Lane Kiffin, the new head football coach at the University of Southern California, is being somewhat criticized for his move to Los Angeles, after leaving the University of Tennessee, having worked there for only one season.  The criticism stems from an issue that gets visited every January (at the end of college football season) and every April (at the end of college basketball season).

The issue is simple - should coaches be able leave a job after one year to take a better one, while student-athletes (at least in the sports of football and basketball, although baseball and ice hockey are required to follow this rule), if they want to transfer are required to sit out a year?

My thought is unquestionably YES!  I fail to see why this is such an issue.  The premise, at least, is that these young men and women are there to get an education, or at least a way to start a vocation, if they are good enough to go to the pros right away.  A coach is a professional.  A student-athlete, at least in premise, is an amateur.  Don't mistake my reasoning for naivete - I'm not so dumb as to think there aren't schools having work done for their players, paying them, skirting the rules while recruiting (See Sampson, Kelvin).

But the premise, at least, the idea - is that a student-athlete is there for an education.  The chance to play a sport is the means to get it.

A coach is a professional.  Like any human being, they can take any job they want.  They can leave any job they want.  So what is the big deal?  If a student-athlete recruit is coming to Penn State because of Joe Paterno, maybe they should re-evaluate that.  Maybe they should see beyond the next four years.  Maybe they should know that Syracuse is a good journalism school and that Vanderbilt is a good education school and that Duke is a good pre-med school.

Maybe we should start going European - have sports academies on all our major sports team.  Kids can enter at at nine, and work their way up to the big squad, if they are good enough.  If they aren't quite, they can go to the UFL or the NBADL or Double-A.  We can keep collegiate sports too, and have student-athletes with the emphasis on student playing those sports.