If one considers 25 years to be "short term" then I guess it only worked short term.
I think most people would consider that to be long term.
I guess that's a little bit like saying Bill Walsh and LaVell Edwards and Bobbby Bowden weren't actually sucessful - they only had about 20 or 30 years of short term success and once they were gone their successors coulnd't sustain the success so they must actually be failures, not successes.