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Cinderella central Someone's turnaround story has to end in Honolulu
Posted: Tuesday December 21, 1999 02:47 PM
HONOLULU (AP) -- It was a matter of faith for June Jones and Dennis Erickson. Jones left the San Diego Chargers, taking a steep pay cut to come to Hawaii and help resurrect a dormant football program that hit rock bottom in 1998 when it went 0-12. Erickson was fired by the Seattle Seahawks and went to Oregon State, where he had to bury a long history of losing -- the school hadn't had a winning season since going 6-5 in 1970 and hadn't been to a bowl since losing to Michigan in the 1965 Rose Bowl. Their players believed, winning followed and the two most surprising teams of the 1999 college football season will play Christmas Day in the Oahu Bowl. "Everybody is just ecstatic over what's happened," Beaver defensive tackle Aaron Wells said. "Thirty-five years is a long time to go without any kind of bowl appearance and 30 years without any kind of winning season. Everybody wants us to win and get the program back on its feet." For Erickson, the first task was to end the culture of losing at Corvallis. "When you lose for 30 years like we have it's pretty much imbedded in a lot of areas," Erickson said. "When you've been losing for a lot of years it's just there and you've got to break it. We were able to do that." The coach changed the losing attitude the first day with his players. "He just brought intensity. He came in and the first thing he told us in the first meeting was that we were going to go to a bowl game," Wells said. "Since he said that at the beginning, it set in on all of us ... and everybody kind of realized that we are here to win." Restoring faith was also the first task for Jones. "Coach Jones told us last spring that we had to unite as a team," quarterback Dan Robinson said. "There was a lot of dissension on this team, but he brought us together and got us to start believing in ourselves." For Hawaii, the game also is a chance to earn some national respect. While the team's turnaround has garnered some national attention, doubters point to the Western Athletic Conference team's schedule and the fact it lost to USC and Washington State, the only two Pac-10 teams on its schedule, both of which finished behind Oregon State. "We look at this as a great opportunity to get some national respect," Rainbow Warrior linebacker Jeff Ulbrich said. "The WAC doesn't get too much respect nationally. "The Pac-10 has gotten a little more respect than us. I think there's some rivalry, but I think it's more on our part than on their part."
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