Go down the street and ask most people why they work at the jobs they work at. Odds are, nine out of every 10 answers will be something tethered to the influence and need of the almighty dollar.
You may run into that one elderly dude that works 15 hours a week at the golf course for discounted rates. He’s your other guy.
But then go ask the same people, “what makes a good job” and then you start hearing things like “engagement with supervisors, the people you work with, nice management, the working conditions and hours, etc.”
What makes a good job and why people work are two completely different things, very often.
College football’s annual hatchet weekend for coaches came and went with one major surprise … Mark Richt is out at Georgia. At the time, Southern Cal was open. Miami continues to be open. Last year, Michigan and Florida were open. Before that, Texas was open. More will open next year. And then the year after that. And so on.
These are all what folks consider “great jobs.” How many times have we heard “Georgia is a top (insert number here) job in the country?”
But really, is it? Are any of those? Is USC or Notre Dame or Alabama or Texas and so on really great job openings? It’s doubtful that what we act as though are good jobs are good jobs to us in our real lives.
Look at Georgia. Aside from money, what’s the upside in going there right now? You’re going in knowing that if you’re good for a long period of time, you still will get the ax because the standard set by firing Mark Richt (who won two of UGA’s all time 12 SEC Championships and was a yard from winning a third) is “we expect championships” even though:
- That’s very hard to do;
- UGA hasn’t won a “national” title since 1980, suggesting it’s not particularly easy to do there, even.
Surely we wouldn’t apply the logic of “if I’m really good at my job, the people around me still won’t care and I’ll be fired eventually” to our own lives, likely.
This also isn’t to jump on Georgia, they just happen to be open. Very few of us would consider jobs with very little security and what little security that’s there being tied to bloated expectations. It exists at all of these big jobs. Georgia has essentially said that winning 10 games is simply not enough.
This isn’t a 2014 Nebraska situation. Richt seems to be well-liked and universally praised as a good dude from Spokane to Latvia.
This is meeting a really pretty girl and finding out that the last guy was some stiff shirt trust fund type that bought her the Benz she’s driving, paid for monthly trips to the spa for her, and is the reason 350 of the 400 pairs of shoes in her closet exist. Yeah, you just go ahead and run away from that, no matter how good looking it might be.
Contrast that to Georgia (sorry) and their basketball coaching gig. Mark Fox has been there seven years and has a .541 winning percentage, including a .500 record in the SEC, not exactly renowned as college basketball’s top conference annually to say the least.
That’s a better job than the football gig. Richt would have been run out on a rail after year three had he gone .500 in the SEC. You don’t see constant wailing and gnashing of teeth by UGA fans over the state of the basketball program. Nor do you hear people call it what it is … “a great job.”
Fox has limited expectation, certainly not overwhelming ones, doesn’t have to be amazing to keep his job, and doesn’t have the built in disadvantage that comes along with playing in the SEC in football for the last decade. Most of us would sign up for that yesterday.
Someone will take the Georgia job, though, and all of these big gigs, because they pay well and coaching at that level is in some measure about ego. Heck, coaching at any level is in some respect about ego.
The truth is, though, that these are “great jobs” only according to the misguided logic we’d never apply to ourselves, where a world of zero job security, outlandish expectations, a ridiculous starting baseline of expected success, and scrutiny from 500,000 idiots on social media every day sounds appealing.
But hey, the pay is good.
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