The Case for Firing/Keeping June Jones

[ponyinNC]

I wanted to dedicate a thread to the arguments for/against firing JJ. In order to intelligently make a case to Turner/Hart et al, I think some fundamental questions must be aksed and answered. I'm talking about that "Come to Jesus" moment, where we find out who we are, where we want to be in the future, and either continue down this path or make a change. Obviously, some folks on this board are more influential than others when it comes to SMU, but we all have an equal voice on this site and should be able to gain momentum if we can speak as one voice.

Question 1 - What is the administration's commitment going forward w/r/t Athletics, and especially w/r/t football?

This is the fundamental question that absolutely has to be answered before we proceed any further. Otherwise, no coach will be able to succeed at SMU and it is fruitless to make a change. I am not privy to any inside info here, so I will defer to others in the know. I want to know, is the President committed to top-level athletics, or are we happy just to be competitive and occasionally make bowl games. Do we strive to be like TCU? Or are we happy being a cellar-dweller in a better conference? Is the AD committed to fighting for our athletic programs and striving for greatness? Or was he hired to simply market the teams and get fans in the stands?

From an outsider's perspective, the move to the Big East shows that we are trying. The facilities upgrades, from Moody to Crum to the locker rooms are a great start. Hopefully the IPF is still a priority, as it should be. But deeper than that, are we committed to fielding the best possible teams? Do we have the programs in place to admit kids, keep them in school and offer athletic-friendly majors like most programs do? I think we have the process in place to admit, and we aren't that far off if we can get some of the majors in place that can keep kids in school. This is a fine line to walk, and we should find out more once some of Larry Brown's commits get on campus. But this question must be answered before we can prepare for the future.

Question 2 - Is this the best that SMU can ever do? Have we reached the ceiling on our growth?

We've gone to 3 bowls in 3 years. In the last 5 years, we have creeped out from the ESPN bottom 10 and have become a respectable, high-level CUSA team. We still can't really compete with the other Texas BCS teams, but we win more of our conference games than we lose and we are usually in the hunt for the CUSA west crown. To steal a line from Jack Nicholson..."What if this is as good as it gets...?"

Even if we have the commitment in place from question 1, we have to ask if this is as good as we can realistically expect from a small, private, academically-challenging university. I don't think it is, but that is my opinion. Others may think that 6 or 7 wins most years is our ceiling. Especially after we move to the Big East, where I think we are more likely to average 3-5 wins with this level of recruiting.

Bottom line is this-- we have to have a plan for the future, and in order to do that, we have to agree on the end goal. What is it? Orsini had a stated goal - top 25. We aren't there yet. Personally, I see no reason that we shouldn't be in the Top 25 every year and challenging for BE championships/BCS bowl games. Is that realistic?? If so, how do we get there?

Question 3 - Are we happy with June Jones efforts?

Is Jones the best we can do? Are we reaching our full potential w/r/t recruiting? Are we happy with the level of recruits we get? Larry Brown is killing it on the recruiting trail, selling basically the same product. Klemm did the same in Cali, again with the same product. Are we happy with the effort put forth by this staff? Are we happy with player development over these 5 years? Have June's NFL connections paid off? Are we getting a good return on the $2MM investment that the CofC has made on JJ?

Question 4 - June Jones is still a name. Are there better candidates out there than what we have?

We absolutely must answer this question before a change is made. There are quite a few schools that will be looking for HCs after this year. So there will be competition for top names. For better or worse, June Jones still has some cache. Some think of him as a QB guru. ASU was ready to hire him away. But then again, the entire Sun Devil Nation came out in total unity against him. What does that say about his coaching abilities and reputation when an entire fanbase collectively said "No Freakin Way".

Personally, with the money we seem to be prepared to pay a coach, along with the recruiting hotbed of DFW and a commitment going forward, I think we could get a top candidate. But are we fooling ourselves? Is SMU still a coaching graveyard, with little to no fan support and with constant fighting between athletics and academics?? I don't know. I'd like to think we could land a Sonny Dykes or Chad Morris. is this realistic??

