Steve Sarkisian reverses basket weaving comments with Ole Miss, while sounding alarm on college athletics
Steve Sarkisian found himself in the crosshairs of Ole Miss fans last week after implying that getting a degree from Texas is a whole lot harder than some other schools across the country.
Yes, you might remember the Texas football coach bringing up "basket weaving" classes at Ole Miss, which drew plenty of pushback and jokes from across the country.
Honestly, Sarkisian enticed me to sign up for one of these basket weaving classes that I will still take next week because I found the entire conversation intriguing.
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But on Thursday, while speaking at the Houston Touchdown Club, the Longhorns coach made it a point to say that his quote was taken out of context and that he only used Ole Miss because of his relationship with Lane Kiffin, along with the current head coach Pete Golding.
"The only reason the Ole Miss thing came up is because two of my best friends were there, Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding," Sarkisian noted. "So, I know when we would compete with them they were able to take kids, and then they were able to graduate them. I probably shouldn’t have used basket-weaving as my example for the class, ok. Microeconomics, I don't give a damn, whatever the class is. Yoga, we have yoga at UT.
"The last part was irrelevant. The point I was trying to make is that at UT, you have to complete half of your degree at the University of Texas. You have to do those 60 hours at UT to get a degree from Texas. At a school, like Ole Miss, they can take one class and get a degree. Maybe that one class is basket-weaving, maybe that one class is macroeconomics, I don't know."
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But, even though basket weaving is an interesting topic, a bigger issue is brewing right now in college athletics that could have a major impact on what this entire model looks like in five years.
One of the biggest issues facing conferences across the country centers on the absent guardrails when it comes to schools abiding by the rules.
In reality, there are no rules at the moment, judging by the amount of money being spent on rosters across different collegiate sports.
And, a good chunk of this stems from the House settlement that has led to pure chaos around campuses, thanks to a competition between programs over who can spend the most money on trying to win a championship.
Obviously, this is one of the reasons why college commissioners are imploring Congress to agree on some type of legislation that would at least set up a governance system. A perfect example would be the different types of contracts offered to players, depending on which state the school you sign with resides in.
"The contracts we can offer our players are different than what you can offer in California, Louisiana or Florida, because there are 39 different state laws. We're not governed by one thing," Sarkisian noted. "That's why we're striving so hard for federal intervention that we're struggling to get, so we can police these things we have in place.
"Because if not, any time somebody does something that's against the rules, and for a group we all signed up to be part of in the NCAA..But then when we break the rule, we want to run to a judge in our hometown and get an injunction against that rule to get that player eligible. That doesn’t make sense to me. That's why there's been all this talk about breaking away. It's not breaking away so we can get away from everybody, its breaking away so we can govern the rules that are in place.
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I think just about everyone in college athletics would agree, but some of these presidents and athletic directors have to stop acting as if revenue-sharing or NIL came out of nowhere. Take this interesting quote from University of Georgia President Jere Morehead for example.
"If we don't get federal legislation in my opinion, we're going to have do this conference by conference because we can't allow the wild west to continue any longer," Morehead said Thursday. "I'm prepared next week in Destin to be ready to vote on creating an SEC mechanism, SEC rules that we have to do if Congress isn't going to be act as they should. We just cannot continue down this current path, We have waited months after months for congress to act and it hasn't occurred yet."
While he may be acting a bit overdramatic, Morehead isn’t entirely wrong. But, until these leaders realize Congress can't save them all, the conversation will shift toward how a conference like the SEC or Big Ten can start governing themselves.
Sounds a bit tougher than basket weaving, though I'll be the one to judge that next week.