The SEC's annual spring meetings in Miramar Beach, Florida, wrapped up this past week having achieved their traditional goals: no binding decisions, maximum drama, and at least two coaches in varying degrees of online fire.
Steve Sarkisian walked into Tuesday's press availability still trying to explain why he told USA Today that "all you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree." He called it a "poor choice of words," said he could have used "macroeconomics" or "engineering," and noted "the class was irrelevant." The SEC declined to fine him, which is the conference equivalent of a disappointed head-shake and a polite suggestion to think about what you have done. Ole Miss AD Keith Carter is reportedly in discussions with SEC officials about Sarkisian's comments and Kiffin's remarks — which will accomplish nothing except make the October Texas-Ole Miss game a nationally significant television event.
The thing is, Sarkisian didn't even have the most viral Ole Miss take of the week. That honor belongs to Lane Kiffin, whose Vanity Fair feature landed like a grenade wrapped in NIL money. In a four-hour interview, Kiffin disclosed that Black families sometimes told him their kids weren't moving to Oxford because of the state's history, and that Baton Rouge hits different in the diversity department. He apologized the next day. Said it "wasn't calculated." Ole Miss fans — who just watched Pete Golding take Kiffin's program to the Playoff semifinals after Kiffin's exit — are doing that thing where you're furious but also kind of can't disprove the underlying point, which is the worst emotional combination known to fan-kind.
First-year Florida coach Jon Sumrall, a former Ole Miss assistant who has decided to make enemies quickly in his new home, logged onto X and fired: "Grateful to coach at a top 10 public university that also offers advanced basket weaving!" LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry told ESPN on Thursday that he'd spoken with his coaches about "the importance of unity within the SEC." Very effective. Already working.
Stephen A. Smith then devoted three full minutes on First Take to calling the basket weaving comment "classless," "totally wrong," and "a low damn blow," while pointing out that Ole Miss currently has the better quarterback in Trinidad Chambliss while Texas waits on Arch Manning. The optics of Stephen A. Smith defending Oxford, Mississippi on national television are something no one could have predicted at the start of May. Stephen A. Smith is now a Rebel. Wrap your mind around that.
Meanwhile, Kirby Smart used the meetings to casually suggest that if the SEC can't reach an agreement on playoff expansion and NIL regulations, the conference should maybe just secede from the NCAA entirely and run its own postseason. This is the logical endpoint of a decade of SEC dominance: the most powerful conference in the sport threatening to leave an organization it already functionally controls. The rest of college football reacted with the mixture of exhausted contempt and low-grade existential terror that Kirby Smart has perfected producing on command.
Official visit season for the 2027 class kicked off this weekend, meaning the next wave of chaos is already loading. Lane Kiffin — apparently not finished generating content — brought Ed Orgeron back to LSU's staff, and Coach O was on campus last week delivering impassioned speeches to five-star recruits. Whether this is visionary program-building or a haunted gris-gris ritual depends entirely on your relationship with recent Louisiana history.
Ole Miss got roasted by two coaches, defended by Stephen A. Smith, lost their greatest-era architect to a rival, and still has to play Texas in Austin in October. That basket is not going to weave itself.
