June Jones resigns as SMU football coach after 0-2 start

Jones said through his agent that he had succeeded in turning the Mustangs' program around.

June Jones has resigned as the coach of SMU after an 0-2 start to the 2014 season in which his team was outscored by a combined score of 88-6. The news comes from Jones' agent, who says that Jones "needed a break" after he had met his goal of turning the program around.

JUNE JONES RESIGNS SMU COACHING JOB--June had felt for some time he had accomplished mission to turn around program and needed a break.

— Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg) September 8, 2014

It's tough to say that Jones really turned SMU around during his six full years with the Mustangs. He made them somewhat respectable, but could never get them over the eight-win hump. Jones won either seven or eight games in a four-years stretch from 2009 to 2012, but regressed in 2012 with a five-win season and was off to an awful start this year, with a 45-0 loss to Baylor and an even more embarrassing 43-6 loss to North Texas.

Jones felt that while SMU had made the decision that it would become a force to be reckoned with in college football — it did move from Conference USA to the American Athletic Conference, which is a slight step up — it was still behind others.

"Schools like TCU made the decision 15 years ago they were going to enter into the arena of play they're in now, that's why they're in the Big 12. SMU made that decision 5, 6, 7 years ago and we're starting to be competitive on the top kids but we really have to find kids that get overlooked and we've done that."

Jones had a lot of success at Hawaii — a program that is very difficult to win at — leading the Warriors to a Sugar Bowl win over Georgia in his final year before leaving for SMU. However, some criticized him for his failure to adapt in Texas, where so many programs were already successful and so many others were improving. To that end, Jones was not going to change how he operated.

"I've always had what I do. You really have to go with what got you there. It all goes in circles. I won't ever change the way I play but you see the game going in circles."

Six years and two games later, Jones leaves SMU with a 36-43 record and some flashes of lifting the program a little bit above mediocrity. Whether that's a success at SMU is debatable, but now Jones gets his break.

Steven Godfrey contributed to reporting

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