Former Oklahoma Sooner associate AD signs on at Kansas
By Chip Rouse
As one might expect, the Oklahoma Sooners sports family is a large one with far-reaching lineage.
In college sports, it is not at all uncommon for the top programs to have deep-rooted family trees that have spawned plenty of branches and blooms over the years, all with ties to the original source, or in this case the institution of which they were once a part.
The day after 4th of July, the University of Kansas had some leftover fireworks, announcing the hiring of Jeff Long as the Jayhawks’ new athletic director. Long, perhaps best known as the inaugural chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee in 2014 and 2015, replaces Sheahon Zenger, who was let go this spring after serving seven years as the KU athletic director.
Long was the athletic director at Arkansas from 2008 until 2017. Before that, he held the same position at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2001-02, he was at Oklahoma, working under Sooner AD Joe Castiglione as senior associate athletic director.
"“He was already an AD (at Eastern Kentucky) when I hired him,” Castiglione told the Lawrence Journal-World after the announcement of Long’s hiring at Kansas.“The fact that he (Long) chose to step away from an AD role that he had already obtained to go to a senior associate role, thinking of what that would do for his career track, is probably the biggest example of him being intentional about his career journey.”"
Despite overseeing 34 conference championships across all sports while he was at Arkansas, it was ultimately the recent struggles of the Razorback football program that cost his job.
That is somewhat ironic, because at Kansas, he will be tasked with rebuilding and returning a football program to respectability that has won just three games in the last three years and has not had a winning season since 2008, when…pause…former Oklahoma offensive coordinator and assistant coach Mark Mangino was the Jayhawks’ head coach.
Of course, it is only fair to add that at Kansas Long will also be associated with one of the most storied and successful programs in the history of college basketball.
According to multiple media reports. Kansas will pay Long $1.5 million a year for five years. That is actually comparable to what Castiglione earns at Oklahoma, which is frankly surprising to me. According to Cody Stavenhagen of the Tulsa World, Castiglione makes $1.55 million per year, but he has also been at OU for 20 years.
Nevertheless, Sheahon is out and Long is in at Kansas, and once again KU has turned to another former Oklahoma Sooner family member to get things back on the right track.