There is a particular flavor of May madness unique to the SEC, and this week delivered it on a silver platter. Or, more accurately, on a podium at the Houston Touchdown Club.
Thursday, Steve Sarkisian appeared in Houston to walk back his now-infamous 'basket weaving' remark — the one where the Texas head coach told USA Today that scoring an Ole Miss degree basically requires showing up and signing your name on a macramé project. 'I probably shouldn't have used basket-weaving as my example for the class,' Sarkisian told the crowd, to chuckles, before pivoting to a lengthy stem-winder about federal legislation in college athletics. The clarification arrived nearly two weeks after Stephen A. Smith devoted three uninterrupted minutes of First Take to absolutely roasting him, calling the comments 'classless,' 'below the belt,' and 'a low damn blow.' Stephen A. Smith. Defending Ole Miss. In the year of our Lord 2026. The timeline is shattered.
The basket weaving fire would not have started without kindling. A week earlier, Lane Kiffin — the man who spent six seasons building Ole Miss into a playoff program, pocketed a $91 million LSU contract, and bailed before the Rebels' postseason run — told Vanity Fair that Black recruits' grandparents didn't want their kids moving to Oxford, citing the state's racial history. He's not technically wrong. He's also the coach who spent six years happily depositing Ole Miss paychecks without making a peep, then used the same school's baggage as a recruiting selling point for Baton Rouge the moment he crossed the state line. Kiffin issued a semi-apology the following day. The hate mail from Oxford has not stopped. His return to The Grove on September 19 is going to be a religious experience.
Sarkisian's comments carry their own spectacular irony: Arch Manning — the Longhorns' starting quarterback — is the grandson of Archie Manning, perhaps the most famous Rebel to ever play the sport. Nobody in this saga appears to have thought anything through.
Meanwhile, the physical world kept intruding. Missouri's Ahmad Hardy, the SEC's leading rusher last season and a legit Heisman contender, posted a video from Columbia this week — the most recent update heading into Sunday — saying 'I'm back on the road to success' after being shot in the leg at a Mississippi concert on May 10. Coach Eli Drinkwitz said Thursday it'll be several more weeks before there's any clear timeline on a return, adding there's 'some internal healing that has to occur.' The suspect who reportedly drove seven hours from Wayne County to attend that concert has since been arrested. Missouri entered 2026 as a dark-horse CFP contender. Now they're figuring out what they are without their identity.
The SEC in May: coaches can't stop torching each other's institutions on national television, the conference's best running back is rehabbing a gunshot wound, and somehow the most surreal development in all of this is Stephen A. Smith standing up for Ole Miss. We don't deserve this sport. We absolutely cannot stop watching it.
