Is It a Good Idea for USC to Pay Lane Kiffin Nearly Four Million Dollars a Year?

It depends on how you look at it. I thought University of Southern
California Athletic Director Mike Garrett was out of his mind when he
insisted on paying Pete Carroll over one million dollars a year when
he was hired. Carroll was actively pursuing the job while all who were
offered it were politely turning them down and Carroll likely would
have accepted just about any contract offered at that time by Garrett
and USC. Now reports are that Garrett and USC are paying Lane Kiffin
around four million dollars a year and the outrage in the national
media is palpable.Now instead of thinking Garrett is out of his mind
again, I think he may have low-balled Kiffin if the numbers the media
are reporting are accurate. Do I think Kiffin is four times the coach
Carroll was when he started at USC? No. Is it a change of heart on my
part because Carroll vastly outperformed expectations? No again. Why
then the drastic change in my viewpoint? It has nothing to do with my
feelings of either's coaching ability. What it does come down to is a
change in how I am looking at the two similar situations.In the
instance of Carroll's hiring I was stuck on my fiscally conservative
side and miffed that Garrett would offer someone more money than he
had to. In strictly fiscal terms this amounts to taking an unnecessary
risk. Now I am stuck on the mental side of the hiring of Kiffin and it
makes complete sense to me. If the USC football coaching job is the
best job of its type in the country like Garrett believes it is, then
why wouldn't you pay the person in that job the highest salary? Think
of the message that sends to Kiffin and all of his potential recruits
if his predecessor made substantially more money doing the same job.
If Kiffin achieves the goals he and Garrett have for the program, he
will have been worth every penny of his contract and get a much
deserved raise. If he fails, paying him the rate the position deserves
and requires will not have anything to do with it and paying it less
would have made failure more likely.All successes start with belief.
Had Mike Garrett made Pete Carroll the fifth highest paid coach in the
league when he hired him instead of the highest paid coach would he
have had the same success he had at USC? That we will never know, but
I would argue that it would have made Carroll's job a lot tougher as
he and his opponents would have been able to question his school's
commitment and belief in him. No one can question USC's commitment to
Lane Kiffin and that puts him in position to succeed.Posted in The
Mind Side Blog