March 31, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. - Don Jonas, the original head football coach at UCF who literally built the program from the ground up in 1979, stopped by the current team's spring practice on Tuesday morning. Jonas still lives in the Orlando area and remains a fervent supporter of the Knights.
Here are some thoughts that he shared as practice was starting on Tuesday:
Over 30 years since this program started, what is the biggest change you see?
"Well obviously the University of Central Florida made a commitment to go big time. When I started the program in '79 I coached for nothing, and not because I wanted to be a head coach. I believed that Orlando and the University of Central Florida deserved a major college football program. Dr. Colbourn was the president at that time and I talked to him about it and he said yes and it was in the works. Next thing I knew I was the head coach. It took time. We got to a point where we were either going to make a commitment or we weren't. And when Dr. Hitt made a commitment and went and got George O'Leary and that caliber of a coach and scholarships. That's where it is now. We're just taking tremendous leaps forward now."
Is this what you envisioned in 1979?
"Oh yeah, no question about it. I didn't think it would happen this fast. It sure did and everybody is happy about it. We got the stadium. Even through the years that we were playing Division II and Division I-AA we set all kinds of attendance records. We had the Citrus Bowl down there, putting 22-23,000 people in there, and when you went to Eastern Kentucky and all those other schools they couldn't even match it because their stadium only seats 15,000, and we averaged over that. Now we get big crowds here (on campus) too."
How much over 30 years has football changed, how much is it the same?
"Size and speed has been a tremendous difference. I compare my guys to these guys here. We had some guys that were pretty good size but nothing compared to these guys here, averaging over 300 pounds on the line. You've got guys who can run like the wind. And of course you got the money now where you can afford the scholarships. We didn't give a scholarship away until the third year and the most we could give was 500 bucks"
What over the past 30 years have been some of your happiest moments with this program?
"Probably the happiest was the first game when we went to St. Leo and it poured rain. They wanted to cancel the game. I said `no, we got to play.' We get down there for the first touchdown and we ran the last three yards in about ten feet of water. That was tremendous. The other thing is watching the progress as it took place. My first year we all coached for nothing. I had fourteen coaches and eight of them played in the NFL, and they all lived in Orlando. They had the same visions that I had. They wanted to see the same thing happen. They wanted major college football in Orlando. We knew Rollins wasn't going to do it, Stetson had done it a long time ago and we knew that was never going to happen. So this was the only place that could really make it become a reality."
What do you think will be next for UCF?
"I think to solidify the program. Things went very well. We progressed to a point where we wanted to be when George won the conference championship and got into the first couple of bowl games. Last year we didn't have a good year because he got stuck with two freshman quarterbacks, and so now you've got two young quarterbacks with lots of experience. So we've got to continue to progress. We can't progress and then go back. We have to continue to improve year-in and year-out, and that's what is going to bring everybody here. And, of course, building the stadium was the greatest thing in the world. You see the people you put in that stadium. It is what I imagined in '79."
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