Fairmont Athletic Hall of Fame, 2016 Class
Pete Fowler, Fairmont High, Baseball Coach, 1944-54 (deceased)
Joe Hamilton, Fairmont West, Basketball and Baseball, 1968
Josh Jackson, Fairmont High, Football, Basketball, Baseball and Track, 1993
Jeff Long, Fairmont East, Football, Baseball, 1978
Carly Mathes, Fairmont High, Swimming, 2005
Harry Otto, Fairmont High, Booster, 1989-99
Some lessons last a lifetime.
The first time he walked into that conference room as chairman of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee and looked into the faces of those who’d be under his charge — people like Condoleezza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State, Lieutenant General Mike Gould, the former superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Barry Alvarez, the University of Wisconsin athletics director, Pat Haden, the USC athletics director, and Tom Osborne, the former Nebraska athletics director and football coach — Jeff Long, the Arkansas AD, unconsciously drew on a long past but similar experience from his days at Fairmont East High School.
Back then he was a 16-year-old, modestly-built sophomore quarterback called up late in the season from the junior varsity to start a big game against Troy.
Instead of Rice, Alvarez and Osborne, he found himself face to face with older, more established Falcons — varsity stalwarts with names like Heath, Pugh and Hoke — and he knew he had his work cut out for him.
Rusty Clifford, Fairmont East’s 24-year-old coach, had seen something in Long that some of the other coaches, the other players and even the young quarterback himself had not.
“There was a junior quarterback ahead of me and I had a sense that the coaching staff — other than Rusty — would have preferred to start him instead of me,” Long remembered. “I think a lot of my teammates didn’t have confidence in me at first either.
“But Rusty had a unique ability to see something in individuals before they could see it in themselves. He saw me as a leader before I realized I could lead. He took me under his wing and instilled confidence in me. And pretty soon I believed I could do it, too.”
And he did. He directed East to a victory over Troy and then led the team to a win in the season finale the next week.
“Many of those same things came into play the past two years as I chaired the playoff committee,” he said. “To have the confidence to lead a group of people who are admired and respected and already have so many accomplishments is almost like assuming command of a huddle.
“That first time in high school, I can remember it like it was yesterday, being huddled there under the lights at our stadium with guys who were two years older, significantly bigger and taller. But I’ll tell you what, those guys turned out to be great teammates and they helped me.”
Long was recalling this a couple of afternoons ago as he talked by phone from his office in Fayetteville. This weekend he plans to be back in Kettering.
Saturday afternoon he gets enshrined in the Fairmont High Athletic Hall of Fame. Friday night, he and the other inductees will be introduced at halftime of Fairmont’s basketball game with Beavercreek at Trent Arena.
Although he went on to collect seven varsity letters in football and baseball at Ohio Wesleyan, coached football at Miami University, N.C. State, Duke, Rice and Michigan, has been in athletic administration at Virginia Tech, Michigan, Eastern Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pitt and now Arkansas, was named Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal athletic director of the year last spring and may soon end up as Michigan’s new AD, Long was moved when he heard himself referred to as a Fairmont Hall of Famer:
“To hear that sends a chill down my spine.”
Connection to Hokes
Long said his dad, Harold, came here from Jellico, Tenn., when he was 18: “He and his two brothers moved to Dayton to work in the auto industry.”
Ruth, his mom, was born and raised in Dayton.
“When I think back on it, the most remarkable thing is that neither of my parents graduated from high school,” he said. “My dad did eventually go back and get his GED, but all along both of my parents understood the value of education.”
He said that’s why, when he was in seventh grade, they “stretched their budget” to move to Weybright Court in Kettering so he could attend Fairmont East.
They ended up living not far from Brady Hoke, now the well-known college coach who was at Michigan and just recently joined the Oregon staff. Back at Fairmont East, he was the Falcons center who snapped the ball to Long.
But even before that, Brady and his brother Jon were the older neighborhood kids who gave their newspaper route to Long.
“It was the Journal Herald, the early-morning route, so I was up, delivering it every morning at 4 or 4:30,” he said.
Long sang the praises of growing up in Kettering in the 1970s.
“My passion, my love of sports was nurtured at Fairmont,” he said. “A lot of it goes back to people like Rusty Clifford — who has gone from my coach to a lifelong friend — and Bob Chapman, my baseball coach, and Jim Ehler, the athletic director whose office I worked in during my off period in school.
“Sports was what propelled me into college. That’s why I love what I do now. Every day I get to see young people who are able to transform their lives through sports. That’s what happened to me.”
As he was finishing up at Ohio Wesleyan, Long hoped to line up a graduate assistant’s job coaching football somewhere.
“I sent out letters to 200 schools and only Idaho responded,” he said. He was preparing to go there when a high school coach he knew got him hooked up with Tom Reed at Miami. He got on the football staff there and later Reed brought him to N.C. State and then helped get him in at Michigan, where he initially worked as a graduate assistant on Bo Schembechler’s staff.
Although that job was a step back after being a bonafide assistant coach at Duke, Long felt it better situated him for the future and he ended up spending a decade at Michigan, most of it in administration.
That’s where he met Franny, his Ann Arbor-raised wife, and why many consider him a natural to fill the Wolverines’ AD job.
When quizzed on the prospect, he laughed off the speculation:
“I have an incredible job at the University of Arkansas. I’m really proud of what we’ve done and I don’t think my work is done here yet.”
Proud of CFP work
Although he’s going into the Fairmont Hall of Fame, Long admitted his older brother, Harold Jr., may well have pulled off Fairmont’s greatest football play ever.
East was trailing Stebbins, 21-7, with 90 seconds left in a league title game. Although the Falcons would score in the final minute to bring them within seven, they failed to recover the onside kick, and because they were out of time outs, it looked as if they would lose for sure.
All the Stebbins quarterback had to do was take a knee or two.
Instead, as former Fairmont coach Doug Schmidt once told sportscaster Joe Starkey:
“The kid took the ball and ran back and forth, retreating toward his goal line and the gun went off. He basically taunted our kids, stuck it in our faces, then put the ball behind his back, but he never downed it.
“Harold ran up behind him, stole the ball and ran it in for a touchdown. We tied the game and won it in overtime. It’s the greatest play in the history of Fairmont football.”
Long laughed at the recollection: “Yeah, Harold reminds me all the time about that play.”
As for his own myriad accomplishments, Long is especially proud of the work of the College Football Playoff Committee:
“Other than some personal things, being married, having two wonderful children and arriving here in Arkansas, it was really a great personal and professional honor to serve on that committee.”
While he recently ended his term as chairman, he’ll remain part of the august group: “It’s been exhilarating work because we’ve created something new that I believe is going to last.”
And like he said, the lessons that served him well there were first learned at Fairmont.
That’s why he’s so looking forward to his return here. He and his wife will bring along his mother, who now lives with them in Arkansas.
Along with the weekend Hall of Fame festivities and seeing old friends and family here, Long said they will visit his father’s grave at Woodland Cemetery. He’s also trying to firm up plans to speak to the Agonis Club.
And there is one more thing.
“My No. 1 goal is to get to Marion’s Pizza,” he said with a laugh. “That’s the ultimate stop.”
Some lessons do last a lifetime.
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