Dale Zanine-Imagn Images
Apparently, there was some sort of memo among SEC football coaches this week that it is open season on the Ole Miss Rebels and the university as a whole.
On Monday, former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who controversially left the program for LSU amid the Rebels’ College Football Playoff run, took a shot at the university and its ties to the confederate South, which he claims was a major hindrance while recruiting and influenced his decision to leave.
“‘Hey, coach, we really like you. But my grandparents aren’t letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi.’ That doesn’t come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” Kiffin told Vanity Fair of what recruits would tell him. “Parents were sitting here this weekend saying the campus’s diversity feels so great: ‘It feels like there’s no segregation. And we want that for our kid because that’s the real world.'”
Conveniently, Kiffin failed to mention that LSU’s Tiger mascot comes from the Louisiana Tiger Rifles and Washington Artillery, which fought under Robert E. Lee.
Now, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian seems to have decided to get in on the fun.
Steve Sarkisian Calls Out Ole Miss’s Academic Standards
Sarkisian’s gripe with the Rebels has nothing to do with the university’s past. At least, not that he stated publicly. Instead, in a recent interview with Matt Hayes of USA Today, the Longhorns’ head coach took aim at the school’s academic standards.
“At Texas, we will only take 50% of a player’s academic credit hours,” Sarkisian said, via USA Today’s Matt Hayes. “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.”
To his credit, Sarkisian also pointed out that the lack of focus on academics is a nationwide problem in college football.
“It’s like we’ve forgotten about academics, yet less than 5% of these guys will play in the NFL,” he told Hayes.
But even so, given the barrage that Ole Miss faced from Kiffin on Monday, I can’t imagine the university, football program, or head coach Pete Golding is very happy to have yet another big-name coach taking aim at them.