The College Football Coaching Roller Coaster

One of the big sports topics of the day is Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin jumping ship to become the head coach at the University of Southern California. The good people of the Volunteer State were less than pleased with this announcement, as you can imagine. Kiffin was hired as the UT coach just 14 months ago, and the fans believed he would lead them back to national prominence. Instead, they gathered in front of the Athletic Department, set mattresses on fire and tried to prevent Kiffin from leaving. Yeah, because he'll want to stay in Knoxville if they physically force him to do so. And the name-calling, wife-bashing antics that have also occurred in the past 24 hours? All that is going to do is make him miss Tennessee even less.

I turned on Around the Horn on ESPN this evening, and one of the journalists on the show was talking about how this is so terrible that college football is set up in such a way that coach's leave for greener pastures all the time. But is it really so one-sided? Coaches get fired by schools all the time, and nobody is talking about how terrible this is. The truth is college football is all about what is best for "me," whether the "me" is the coach, player or program. Coaches leave, programs fire coaches, and players leave for other schools or the NFL all the time. It just a part of how it goes. Tennessee is going to go out and hire another coach. They will probably hire a coach from another school, and the fans won't have a problem with it. Get over it. That's just how it is.