{"id":290461,"date":"2026-05-13T01:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T01:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290461\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T01:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T01:49:10","slug":"texas-steve-sarkisian-brutally-shades-ole-miss-academic-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290461\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas’ Steve Sarkisian brutally shades Ole Miss’ academic standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas\u2019 Steve Sarkisian is piling on Ole Miss.<\/p>\n

The Longhorns head football coach ripped the Rebels\u2019 academic standards in an interview with USA Today<\/a>, one day after former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin took his own shot at the school<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Texas, we will only take 50 percent of a player\u2019s academic credit hours,\u201d Sarkisian said while discussing transfer rules and degree requirements. \u201cYou may be a semester from graduating, but you\u2019re going all the way back to 50 percent 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HeadHead coach Steve Sarkisian of the Texas Longhorns on the field prior to a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on November 22, 2025 in Austin, Texas. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sarkisian then broadened his criticism to college football\u2019s shifting priorities amid the transfer portal era.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019ve forgotten about academics, yet less than 5% of these guys will play in the NFL,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Vanity Fair published an interview<\/a> with LSU head coach Kiffin, during which he reportedly said that Ole Miss\u2019 lack of diversity hurt the school\u2019s recruiting efforts, claiming that players would tell him: \u201c\u2018Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren\u2019t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana,\u201d he continued. \u201cParents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus\u2019 diversity feels so great: \u2018It feels like there\u2019s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that\u2019s the real world.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiffin walked back his comments on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"HeadHead coach Steve Sarkisian of the Texas Longhorns holds Horns Up as he walks into the stadium before the SEC football game between Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies on November 28, 2025, at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, TX. Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cI really apologize if anybody at Ole Miss or in Mississippi was offended by that,\u201d Kiffin told On3<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was asked questions about the differences in recruiting, and I said a narrative that we battled there from some out-of-state Black parents and grandparents was not wanting their kid to move to Mississippi. That\u2019s a narrative that coaches have been fighting forever. It wasn\u2019t calculated by bringing it up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas\u2019 Steve Sarkisian is piling on Ole Miss. The Longhorns head football coach ripped the Rebels\u2019 academic standards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[261,31000,4793,154,3231,27,29,537,28],"class_list":["post-290461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-college-football","tag-lane-kiffin","tag-mississippi-rebels","tag-sports","tag-steve-sarkisian","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290461","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=290461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}