What We Learned: June Jones coaching with heavy heart

Sporting News' Dave Curtis analyzes what Wednesday's buzz means to college football. Jones' Heavy Heart SMU coach June Jones has split time this week between preparing his Mustangs for TCU and monitoring headlines a half a world away. Jones said Wednesday he has hundreds of friends in American Samoa, which has endured severe property damage and loss of life after earthquakes and a tsunami ravaged the small nation. "It's one thing when you watch it happen somewhere else," Jones told Sporting News by phone from Dallas. "But when you're attached to the people, man, it's devastating." Jones has recruited players from the island nation since the 1990s, but his annual trips there have taken greater significance. He said he leads medical missions that have brought about $800,000 in medical supplies to American Samoa, and he and his coaches run football clinics there every June. The relationships built on the trips have made the disaster pe...