The gathering took place in a Washington D.C. meeting room, and just minutes after it started, Drue Jennings had a sense he might be talking to the next Kansas athletic director.
This was the last week of June, and Jennings — the chair of KU's search committee — had traveled via KU's company jet with chancellor Douglas Girod to formally interview Jeff Long.
The talk, Jennings said, became "one of those pivotal moments" in the hiring process. Long started by telling Girod and Jennings about his own personal history, explaining a past where he was the first child in his family to go to college and the son of blue-collar workers from Ohio.