June Jones is arguably the greatest coach in Hawaii football history. Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Hawaii has found itself in a very awkward public spat with June Jones over his possible return as football coach, and the school escalated things further on Saturday.

Hawaii spokesman Dan Meisenzahl delivered a set of odd and somewhat incendiary comments in a press conference Saturday about Jones’ public statements about the Hawaii job. Meisenzahl praised Jones as the best coach in school history, but added that Jones had “too much power” in his first stint at the school and showed “zero integrity” throughout the current process.

When asked if Jones was still a candidate for the job, Meisenzahl deferred and simply said the job remained open.

On Friday, Jones confirmed he had received an offer from Hawaii and was interested, but that “no coach in their right mind” would accept the terms offered to him. Hawaii clearly felt the need to keep Jones’ remarks from going unchallenged publicly, resulting in this rather extraordinary series of statements.

Jones getting the job seems far-fetched now. This is a lot of bad blood to spill publicly if these two sides are really expecting to be able to work with each other.

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