First Posted: 10/15/2013
Jeff Long, announced Monday as chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee, once accused former Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee of slander, worked under Bo Schembechler at Michigan, was a high-school teammate of current Wolverines coach Brady Hoke and married a girl from Ann Arbor.
All of the above does not mean Long is anti-Ohio State, but that will not keep conspiracy theorists from going off in 3…2…1…
If Ohio State narrowly gets left out of the four-team College Football Playoff, which debuts next season, no doubt Long will receive the stink-eye from those who smell a rat, or a Wolverine, which in these parts is pretty much the same thing.
And you think poll voters and Bowl Championship Series computers are subject to suspicion? That is nothing compared to the slings and arrows that will come Long’s way when things don’t go “your” team’s way.
Who would want such a thankless job? Long.
After all, the former Ohio Wesleyan football and baseball player and current athletic director at Arkansas is used to taking a beating just because of his position. As a high-school quarterback at Fairmont East in Kettering, Long ran the option, getting hit even after pitching the ball.
He will take some licks in his newest role quarterbacking the selection committee, too. Will he be able to bounce back up?
“I know he can handle it,” said Bob Colbert, who coached Long in baseball and football at Ohio Wesleyan. “He always acted older than his age and had a certain calmness about him that I really enjoyed.”
Long was a relief pitcher and defensive back for Ohio Wesleyan, earning seven varsity letters before graduating in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He earned a master’s in education in 1983 at Miami University and also has either coached or worked as an administrator at Michigan, Duke, Rice, North Carolina State, Miami, Eastern Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma and Pittsburgh.
Colbert pointed to Long’s firing of Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino in 2012 as reason why Buckeyes fans need not worry whether he will be objective as committee chairman. Long hired Petrino in the first place, but he fired him after learning that the coach had lied about a relationship that had crossed the line from infidelity into workplace favoritism.
“They’re going to be up in arms there,” Colbert said of Ohio State fans’ reaction to a Michigan man and perceived Southeastern Conference sympathizer leading the committee. “But I know he has good character. It’s why he has succeeded.”
Long also is not afraid to take on bigger fish. After Gee said that Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez considered former Badgers coach Bret Bielema a “thug,” Alvarez denied the comments and Long called them “slanderous and unfounded.”
Ohio State fans might respect Long for speaking up, or their mistrust of him might increase given that Long hired Bielema, who was instrumental in ramping up the rivalry between the Badgers and Buckeyes.
And here I thought a playoff selection committee might alleviate the skepticism associated with the BCS standings selection format. But it is one thing to trust the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee, which picks 68 teams for the Big Dance, and quite another to put faith in a committee that chooses which four teams get a shot to play for a national championship.
Bill Hancock, BCS/College Football Playoff executive director, said early in the process of picking people for the committee that each candidate would be vetted up and down.
“We need to know everything we can about them,” Hancock said.
I wonder if he knows Long’s alma mater (Ohio Wesleyan) is 2-26-1 against Ohio State? Buckeye Nation just got a little more nervous.
