College football needs a "No-Tampering" Rule

By now it's old news, but just in case you missed it, Jim Mora is out in Seattle, Pete Carroll is out at USC and into Seattle, Lane Kiffin is out at Tennessee and into Southern Cal. And UT fans are not happy about it.

But wait...there's more! Kiffin is not leaving Tennessee all by his lonesome. Let's take a look at who and what will be joining him at USC:

1. Monte Kiffin, defensive coordinator
2. Ed Orgeron, assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator
3. An entire class of 9 incoming mid-year recruits, whom Orgeron has instructed not to enroll in UT courses, lest they complicate the transfer process to USC.

As you might expect, all of this is having a devastating impact on Tennessee's recruiting class.

Personally, I am disgusted by the entire story. Please excuse my strong language, but how can anyone argue with the increasingly commonplace belief that today's coaches are whores on a neverending prowl for more money??

Pete Carroll, in his "long" 9-year tenure at USC, won 7 PAC-10 titles and 1.5 national titles. He was one of the faces of college football. Yet he is leaving to take an NFL job with the mediocre Seattle Seahawks, despite a mediocre track record in pro football (33-31 in 4 seasons with the Jets and Patriots). Sure, he'll probably make more money, but that's not the point. He is leaving behind three recruiting classes who enrolled at USC at least partly on the expectation that they would play for Carroll under Carroll's system. Now those players will play under Lane & Monte Kiffin under a distinctly Tennessee-flavored system.

And how can you not feel sorry for Tennesee? Sure, they might have seen this coming when Al Davis (who inexplicably refuses to abandon JaMarcus Russell!!) got fed up with Kiffin and cut him loose. But now Tennessee has lost its head coach, assistant head coach and recruiting coordinator, and defensive coordinator. Not to mention 9 mid-season recruits. And...some of their players in the upcoming season will be playing for their third coach in three years. Yeesh.

So what, if anything, should be done about this mess? To me, it's simple: the NCAA needs a no-tampering rule. The NBA has it (remember the Miami Heat getting busted for tampering with Pat Riley when he was still under contract to coach the Knicks?). The NFL has it (remember when Washington was alleged to have tampered with Albert Haynesworth when he was still on, ironically, Tennessee?). Well, some are calling for the NCAA to install a no-tampering rule, and I agree.

Here is the NFL's definition of tampering: the term tampering as used within the NFL refers to any interference by a member club with the employer/employee relationship of another club or any attempt by a club to impermissibly induce the person to seek employment with that club or with the NFL

Tell me why this couldn't work in the NCAA! Why should any team be allowed to step in between another team and its player or coach, and woo that person into abandoning his contract by offering more money. In the law, that's called "tortious interference in a business relationship" and it's illegal because in the context of sports, you're not just hiring a coach to help your own team -- you're helping your own team at the expense of the other teams.

Indeed, as the website states, a systematic effort to induce employees to leave their present employment and take work with another is unlawful when the purpose of such enticement is to cripple or destroy their employer rather than to obtain their skills and services in the legitimate furtherance of one's own business enterprise.

In my opinion, while USC was clearly trying to help itself by hiring Kiffin and most of his staff, the purpose was also to cripple Tennessee and any other team that poses a threat to USC's goal of winning the national championship next season. That's why teams spend big bucks to bring in big name coaches -- to get a staff whose skills they enjoy and nobody else does.

Besides, the entire story just reeks of greed. This isn't pro football, where players (like the coaches) follow the dollars. This is college football, and these recruits and players trust their future careers in the sport to their head coach. So when the coach jumps ship after one year and brings most of his coaching staff with him to some other program, he is deserting an entire team of unpaid collegiate student-athletes. It's not like Kiffin got a 250% raise. He went from making millions to making, possibly, another million on top of that. And for what? To return to USC, where he once coached? Grow up, Lane Kiffin. You had a great setup in Tennessee, coaching with your dad in the best conference in college football. Don't run at the first opportunity to return to what's comfortable. You could have done great things in the SEC. Fleeing back to Southern Cal makes you look like a liar and a coward, and that's just not fair to those Vols players.