$100,000 for a high school football coach?

How much money is too much for a high school football coach? North Carolina’s largest school district has provided something of an answer.

Last month, Vance High School coach Aaron Brand cashed in on a successful five-year run in Charlotte and accepted a coaching job at Irmo High School in Columbia. Brand will be earning $100,000, nearly twice as much as he made at Vance, and his position at Irmo will include no teaching duties. It is, as Brand told the Observer’s Langston Wertz, a “golden opportunity,” and the talented coach should be congratulated. But it’s also money Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is unable or unwilling to pay. That, too, is good.

Brand’s move has renewed a lingering discussion about successful high school coaches leaving Charlotte for high-paying positions in South Carolina or at smaller, in-state schools. The same has happened at schools across North Carolina, perhaps no more famously than with former Independence High School coach Tom Knotts, who won six state titles at the school before heading across the border to coach at Dutch Fork (S.C.) High School.