A Matter of Perspective

So I was reading the Greyhound (LoCo's student newspaper) last night, when I came across an opinion piece about Lane Kiffin leaving his job as head coach at the University of Tennessee to take the head coaching job at Southern Cal.  Normally, I tend to just skim over the headlines in the sports section, but this article caught my interest because I spent last summer at UT and am applying there for grad school, and remembered the excitement that was in the air when they hired Kiffin last year, so I read on.  The article's author makes a valid point about Kiffin taking advantage of a prestigious and highly coveted job opportunity, and how the fans might be taking it a little too personally.  The only thing I found wrong in the article was the line "The man is trying to support his family."  Which brings me to the point of today's post:  In the business of athletics, family is NOT a legitimate excuse for leaving a team for more money when you already make seven-plus figures a year.  I remember sportswriters using the same excuse  in 2008 to justify Ryan Malone leaving the Penguins for the Lightning.  Sorry, but that just doesn't wash with me.

Let me put things in perspective:  For the last few years, my family has been struggling just to make ends meet.  Both my parents work part-time, my dad having only recently found a job after four years of unemployment.  On top of all the bills and living expenses, they have to find some way to put both my sister and me through college.  The fact that I'm still at Loyola and not at some community college is all the proof I need of the existence of God.  My parents have completely drained their retirement funds.  I myself am down to my last $300, which will probably be used up in the next month on groceries and an application fee for a grad school that I might apply to.  I have worn the same pair of glasses for the last five or six years and badly need new ones, but that's gone by the wayside what with my dad having to replace his computer and my sister needing surgery on her toe, among other things.  I'm probably going to need a car when I go off to grad school, but I don't know how the heck I'm going to pay for it.  I have a job as a tutor, but it doesn't pay jack squat. 

You get the picture.  The point I'm trying to make is, if I had a wife and kids to support, I think I could live pretty comfortably on even $100,000 a year, a figure which I highly doubt that a college professor would ever come close to making.  According to the Greyhound article, Kiffin was making upwards of $2 million a year at Tennessee, and his new job at USC will bring in $3 million per annum.  Are his wife and kids really going to die without that extra million dollars?  In my humble opinion, he was already making enough to live pretty comfortably.  From that perspective, is one million dollars worth the shame of betraying all those fans who put their complete trust in you?  It's one thing to cite the need to support one's family when that extra money legitimately means the difference between a real house and the poorhouse.  It's quite another to say it when you already make more than you really need.