Matthew Zemek- Top Coaches of the Past Decade
7) June Jones, Hawaii and SMU. The same man who was tarred as a finesse coach unfit for the NFL has developed quite the resume over the past decade in the college game. What sneaks up on evaluators when trying to assess Jones’s overall portfolio is the fact that he did so much more than produce winning seasons at two underequipped programs in Honolulu and Dallas. Jones denied BYU a shot at a BCS bowl game in 2001, and then plucked a premium postseason prize with the Warriors in 2007. At SMU, Jones didn’t merely deliver a bowl season in 2009; he – not anyone else before him – led the Ponies out of the shadows of the NCAA Death Penalty, a feat which will become only more remarkable with the passage of time. No coach – with the possible exception of Chris Petersen (and he has an ideal situation in Boise) - did more outside the realm of the power conferences over the past 10 seasons than June Jones. It’s not that close, either.