Sports are a enterprise that runs on dollars and cents. Dollars and cents are what you need to feed your family. In order to feed your family, you need to make the most dollars and cents that you can to provide and hold your family. With that being said, in the past few months we have seen Ncaa Football coaches leave one team for another. Either it was for monetary reasons, or for a step up on the job scale, fans and writers are questioning the coach's loyalty. But should they?
Loyalty is defined as, "A feeling or attitude of devoted attachment and affection". In my own thought I believe that this means that if you have a love for something so much, you will all the time stand true to what it is that you love. Family, friends, businesses, or whatever else you feel a loyalty towards.
Georgia High School Football
Lane Kiffin is the most hated man in Knoxville, Tennessee right now. In case you are oblivious to the world, Lane Kiffin was the head Football coach at the University of Tennessee. He recently departed Tennessee, after one year of coaching duties, to come to be the head coach at the University of Southern California. Fans in Knoxville are calling for his head and questioning his loyalty. But should they verily examine his loyalty? In this case I feel that he may be acting on loyalty and not selfishness.
Lane Kiffin started coaching at the University of Southern California in 2001. This was his first position as an assistant coach to a major college program. For 6 years Coach Kiffin developed, coached, taught, shaped, and recruited pupil athletes for the program. He had been working with some of these kids since they were 8th graders up until they left for the Nfl or graduated. When you continuously do this for many years, you feel a sense of stability for the agenda that you are helping. After a dominate run for Usc, Coach Kiffin was offered a job as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders. A coach's dream is to one day have operate over your own team, so Kiffin took the job knowing what he had done for Usc. His tenure at Oakland didn't last long and he was fired. The University of Tennessee came calling the next year and offered him the head coaching position and he acceptable it. For 14 months he took the agenda and brought them close to where the agenda had been in the 90's. Top 10 recruiting class, correction in wins by 2 games, blowout win over rival Georgia, and a hype that fans bought into but coaches in the Southeastern consulation loathed. Then in one day it all changed, and loyalty was questioned.
How can you examine his loyalty? Because he left the agenda he was under ageement to after one year of service? Because he made a promise and broke it the second that other school came calling? If you watched Kiffins speech on Wednesday night you saw where his loyalty stood. It was with Usc. He noted that he would have only left Tennessee for Usc. Usc was his home. He met his wife there, his children were born there, and he got his start there. To me, that sounds like loyalty. It may look like abandonment, it may look cowardly, not everyone is going to agree with me, and you don't have to, but you cannot examine a person's loyalty without questioning your own as well. Think of yourself in this situation. You are working an entry level position with a high end enterprise for years, then one day other enterprise calls and offers you a higher paying job. You tell your current enterprise that you have acceptable other position somewhere else and wish them the best of luck. One year later your previous enterprise calls back and says that the Ceo has stepped down and they want you to take the job, ask yourself what you would do.
Again, you can have your own personal feelings toward Lane Kiffin and loyalty, but please examine yourself before you judge others.
Loyalty in Sports Depends on Your Definition of Loyalty
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