Steve Sarkisian Clarifies Ole Miss Remarks, Calls It a Fine Institution
steve sarkisian said Thursday his Ole Miss remarks were aimed at broader college football inequalities, not at the school’s academics, after his earlier “basket weaving” comment drew attention. He called Ole Miss “a fine institution” and said he was sorry if people took the comment the wrong way.
Speaking before an event at the Touchdown Club of Houston, Sarkisian said the point was the gap in how schools handle transfers and degrees. At Texas, he said, players must complete 60 hours at UT to get a degree from the University of Texas.
Houston remarks from Sarkisian
“The only reason the Ole Miss thing came up is because two of my best friends were there in Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding,” he said. He added that he “probably shouldn’t have used basket weaving as my example for the class,” and said the class itself was irrelevant.
He also said, “At a school like Ole Miss — I’ll reference them that way — they can take one class (after transferring) and get a degree (from Ole Miss). Maybe that one class is basket weaving, maybe that one class is macroeconomics, I don’t know, statistics, irrelevant. My point is that this was one of the inequalities and discrepancies that we deal with in college athletics.”
Texas and Ole Miss compared
The contrast Sarkisian drew centered on transfer and graduation rules. He said Texas requires 60 hours at UT for a degree, while a school like Ole Miss can take a transfer after one class and still let that player get an Ole Miss degree.
He also said, “Ole Miss is a fine institution, they’ve got the great degrees, all the things there, but there is an inequality when it comes to transfers of who can transfer to us — or to Vanderbilt for that matter — and who can transfer to an Ole Miss.” That explanation shifted the focus from Ole Miss alone to the broader structure he said coaches deal with across college football.
Earlier comments, same dispute
Earlier this month, Sarkisian told that at Texas players can only transfer in with 50 percent of a player’s academic credit hours, and he tied his “basket weaving” line to Ole Miss. On Thursday, he repeated that he did not take basket weaving in college and said, “I was a sociology major, though.”
He also added, “It’s not exactly — I didn’t go to (Texas’) McCombs (School of Business), I can tell you that.” The clarification leaves his original transfer-credit point intact, but his choice of example is now the part he backed away from in public.
For Texas, Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, the issue he raised is not about one class name. It is about how transfer credit and degree rules can leave players with very different paths depending on the school they join.
