Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian thinks he took things too far when trying to explain the inequities and challenges certain teams face in recruiting. In a mid-May interview with USA Today, Sarkisian ripped the NCAA for allowing those inequities to exist.
While attempting to explain his point, Sarkisian decided to tear into the academic standards at Ole Miss.
“At Texas, we will only take 50% of a player’s academic credit hours. You may be a semester from graduating, but you’re going all the way back to 50% if you play here and want a degree.
But at Ole Miss, they can take you. All you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree.”
It was Sarkisian’s final comment above, in which he said all an Ole Miss football player needs to do in order to get a degree from the school is “take basket weaving, that drew the ire of the university.
Ole Miss reportedly took issue with the insult, and asked the SEC to punish Sarkisian for breaking SEC bylaws, which prohibit coaches and staff from making derogatory comments about other schools.
Sarkisian was not punished for his comments, he told reporters Tuesday. He did, however, admit he regretted using “basket weaving” in his example.
“I could have used macroeconomics. I could have used engineering. It wouldn’t have mattered. The class was irrelevant, and that was a poor choice of words on my part.”
Sarkisian reportedly wasn’t the only coach Ole Miss wanted punished. Former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin made comments around the same time as Sarkisian, claiming the lack of diversity in Oxford, Mississippi — where Ole Miss is located — made it harder to recruit prospects. Kiffin said that is less of an issue at LSU, where he coaches now. Kiffin quickly apologized, saying he didn’t mean to offend anyone at Ole Miss with his comments. He added that his words weren’t “calculated.”
Sarkisian’s comments Tuesday, notably, focused on his insult, and not his original point. Sarkisian stood by his belief that academic inequity among schools can lead to an uneven playing field in recruiting. He just felt bad that he denigrated Ole Miss’ academic standards when making his original argument.
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