Ole Miss just can’t seem to catch a break from opposing coaches within the SEC, with Texas coach Steve Sarkisian joining the party.
There obviously must be something in the water down in Oxford that is attracting coaches to somehow keep the Rebels part of the offseason conversation, coming off a two-day stretch that saw Lane Kiffin take an enormous amount of heat for his comments regarding some recruiting struggles at Ole Miss.
In what started as another interesting look into the life of Kiffin, which has many layers built into the body of his overall work, the subject that drew the most attention centered on what some perceived to be racial epitomes about struggle to recruit certain players to Oxford based on the state’s history.
LANE KIFFIN TAKES SHOT AT OLE MISS, CITES RACISM IN RECRUITING GAP WITH LSU IN AWKWARD INTERVIEW
When describing certain problems that had risen in the past, across different sports, Kiffin brought up on his own that getting players to Ole Miss was not only about how much money could be offered.
“‘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 said to Vanity Fair. “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.'”
“I just hope (comments) comes across respectful to Ole Miss … There are some things that I’m saying that are factual, they’re not shots.”
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Kiffin would then go on to say in later interviews that his comments were not calculated, and he did not mean for it to come across as derogatory toward the State of Mississippi.
But unfortunately for the LSU coach, the benefit of the doubt is not something that will be granted to him based on past instances of taking shots at other schools.
And no, I don’t think Kiffin had anything remotely racist in his body when describing Ole Miss recruiting, but sometimes he says these off-the-wall things to draw attention.
In this case, I don’t think it went according to plan, which is easy to notice when Kiffin is messaging media members to clarify his remarks.
But, he wasn’t the only one who had Ole Miss on their minds in recent weeks, as Steve Sarkisian proved on Tuesday morning.
When Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney took aim at Ole Miss nearly three months ago for the recruitment of transfer linebacker Luke Ferrelli, the college football world was put on notice, or so it seemed at the time.
Swinney has the proof that Ole Miss tampered with the short-term rental linebacker that spent only a few days at Clemson before heading off to Oxford. There were claims of text messages, a picture of a $1 million check sent to Ferrelli, along with other forms of communication that were sent to entice him to leave Clemson after only just arriving.
And yes, he ended up at Ole Miss. Which brings us to Steve Sarkisian, who was asked about the ongoing circus in college athletics pertaining to the transfer portal and athletes losing out on an education by transferring so many times during their career.
“At Texas, we will only take 50% of a player’s academic credit hours,” Sarkisian noted to USA TODAY. “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 take is basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree.”
Sure, Sarkisian also brought up other schools during his rant, but he’s also pointing the finger at the current system in which we currently reside in.
“We all signed up to be part of the NCAA, and then we all allegedly make the rules,” Sarkisian said. “Everyone knows the rules, right? Then we go to our attorney general and say we don’t like that rule, let’s just sue. Right now, no one is afraid of the consequences.”
OK, I don’t know how many people are going to offer sympathy to the Texas football program, but to each their own.
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The story of the 2025 college football season, outside of Indiana running through opponents on its way to a national championship, was the Ole Miss Rebels.
A traveling circus would honestly be a better way to describe what I witnessed from the second half of the season until Lane Kiffin raced to an Oxford airport for a flight to Baton Rouge just two weeks before Ole Miss would start their CFP run.
“Kind of amazing how uncomfortable our success is making some people,” Ole Miss AD Keith Carter wrote on social media.
Whether it’s Lane Kiffin, Dabo Swinney or Steve Sarkisian, everyone seems to be using Ole Miss as a punching bag right now.
Have people forgotten that Kiffin does not reside in Oxford any longer? Who knows.
But, this has certainly been an interesting few months for the Rebels athletic department, and we haven’t reached the start of Summer yet.
All I know is that SEC spring meetings have the chance to be unhinged in two weeks, and we’ll be there to cover the potential madness that arises from the beaches of Destin, Florida.
