Julian “JuJu” Smith said “I do” to a 2025 University of Hawaii football scholarship before being asked “Will you …?”
After noticing UH associate head coach Chris Brown’s number on caller ID, Smith recalled answering the phone: “Let’s go get it, Coach.”
“He started laughing,” Smith said of Brown. “Before he asked if I wanted to be a Warrior, I already knew. I said, ‘Let’s go.’ I told myself, if they ever gave me an opportunity, I was going to take it.”
Smith, a hybrid defensive back/linebacker at Bakersfield (community) College, will enroll at UH in January. His older brother, Jalen Smith, is the Rainbow Warriors’ No. 1 weak-side linebacker.
“From the coaches to the environment, everything about Hawaii is great,” Smith said. “And I liked the way Coach CB took care of my big brother. After what he went through his first season, and the amount of love they showed him — and they still show him — proved how much support he had.”
Two weeks ahead of the 2022 fall semester, the elder brother was told one of his classes was not transferable from Bakersfield College. With no time to complete a substitute course, Jalen Smith was allowed to attend UH but not play in a football game in 2022. Last year, he emerged as an impactful defender.
“As a man and as a football player, my brother has grown (at UH),” Julian Smith said. “From that, I was like, ‘Yeah, Hawaii’s the place for me, too.’”
As a Garces Memorial High senior, Julian Smith was set to attend San Jose State. But when a scholarship was not finalized, he opted to attend Bakersfield College. In 2023, he amassed 55 tackles, including 44 solo stops, in 11 games.
Smith, who is 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds, was used as a safety, nickelback and edge blitzer. During spring ball, he took reps as a cornerback. In max testing last week, Smith bench-pressed 315 pounds three times, did seven reps of 365 pounds in the Romanian dead lift, and front-squatted 355 pounds. He ran 100 meters in a laser-timed 11.1 seconds.
As an academic qualifier out of high school, Smith does not need to earn an associate’s degree to transfer to UH.
He said he is mulling a decision to play a second season for Bakersfield this fall or redshirt while training for his move to UH. If he redshirts, he will have three seasons of UH eligibility. If he plays this fall, he will have three years to play two UH seasons.
“That’s the question I’m dealing with,” he said.
But he said Bakersfield head coach R. Todd Littlejohn and offensive coordinator Seth Damon are supportive of whatever decision he makes.
“That’s what the coaches preach at BC,” Smith said. “They want us to get to that development of playing at that level we want to play at, which is Division I.”
