Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian believes that Mississippi has lowered its academic standards to make it a more attractive destination for recruits in the transfer portal. <\/p>\n
Speaking to USA Today’s Matt Hayes<\/a>, Sarkisian put Ole Miss’ academic standards on blast compared to Texas when it comes to recruiting in the transfer portal. <\/p>\n “At Texas, we will only take 50% of a player’s academic credit hours,” Sarkisian said. “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.”<\/p>\n Sarkisian’s comments were part of a bigger discussion about “how bad” the state of things in the NCAA are stemming from the rise of the transfer portal.<\/p>\n Ole Miss is currently embroiled in a recruiting scandal in which Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney accused the program of tampering with linebacker Luke Ferrelli.<\/p>\n One of the\u00a0accusations<\/a>\u00a0made by Swinney involved Ole Miss head coach Pete Golding allegedly texting Ferrelli a photo of a $1 million contract while he was in class with a message, “I know you’re signed. What’s the buyout?”<\/p>\n The NCAA\u00a0opened an investigation<\/a>\u00a0into the tampering accusations that remain ongoing.<\/p>\n Mississippi did have\u00a0four football players<\/a>, including Jaxson Dart, honored by the National Football Foundation\u00a0in April 2025 for maintaining a GPA of 3.2 or higher throughout their entire college tenure.<\/p>\n Ole Miss has routinely ranked among the highest-spending programs in the country during the NIL era. The program spent between\u00a0$10-13 million<\/a>\u00a0on its roster in 2024. It spent\u00a0$57.1 million<\/a>\u00a0in total football expenses from 2023 to ’24.<\/p>\n Texas isn’t exactly slacking when it comes to spending, with a\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0budget between $35-40 million for the 2025 football season. The Longhorns\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0have the highest NIL budget among all FBS programs in 2026 at $23 million.<\/p>\n Ohio State was the only other program at $20 million, followed by Oregon at No. 3 with a $19 million NIL budget.<\/p>\n If nothing else, Sarkisian’s comments do add more intrigue to the Ole Miss-Texas game in Austin on Oct. 24. It will be the first meeting between the two teams since Texas joined the SEC in 2024. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian believes that Mississippi has lowered its academic standards to make it a more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-289774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}