Watching the innovative Doc Rivers “trade” play out between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers recalls one of the more intriguing what-ifs in recent University of Hawaii football lore.
As in what if UH had followed through and demanded an Aloha Stadium appearance from Southern Methodist University in return for the release of football coach June Jones from his contract five years ago?
Jones, you will recall, was the most accomplished coach in UH history when he left the Warriors in shock on Jan. 7, 2008 — six days after the Bowl Championship Series Sugar Bowl appearance — for the lucrative SMU job.
Like the Celtics, who insisted on a first-round draft pick for allowing Rivers to become the Clippers’ coach, UH didn’t want its coach to walk for nothing.
Not when UH maintained Jones was bound to the school by contract through June 30, 2008, and obligated to repay a buyout fee of $400,008, an amount equal to half of his annual UH salary at the time.
Unlike Boston, however, UH wasn’t in a position to ask for a player or even a recruit to be named later. Something the NCAA would have frowned upon much more than NBA Commissioner David Stern’s resistance to the inclusion of Kevin Garnett in the Rivers deal.
Jones, meanwhile, insisted that former athletic director Herman Frazier, who was fired a day after Jones announced his departure, had pledged to release him after three years of the five-year contract.
It resulted in a standoff that required 11 months to finally negotiate a resolution, a period during which rumors were rife that the Warriors would seek an SMU visit to Aloha Stadium as a condition for granting the coach’s release.
Mediator Clyde Matsui, who presided over the negotiations, said Monday he had also heard the talk, though the “issue never made it to the table.”
Too bad, because it would have made for an attractive showdown, a game that would have sold itself. One that, sadly, has yet to materialize and isn’t on the horizon anytime soon.
Instead, while Jones has returned to Aloha Stadium with his Mustangs twice, it has been to whip up on Nevada (2009) and Fresno State (2012) in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl when the Warriors failed to qualify for the postseason.
While the two appearances drew decently, averaging more than 30,000, they hardly scratched the surface on what a match between UH and SMU would have produced, especially if it had come against a team featuring many of Jones’ former players and assistant coaches.
Instead, the parties eventually agreed that the June Jones Foundation would donate $100,010 to Na Lei O‘iwi Scholarship Fund in the name of the late Kanalu Young, who had been a professor in UH’s Hawaiian Studies program and adviser to Jones. In addition, someone who was described as an anonymous donor, contributed $100,000 to be used at the discretion of the Manoa Chancellor’s office.
Ultimately, Jones got his release and UH received compensation, but a much anticipated showdown has yet to happen.
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
