Steve Sarkisian tried on Thursday to clean up the comment that drew national attention less than two weeks ago, saying his Ole Miss basket weaving example was meant to illustrate broader inequalities in college football, not to single out the school. Speaking before an event at the Touchdown Club of Houston, the Texas coach said the reference came up because two of his close friends are there in Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding.
“I probably shouldn’t have used basket weaving as my example for the class, OK? Macroeconomics, I don’t give a damn, whatever the class is. Yoga, we have yoga at UT. The class part of it was irrelevant,” Sarkisian said, adding that he was speaking about disparities in transfer rules and academic requirements across the sport. He said that at Texas, players must complete half of a degree — 60 hours — at the university to earn a Texas diploma, even if they arrive close to graduation. By contrast, he 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).”
The earlier remarks, made in an interview with earlier this month, set off criticism because Sarkisian described Texas as taking only 50 percent of a player’s academic credit hours while saying an Ole Miss transfer could take basket weaving and still get a degree. On Thursday, he softened the example but kept the substance of his point. “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,” he said.
Sarkisian also said the broader issue he was trying to raise involved more than academics. He pointed to differences in coaching staff budgets, roster budgets, conference scheduling and admissions, saying the schools’ transfer rules are not built the same way. He said the comment about Ole Miss was never meant as a personal slight and apologized for the way it landed. “That statement — but when you do a sit-down, one-on-one print article, it’s easier to pull out excerpts, to say, ‘Oh, coach Sark said you can go get a basket weaving degree at Ole Miss.’ That’s not what I was implying, and I apologize if they took it that way,” he said.
He also pushed back on the idea that he was speaking from personal experience. “I did not,” Sarkisian said when asked whether he had taken basket weaving in college. “I was a sociology major, though.” He added, “It’s not exactly — I didn’t go to (Texas’) McCombs (School of Business), I can tell you that.” The clarification came as Texas continues to add talent on the field, including Brock Williams’ commitment that gives Sarkisian another prized tight end.
The episode has now moved from a sharp one-liner to a wider argument about how college football treats transfers, degrees and access. Sarkisian said the real divide is structural, and Thursday’s appearance suggested he wanted the conversation redirected away from Ole Miss and back toward what he sees as a system that gives some programs more room to absorb transfers than others.