It's time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves who we are and who we WANT to be. I'd appreciate any input on these issues or any additional questions you think we should be asking ourselves, our president, our AD and our fanbase. Thanks for your time.

[Mustangs35SMU]

All I have to say is that he was brought here to 1) turn the program around 2) win championships.

He's getting paid 2 million a season to win championships. Not only have we not won a single Conference Title, we've only reached the championship game once and we were dominated in it. He's turned it around but we've peaked under him. Time to move on.

[ojaipony]

Great post, NC. Very well thought out.

I SO want us to do/be better. I just don't know if we can. SMU certainly has the resources it seems. We are in a touchy situation. We are much improved from the early post-DP days but it's been terrible watching TCU taking their seat that should have been ours (from BCS buster to invite to the big boys table). That's on our administration/leadership. I think they thought JJ would be the answer, and to some extent he has been but we have a long way to go. They have some tough decisions to make. It all comes down to who we think we could get IMHO.

[lwjr]

I believe this is about as good as it gets. Admin. is going to hold this program down

[Mustangsabu]

That's nonsense. We weren't dominated at all.

I was there. We lost. We weren't dominated.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2

[SoCal_Pony]

All I have to say is that he was brought here to 1) turn the program around 2) win championships.

He's getting paid 2 million a season to win championships. Not only have we not won a single Conference Title, we've only reached the championship game once and we were dominated in it. He's turned it around but we've peaked under him. Time to move on.

Really?

We have 4 wins this season. One against a D-AA team, all against teams that will be ranked over #100 in this upcoming Sagarin rankings.

JJ's poor record against teams with winning records, 4-20, will get worse as you can now include A&M and UCF and possibly TCU (of course there is always Tulsa).

Outside of a TE of all positions and a JC running back (which is a need), this recruiting class sits beside any of PB's disasters if you view them by offers, which most would agree is the best barometer.

He hasn't turned it around, unless you are speaking of a complete circle. THAT is the problem.

[shadowman]

All I have to say is that he was brought here to 1) turn the program around 2) win championships.

He's getting paid 2 million a season to win championships. Not only have we not won a single Conference Title, we've only reached the championship game once and we were dominated in it. He's turned it around but we've peaked under him. Time to move on.

Really?

We have 4 wins this season. One against a D-AA team, all against teams that will be ranked over #100 in this upcoming Sagarin rankings.

JJ's poor record against teams with winning records, 4-20, will get worse as you can now include A&M and UCF and possibly TCU (of course there is always Tulsa).

He hasn't turned it around, unless you are speaking of a complete circle. THAT is the problem.

Outside of a TE of all positions and a JC running back (which is a need), this recruiting class sits beside any of PB's disasters if you view them by offers, which most would agree is the best barometer.

This is exactly what I don't get...All June did was serve up a 1-11 and then get us a tick above .500 for 3 years to get us to a cruddy bowl playing disinterested teams whose seasons fell short of what they wanted to do. Phil Bennett had us a 6-6, unfortunately the WAC did not have enough bowl affiliations to sneak into the Weedeater Bowl. Cavan gave us a winnning record, but once again, not enough bowls to go around.

All June does is beat cruddy Division One teams (of which there are plenty in C-USA) and as many Lower division teams that we can play.

Then we have the people that say..."Oh..but he changed the culture, we brought our admissions in line to succeed"....

BS!!!! The SMU admin already made that call when we paid the tiki god $2 mill a year, Bennett, Cavan, Rossely, all said the same thing, "SMU is held back because of Admin restrictions"...June had nothing to do with the change.

Well, he got the change, and did pitiful little with it, Lazy recruiting for an antique of an offense that middle schools adopted, but then made it better, more dynamic.

June just stumbled in at the right time and got to play a bunch of cruddy teams.

He deserves very little credit.

[SoCal_Pony]

AMEN Shadowman, you get it.

Many on this board, not so much.

Oh, and I think Tiki is now earning $2.3M, not $2M. What a joke.

[shadowman]

Once again,

I will say, however, that I like June's style. I like the fact that he does not cuss or raise his voice to players. I am sure the team loves playing for him. Unfortunately, his offense has fell well short of what we were promised, and his recruiting is just as poor as we had back when we had those silly restrictions.

