Is Lane Kiffin the Only One Who Deserves To Be In the Scumbucket?

Ok, so last night I'm cruising around the interwebs and I begin noticing that some of my facebook friends are posting messages like "Lane Kiffin is a scumbucket" and "Kiffin is such an Ass!" Now for those who may not recognize the name, Lane Kiffin is the former University of Tennessee head football coach who abruptly and pretty much in the middle of the night defected to the University of Southern California back in January, taking a number of the U.T coaches with him. At the time he was roundly, and in my opinion rightfully criticized not only for his actions, but for the way he handled the situation. Now, I don't consider myself to be a U.T. fan (What can I say? I was raised a Vanderbilt fan, and always will be one.), but I can certainly understand their reactions. There is no doubt that Kiffin's defection was, as the kids would say, "a Dick move". At the same time, I haven't really been keeping up with the sports news enough recently to know what had brought on the renewed ire. So, of course, time to do a little Googling to find out the latest.

Now, the way i understand it, the Tennessee Titans (our NFL team) are suing Kiffen and USC for "inducing" Titans running backs coach Kenneth Pola to break his contract with the Titans and sign on with USC a mere week before training camp was set to begin. Basically, the Titans are accusing Kiffin of "poaching" Pola from the titans. The facts, as laid out in this article from the Tennessean newspaper, seem to be that the main issue seems to be that coach Pola's contract required him to get written permission before talking to anyone else about a job with an organization besides the Titans, which he did not do. Instead, what appears to have happened is that Kiffen called Pola on Friday to see if he would be interested in a job at USC. Pola, who had only been hired by the Titans back in January of this year, told coach Kiffin that he would think about it and get back to him. On Saturday, Pola called Kiffin telling him he would take the job. At that point, Kiffen says that "out of my great respect for Coach Fisher I immediately reached out to Coach to make him aware of the situation."

It is the timing of this call, and what coach Fisher seems to see as a complete lack of respect on Kiffin's part that appears to be the basis of the lawsuit filed by the Titans. The same article quotes Fisher

“I am very disappointed in Lane Kiffin’s approach to this,’’ Fisher said on Saturday. “Typically speaking when coaches are interested in hiring or discussing potential employment from coaches on respective staffs there is a courtesy call made from the head coach or athletic director indicating there is an interest in talking to the assistant.

“So I am very disappointed in the lack of professionalism on behalf of Lane, to call me and leave me a voice mail after Kennedy had informed me he had taken the job. It is just a lack of professionalism.’’

The article then goes on to state that

According to the lawsuit, “USC and Kiffin maliciously intended to – and did – induce Pola to breach his contract with the Titans. The lawsuit alleges “USC and Kiffin engaged in improper means in their procedure of the breach and were not legally justified in their actions.’’

Ok, but here's where we start getting into "I don't get it" territory. now as far as i know, in everything that I have read so far, this phone call that Kiffin didn't make to Fisher is referred to as a "courtesy call". Those are even the words that Fisher himself uses. In other words, it's something that is considered "the right thing to do", but not a legal requirement. Beyond that, Kiffen is said to have known about (as he certainly should have) the requirements in the coach Pola's contract to inform the Titans that he was interested in talking to USC and to get their permission before doing so. Ok, fine, so Kiffin is an ass for not calling Fisher or at least for not making sure that the Titans were informed of what was going on. I don't disagree with that. But what i don't get is why Kiffin and USC are the targets of the Titans' lawsuit.

Lets be frank here. No matter how one might feel about Kiffen or USC for that matter, they were not the ones who had a contract with the Titans. Even the phrasing of the accusation - that Kiffin didn't make a "courtesy call" - pretty well says that while he should have, it was not legally incumbent upon him to do so. Instead it seems to me that all the wrath and fire, at least from a legal perspective, should be directed at coach Pola. After all, he was the one who didn't get the necessary permissions. He was the one who didn't inform Fisher that he had been contacted by USC as he was apparently contractually required to do. And he was the one who ultimately breached his contract and left the titans in the lurch. So why isn't he the one being sued?

Now, my first suspicion when considering this question was perhaps the possibility that the Titans don't want to sue Pola because they're hoping USC will back away from him rather than fight the suit and he will then come running back (no pun intended) to the Titans. Then they can play "no hard feelings" and get on with getting ready for the season. After all, a big part of the issue is that the Titans are ready to begin training camp, and the timing of Pola's defection, according to the lawsuit "disrupts planning" and "causes potential loss of confidence by players". There is also the issue of the loss of salary and benefits already paid to Pola along with "future damage." So, wanting to indirectly threaten Pola without actually filing suit against him, giving him perhaps a way to come back to the organization so that they don't have to spend a lot of time fitting someone new into the flow of the team might make some sense except for two things: first, it seems to me that despite the outrage, USC and Kiffen would just laugh at the Titans lawsuit saying "you're suing the wrong folk here - your boy's the one that (legally) done ya wrong" and second, Fisher is already on record saying he'll simply fill the position from within the organization.

Then there's also the suggestion that the suit against Kiffen and USC is part of a "spray the entire room with bullets and see who you hit" strategy. Or, as my friend D.S. put it, in an email exchange on the topic, "when a claim is made in court, you make that claim against ANY AND ALL POSSIBLE litigants, many times stretching the realm of 'reasonability' as many would understand it, knowing that the court will throw out those litigants who are not at fault. But if the court happens to determine that more litigants than you thought were at fault at first, then BONUS for you. In other words - you don't have to be the (moral) gatekeeper on who should be at fault, you utterly and completely let the court handle it." And, of course, it doesn't hurt if those other litigants happen to have deeper pockets than your actual target.

Now, again, I completely understand this concept and have no problem with it, except for one thing - in this case, Kiffen and USC seem not to be merely potential collateral damage, but are the primary and only targets of not only the lawsuits, but also the outrage that is being expressed both in the press and online. As far as i have seen, and the root of my question here, is that there's no mention (legally, or in the expressed internet outrage) of fault on the part of coach Pola, who was the one who actually broke his contract with the Titans. As far as i can tell, they're not suing Kiffin and USC in addition to the coach in the hope that the courts will go along with it but instead of and it's not "Kiffin and Pola suck" that I repeatedly see in people's comments, but just "Kiffin sucks". I mean, I understand Kiffin just screwed U.T., so he's gonna get some residual ire, especially from fans of the school, but where's the hate (and the lawsuit) against the coach who actually was the one who didn't follow through on his contractual obligations and was the one that actually left the Titans in the lurch three weeks before the first preseason game?

That's the part i don't get. Why he's seemingly getting a free pass?

So what am i missing? Let me know in the comments.