Pot odds are extremely important in tournaments as well as cash games.  Odds are the foundation of all forms of poker and in the long run you will accumulate more chips and have more success if you use the odds as your guide.  

However, tournaments do introduce some unique considerations in regards to pot odds, as you've picked up on. There is a value to your tournament life so when faced with a decision that is neutral or even slightly +EV you might not necessarily take the spot.  Early on in tournaments I don't really think about this.  If I have a big call with AK that I think is +EV I'm going to take it because we're so far from the money that taking the risk and building the big stack is worth it.  However, as we get deeper into the money, and mostly near or at FTs a marginal +EV spot is less valuable because you don't want to introduce the increased variance.

I do think that this is an excellent topic for a theory video.  I'll gather some hands early where we take marginal spots, and then i'll gather some hands later where the decision might be closer and we can do the math to figure out how +EV it has to be to be worth the variance.