{"id":290110,"date":"2026-05-12T21:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290110\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:06:09","slug":"texas-head-coach-steve-sarkisian-rips-ole-miss-in-usa-today-interview-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290110\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian rips Ole Miss in USA Today interview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SEC spring meetings are two weeks away and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/texas-longhorns\/2024\/10\/09\/10-things-to-know-about-steve-sarkisian-with-texas-making-noise-in-the-sec\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Steve Sarkisian<\/a> has already taken a shot\u00a0at one of his conference rivals.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At Texas, we will only take 50% of a player&#8217;s academic credit hours,&#8221;\u00a0Sarkisian said. &#8220;You may be a semester from graduating, but you&#8217;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sarkisian isn&#8217;t the only SEC coach to speak out about Ole Miss recently.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[They would say], &#8216;Hey, Coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren&#8217;t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi,'&#8221; Kiffin said to Vanity Fair. &#8220;That doesn&#8217;t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus&#8217; diversity feels so great: &#8216;It feels like there&#8217;s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that&#8217;s the real world.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the Vanity Fair article, Kiffin clarified his comments, saying he wasn&#8217;t intending to take a shot at the program and that &#8220;I just hope [my comment] comes across respectful to Ole Miss.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Florida head coach Jon Sumrall, who was an assistant at\u00a0Ole Miss in 2018, responded to Sarkisian&#8217;s comments in <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CoachJonSumrall\/status\/2054235372192710805?s=20\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Grateful to coach at a top 10 public university that also offers advanced basket weaving!&#8221; Sumrall said.<\/p>\n<p>SEC coaches will convene at the conference&#8217;s annual spring meetings from May 26-28 in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEC spring meetings are two weeks away and\u00a0Steve Sarkisian has already taken a shot\u00a0at one of his conference&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1638,27,29,28,88145,106149],"class_list":["post-290110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-brief","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-colleges","tag-tp-steve-sarkisian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290110","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=290110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}