

[Water Pony]

Question,

If SMU wins out, including the CUSA Championship game, wouldn't we be obligated to go to the Liberty Bowl? Nice problem to have, but it certainly it would made it easier to bring the fans.