I would have loved to have seen this team, especially Zach, adapt to a more dynamic offense, a prostyle offense featuring Zach and DJ would have beaten TCU and Tulane.

[shadowman]

AMEN Shadowman, you get it.

Many on this board, not so much.

Oh, and I think Tiki is now earning $2.3M, not $2M. What a joke.

So many, and maybe rightly so, to an extent, still honor June for breaking the bowl drought. I am there with them, one of the best times of my life was Christmas Eve in Hawaii spanking the living hell out of Nevada, great times!

Just don't forget that Bennett and Cavan recorded a record that would have earned a bowl bid in these modern times, when any team that is 6-6 can go to a bowl..and they did it with our silly restrictions..AND against tougher competition.

June just stumbled in to a place where SMU got to play a bunch of aweful teams, and C-USA had enough bowls to go around.

[SoCal_Pony]

All I have to say is that he was brought here to 1) turn the program around 2) win championships.

He's getting paid 2 million a season to win championships. Not only have we not won a single Conference Title, we've only reached the championship game once and we were dominated in it. He's turned it around but we've peaked under him. Time to move on.

Really?

We have 4 wins this season. One against a D-AA team, all against teams that will be ranked over #100 in this upcoming Sagarin rankings.

JJ's poor record against teams with winning records, 4-20, will get worse as you can now include A&M and UCF and possibly TCU (of course there is always Tulsa).

Outside of a TE of all positions and a JC running back (which is a need), this recruiting class sits beside any of PB's disasters if you view them by offers, which most would agree is the best barometer.

He hasn't turned it around, unless you are speaking of a complete circle. THAT is the problem.

I stand corrected.

Here are some of the recruits from PB's last full recruiting season at SMU, which was 2007, along with their BCS offers. Rivals ranked it #98.

Derrius Bell - Baylor, Kansas, TCU
Bradley Haynes - Connecticut, Indiana
Devon Bailey - Clemson, Kansas State, Missouri, Oklahoma St, Texas Tech
Julian Herron - Baylor, Washington State
Josh Lebribeus - Baylor, Boston College, Stanford

[Mustangs35SMU]

He hasn't turned it around, unless you are speaking of a complete circle. THAT is the problem.

He's turned the program around in the sense that we've reached 3 bowl games. That's all I meant. I think it's foolish not to at least acknowledge what he's done in getting things changed around here. But a bottom tier bowl with a .500 record or a tip above it is, imo, the peak under him.

[No Quarter]

Maybe it’s too obvious to mention, and I don't recall seeing it written on this message board, but I think a key to June Jones behavior was that Sugar Bowl where Georgia spanked his Rainbows. I believe a lot of his decision in taking the SMU job was to have another chance to play a BCS team in a big bowl, whether while on the Hilltop or elsewhere. If no other job opened up the fallback was a cool $10 mil and accumulating a nest egg to take back to the islands. Well, the ASU thing did not materialize and rumors (wishful thinking by SMU fans might be a better description) aside, there seems no real current interest on the part of a bigger program. But Catch 22 for us is the contract extension. I’ll grant hat JJ took us from perennial bottom ten status to something approaching the top fifty but altogether his era at SMU is about as dead end as the evolution of dinosaurs and it is going to continue for some time.

[Junior]

For=what he has done up to this season.

Against=this season.

[redpony]

NC- excellent post and analysis.
I suspect our first issue is with the admin. - specifically RGT. I just do not believe that he wants a top 25 team.. My impression is that he goes through the motions just to placate some of the money people who want a major program and who are also key donors on the academic side. My president was Willis Tate and I consider him one of the best SMU has had. IMO RGT in no way measures up to Tate. RGT should have dismissed jj immediately after the ASU fiasco. The issue was not that he talked to ASU but that he was recruiting our recruits to go with him and doing it on our nickle. IMO that smacks of a complete lack of integrity and ethics. Most any business enterprise would have immediately dismissed any of their employees who committed the same actions.

I hope we (SMU) can move on to the next level very quickly but am not optimistic as long as jj remains our coach.