Long overdue: Inside the problems AD allowed at KU, and what’s required to fix them now
In the end, Jeff Long had no friends. Nobody to defend him. Nobody to support. Nobody who believed.
Kansas hired him as athletic director three summers ago ago to fix football, a rudderless department desperate for stability. Instead, he became known for poor communication, insecurity and poor management. Two days after “mutually parting ways” with the football coach he hired, and a day after a disastrous news conference in which he defended his role, Long announced he is “stepping down.”
He leaves with a distinguished record of destructive decisions and burned credibility.
“I’ve never seen someone alienate people like this,” a source inside the department said. “I thought Charlie Weis was bad, but man.”
This can be the beginning of brighter days for KU sports. We’ll get to that soon, promise, but first you should know just how bad it got under Long.
A flurry of conversations this week — many of them unsolicited, from frustrated KU staff venting about the boss — painted a consistent picture. Long is seen by many to have divided a department that needed unity, and to have squashed the morale of a group that was already struggling.
Three made a strikingly similar observation: for a man who cares so deeply about his own image, Long consistently and apparently unknowingly chipped away at it until he was left alone.
At least two developments in the last five days or so are stunning.
First, a canvasing of staffers and especially donors found nobody willing to defend Long. “We have other problems too,” is the closest we came.
Second, Long’s video call with reporters on Tuesday was supposed to be about him correcting what he thought were false perceptions. Instead, the call turned into an objective disaster.
He was visibly nervous even before the first question, took no accountability for the embarrassment of Les Miles being fired just two seasons after Long controlled a search that effectively blocked out any other candidates, and offered no reason for confidence going forward.
That he was presented to the public to talk about the future and gone the next day is an emphatic demonstration of at least three truths: Long was galactically overmatched in the job, the video call disaster spurred many with influence to rally for a school they love, and chancellor Doug Girod has been out of touch with his university’s most visible department.
Long’s continued employment became impossible to defend. His firing leaves the athletic department in immediately better shape.
But Long is not the whole of the department’s problems, and the entire truth will need to be confronted for KU to be better off.
Long was objectively bad at his job, but some of this was systemic. Long’s contract included an extension if any major sports program was put on probation or found to have committed NCAA violations before his arrival.
Nobody can fault him for wanting to protect himself against the basketball program’s Adidas investigation, but in practice the clause meant he stood to personally benefit from sanctions to a department he’s supposed to protect. That created distrust from his literal first day on the job.
If Girod and KU attorneys felt the clause was necessary, fine, but the internal conflict they had to know would be created was never properly addressed.
Similarly, why was Long allowed to so thoroughly mismanage former football coach David Beaty’s firing? That should have been a layup. Instead, Long’s unnecessary pettiness cost the department both money and credibility.
That was Long’s single biggest mistake. It was inexplicable in real time, made worse because it was so unforced, and in so many ways led directly to bigger problems and his eventual ouster.
Here’s a story volunteered by one of those frustrated KU employees. Shortly after Snoop Dogg wrecked the basketball program’s Late Night in 2019, a previously scheduled meeting with the chancellor, athletics department staff, advisory councils and alumni was held.
The meeting was intended as something of a pep rally, for the school and boosters to talk up successes. An alum spoke about his excitement for the ESPN+ documentary Miles To Go, and complimented deputy athletic director Chris Freet, who the alum understood came up with the idea.
Freet, who is widely described as Long’s yes-man, looked at his boss and let an awkward silence hang.
“Nope,” the source remembered Long saying. “I took the blame for Snoop, so I’m taking the credit for ‘Miles To Go.’ That’s how this works.”
Asked if Long meant it as a joke, the source responded: “Not at all. It was gross.”
The picture painted by KU staffers is that Long walled himself off from too many, and was too motivated by his own self image. He apparently had nobody close to him who could tell him hard truths, and lacked the street smarts and self-awareness to recognize them on his own.
He became isolated from people the AD needs to be close to, and unaware he was creating problems the AD needs to prevent.
Long is in the past now, and Girod promised KU would move “quickly but judiciously” to hire his replacement. Girod and those around him must learn from this process, not just in identifying the right candidate but in preventing the same problems from repeating.
KU sports’ next leader must be one the staff can believe in. He or she must be a communicator, a unifier, and perhaps most importantly capable of helping find the right new coach for the country’s worst Power Five football program.
The next leader will find a staff desperate for positive energy at a time when faculty tenure has been limited and job security is fading. The next leader must be unafraid of a challenge.
There can be better days ahead, but the right decisions must be made with the right motivations. Getting rid of Miles and Long was the easy part. Now comes the critical stuff.
This doesn’t immediately make KU stronger, but department morale is already better than when Long’s Tuesday news conference ended. One staffer said he would stop looking for other jobs. Another hoped some who had recently left might return.
This story was originally published March 10, 2021 at 6:31 PM.