LONG’S FIRING didn’t just happen overnight.

Perhaps the only person surprised that Jeff Long was terminated Wednesday as the vice chancellor/athletic director for the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville was Jeff Long.

The great father of two wonderful girls, the loving husband of Fanny and a very spiritual man, Long never got Arkansas football, its history, pride or tradition. Too much bean-counting, not enough hand-shaking.

And the fifth-highest paid state employee ($1.02 million) didn’t really seem to get it.

In Long’s almost 10 years, he hired 14 people as part of his administrative team and 13 were from out of state, the only Arkansan an associate general counsel.

In the last five years he

added nine people to his team, and all that did was put more cushion between him and the heart and soul of the program, the hard-working people who save their money to be able to donate to the scholarship fund and buy tickets. It is a source of pride for them.

No, they don’t give as much as the wealthy but they are the majority of the fans who actually fill the seats. Many are the ones attending games during a dismal season.

In Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz’s news release — there was no news conference and the statement had as much about Julie Cromer Peoples acting as interim AD as it did about Long — he said over the last year that Long had lost the support of fans, alumni, key supporters and members of the university leadership.

Sorry, Joe, but he started losing the fans the first time he walked a wealthy donor down the “A” that the band forms for the team to run through before the opening kickoff on the way to the field to fight for the Razorbacks. It is a great honor for an Arkansas player to have that honor and it should not be for sale.

He also started losing some wealthy donors more than a year ago, in particular a die-hard former Razorback athlete and successful businessman who began a quiet study of the athletic department practices.

The board of trustees didn’t just show up last Thursday and suddenly have a vote to change athletic directors. This was a work in progress for at least three years.

This lousy football season had nothing to do with Long no longer being the AD, but it did put focus on what would happen if Bret Bielema needed to fired.

Bielema received a new contract and an $15.4 million buyout after beating a bad Texas team in a lower-tiered bowl. Using documents received through an FOIA request, it has been reported the buyout is not $15.4 million but less than $6 million, but you can bet your grandma’s cornbread dressing recipe that will be disputed if Bielema is fired. He also gave Bobby Petrino an $18 million buyout, but he was fired for cause.

There seems to be no doubt the board of trustees did not trust Long to hire another football coach. His record with football hires at Arkansas was not good. He tried to hire Tommy Bowden (no longer a coach), Jim Grobe (no longer a coach), did hire Petrino (good coach, but hard to manage), John L. Smith and Bielema.

It remains to be seen if the expansion of Reynolds Razorback Stadium was a good idea. The project started out at $90 million and grew to be $160 million and all the new seats are incredibly expensive. Although the athletic department will have some nice shiny new offices in the Broyles Complex.

Long did some good things, and the night he fired Petrino and almost broke into tears he could have been elected governor, but he didn’t show any emotion again until yesterday when he told his staff he was gone.

Jeff Long will land on his feet and so will the University of Arkansas.