It is June. Football season is four months away. And somehow the SEC has managed to generate more drama than a Real Housewives reunion hosted in a Tuscaloosa Cracker Barrel. Welcome to the Miramar Beach Massacre, where the conference's annual spring meetings devolved into an open-mic night for men who make $12 million a year and should genuinely know better.
Let's start with Lane Kiffin, because of course we do. In a Vanity Fair profile so long it has its own reading week, Kiffin — fresh off abandoning Ole Miss mid-playoff run to take the LSU job — found time to suggest that Ole Miss's racial history was a recruiting liability. The exact bit about recruits telling him their "grandparents aren't letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi," followed by his helpful observation that Baton Rouge parents praised that LSU's campus "feels like there's no segregation" — sent Ole Miss Nation into a grief spiral so deep you could hear it from Tuscaloosa. The SEC mulled a reprimand. Kiffin deployed the classic "I was just repeating what someone else said" defense, which has never once worked in the history of human communication. He did say things are "awesome" at LSU. Congratulations to Baton Rouge, apparently now a utopia. At SEC meetings this week he smirked about returning to Oxford in Week 3, compared it to going back to Tennessee, and said LSU hired Ed Orgeron because Coach O is "a tremendous value" on the recruiting trail. Nothing says "I have moved on" like spending every press availability talking about your ex.
Then, as if one coach poking Ole Miss with a stick wasn't enough, Steve Sarkisian showed up to Miramar Beach and announced that "all you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree." He has since called this "a poor choice of words." The SEC declined to punish him. Stephen A. Smith spent three unhinged minutes on First Take calling the remark "classless," "totally wrong," and "a low damn blow" — while also pointing out that Ole Miss has the better quarterback right now in Trinidad Chambliss. Here is the part that lives rent-free in your skull forever: Sarkisian coaches Arch Manning. Arch Manning, whose grandfather Archie and uncle Eli are Ole Miss royalty. Nothing says "I thought this through" like torching the alma mater of your quarterback's entire family tree.
Meanwhile, in the recruiting mines, June official visit season is now open for business, and the chaos is already compounding. Four-star cornerback Jerry Outhouse decommitted from Georgia in late April and, on Friday, committed to UCLA. His name is Jerry Outhouse. He was committed to Georgia. He flushed it. He is now a Bruin. There are no jokes left — the jokes made themselves. Kirby Smart has not commented, because Kirby Smart does not do that, but somewhere in Athens a graduate assistant is staring at a wall.
And then there is Mizzou, where freshman offensive lineman Brandon Anderson — who enrolled in January, participated in spring practice, and was on the roster as recently as last week — is simply no longer with the team. No explanation. No reason given. He still has Mizzou Football tagged in his Instagram bio. That detail alone might be the most Missouri thing to ever occur in the state of Missouri.
June, everyone. Just June.
