But when Tompkins left in the winter to play professional baseball, Jones got the start in the opener against Bear Bryant's #6-ranked Kentucky, and he threw the game winning pass to help Texas upset the Wildcats.
Texas switched from the straight-T offense to the Split-T and Jones led the team to victories against Purdue, North Carolina and #11 Oklahoma.
[5][7] In 1952, Jones, halfbacks Gib Dawson and Billy Quinn and fullback Dick Ochoa created Texas' all-time greatest backfield combination.
Against Texas A&M, Jones, Dawson and Quinn all rushed for more than 100 yards, the first time 3 players ever did that in a single game for a Longhorn team, and a feat that has only been repeated once since.
He then served two and a half years in the Army Transportation Corps as part of his obligation as a Korean War era ROTC student.
In the summer before the 1963 National Championship season, Jones decided he needed to spend more time with his family due to his wife's illness and he resigned from the team.
[1][5] Jones spent six years selling class rings and then another twelve at City National Bank in Austin, Texas, where he was eventually a senior vice-president.
He made several key hiring decisions including successful coaches Spike Dykes, James Dickey and Larry Hays; oversaw construction of new athletic offices and a baseball stadium and was AD of the program during the Lady Raiders run to the 1993 NCAA women's basketball championship—the school's first and only one in any NCAA sport.
The Dickey hiring was the source of some tension with Dr. Robert Lawless, then the school president, who preferred a national search rather than promoting a current assistant.
Shortly after the school's first national championship, Jones resigned abruptly on June 8, 1996, with 14 months remaining on his contract, because he felt like he had lost "the confidence of the President and the Board of Regents.