Texas Head Football Coach Steve Sarkisian piled on Ole Miss after Lane Kiffin took a shot at his former employer. USA Today reported:
“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.”
"Basket weaving," of course, is used to describe an easy academic course or degree. And Sarkisian didn't just criticize Ole Miss' standards, either. He also called out numerous other college programs in the current landscape of the sport, also mentioning Cal bringing in 32 players despite being one of the most academically renowned public schools in the country....
“It’s like we’ve forgotten about academics, yet less than 5% of these guys will play in the NFL,” Sarkisian said....
Read the rest of the article. The interview is a pretty good one as Sark provides a solid critique of college football that will resonate with most fans. Unfortunately, the powers that be seem intent on wrecking the sport.

31 comments:
The only football players interested in academics are those that can't get a truckload of money by playing somewhere else.
Sports, especially college football, makes retards out of otherwise decent men. Sports has become like politics, full of shit stirring for publicity idiots like Texas Head Football Coach Steve Sarkisian. And the sheep fans, especially the sheep that never played one down in a college football game, will take the bait, donate, and attend every home game.
All the SEC teams are the same when it comes to academics for athletes -- at least before NIL. As far as academic quality, Texas does have 30 Rhodes Scholars from 1904-2023. Ole Miss has 27. Georgia has 26. Notre Dame has 20. Miss State has 2. Sark needs to worry about Arch, and I hope the Mannings chewed his ass on that comment he made.
Sarkisian has an undergraduate sociology degree. Is he really a great judge of academic rigor?
Bread and circuses...
The fans of Ole Miss should be flattered that an otherwise overlooked program should now have significant enough status to be "targeted" by LSU and now Texas coaches. What they say is true of numerous programs but to use Ole Miss as the prime example means you must be special. Ole Miss earned it's backwards reputation but unlike others it's opponents feel it necessary to keep dredging it up to keep the Rebs in their place. Ole Miss must be a threat. Hotty Toddy.
if players having autonomy and making money for the work they perform is "ruining the sport" the sport was already ruined - it's just now fully exposed.
I do not see Ole Miss as some towering giant that has everybody trembling in fear.
This is just low-hanging fruit in the SEC. Mississippi's reputation has been doing the recruiting against itself for decades, and rival coaches know they do not have to work too hard to exploit it.
And if we're being honest, the folks who run this state have done precious little to challenge that image. They spend more time getting offended than addressing why the criticism keeps sticking.
If your house has been leaning for years, it does not take a master carpenter to point out the crack in the foundation.
Mississippi is an ignorant shithole plantation. All of the smartest people have left. You crabs still left in the bucket could change it. But you won’t. You are too busy exploiting and disenfranchising African Americans.
So much for all players must be working toward a degree. It seems like a ton of the major universities have turned into diploma mills.
Sark is trying to stay relevant as well. He's on the hot seat and knows when he is gone, Kiffin is headed to Texas. Also, this is one of a myriad of reasons no one wants Texas in the SEC. They are a bunch of entitled whiney B!tches. Literally no one outside of their fan base like them for reasons such as this, and I am fan from an OM fan. There was zero reason for him to throw his $.02 in...none.
People can do their own research if they choose, but here's a starting point. There was once a pretty fair college football player by the name of Byron White. Most, including friends, called him Whizzer. He was also a pretty fair scholar. Even made it to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was on the Court when it handed down an opinion in a spat between OU and the NCAA. Justice White noted in his dissent, and he had both knowledge of and experience with college ball, that a big mistake was being made. Whiz is dead but if there is a heaven at least he knows just how right he was.
Fast-forward about 20 years after Whiz died. Andy Coats, the lawyer who "won" the case agreed in substantial part, noting that while he still thought the majority opinion was legally-correct, Whiz was absolutely correct about it screwing up college ball. It reminds me of a legal witticism: be careful about demanding justice lest you receive more than you can handle.
Where else can you be in a crowd of thousands of like minded alcoholics to practice keg stands and pound shots like there is no tomorrow? It's also a really great place for finding your life partner amongst the matriculants and alumni!
Back in the dark ages when I was at MSU, you had to earn over 50% of your total required hours at that university in order to graduate. That was for all students. It should be the same now, everywhere, for all students. That of course might clash with the number of eligible seasons an athlete can compete, but that's an NCAA problem, not a university problem. Perhaps transferring athletes should not be allowed to play at all until they catch up on their hours at the new school.
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/mallardfillmore/?morec=1
Sarkisian is a recovering alcoholic loser.....oh yeah he eats his own boogers on live tv. Who cares what he has to say about anything?
Sark must have fallen off the wagon!
Yeah, let's go back to the one college football game a week, two games if we are lucky.
Try reading what he wrote. He was spot on in what he said.
We need to quit pretending that ANYONE really cares if these professional athletes gets an education .
I haven't been an undergraduate college student in a very long time now, but the rule back in the early 2000s was something like "up to 64 hours could be transferred in". In other words, with a 124 or 128 hr BS degree, roughly half of the hours had to be earned at that institution. It was that way everywhere you went. Has this rule been changed in the last 20 years?
Meanwhile, Texas is #1 in NIL money spent on athletes, and Texas ATM wrote the book on paid talent that didn't even have to attend classes, with Johnny Manziel.
The reason Texas is so hard to get into is because of it's admissions quotas/criteria for black and brown students, and it's been that way for decades. UT law school lost a case at the 5th Circuit back in 1996, Hopwood v. Texas, but they just worked around it and kept going.
So Sark and UT keep trying to prove they aren't racists, while their fingers are on the scale with the biggest bank account in all of college sports.
The truth hurts....
College football also creates rich retards.
Two comments. First, Sark should keep his criticism aimed at the NCAA and prepare for this season.
Second, 9:58, MS remains a good place to live. My business has taken me across America and every area has its problems and people who want to leave for greener pastures. Please consider what you can do to maintain Mississippi as the Hospitality State.
Not historically a fan of Sark's, but he's 100% correct in that article. Unfortunately, he's employed by the very beast he's attacking.
I hate the idea of elected officials getting involved in this, but the conferences (especially the SEC) and their commissioners have shown they cannot be trusted to do anything other than work with ESPN to keep feeding the monster. Which just sucks. Eventually, a lot of us are just going to stop watching.
As soon as Sark rejects NIL and a pay raise, we'll listen. And he'll have a lot of free time to talk then too
Since I quit attending football games, my golf game has improved. Fall is a great time for golf.
Degree requirements can vary based on accreditation agencies and institutional governing boards. Requiring the last 30 hours from the degree granting institution is not uncommon. Some schools have implemented flexibility, such as 21 of the last 30 hours. The overall intent of the policy is for students to earn 25% +/- in the major subject area at the school that will award the degree. Don’t know if this policy still applies but the Mississippi IHL schools have had a policy not to accept more than 50% of the hours toward degree from a junior college/community college. As far as I know the NCAA still tracks graduation outcomes as a metric in APR. The day the.NCAA starts telling college chancellors and presidents how to handle institutional academic policies will be the tipping point.
I take it you no longer live in the state? I can 1000% tell you that most do not give a damn about how or who you vote for. I would love to see the state provide high paying jobs to anyone qualified to hold them. No matter what race they are. One day, you will stop seeing world through race and realize that no one cares about it as much as you do. Until then, keep banging your head against the wall someday someone will care.
" Where else can you be in a crowd of thousands of like minded alcoholics to practice keg stands and pound shots like there is no tomorrow?"
Where else ?
Every school in the SEC.
(Maybe with the exception of Vandy).
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