Ole Miss is having the worst week in the SEC offseason, and they didn't even do anything wrong. That takes a special kind of talent.
Let's set the scene. Lane Kiffin, still operating in full chaotic-ex energy six months after abandoning Oxford for a $91 million bag in Baton Rouge, sat down with Vanity Fair for what was apparently a four-hour interview. Four. Hours. In that time, he managed to suggest that Black recruits' families were hesitant about sending their kids to Mississippi due to its racial history, with parents supposedly praising LSU's campus diversity by saying it "feels like there's no segregation." He apologized later — to On3, specifically, which is the college football equivalent of apologizing to someone via their roommate — but the quote was already out there doing laps on sports Twitter while the Ole Miss fanbase went supernova.
Then Sarkisian decided this was a pile-on worth joining. In a separate interview with USA Today, the Texas head coach took a break from complaining about the transfer portal to observe that Ole Miss academics are so lax that, quote, "all you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree." This from the coach of a program that just lost in the first round of a CFP that Ole Miss reached and advanced in. Neat flex, Sark.
Stephen A. Smith called it "below the belt" and "a classless thing." Tim Brando tweeted "Beneath ya Sark." Florida's new head coach Jon Sumrall — a former Ole Miss assistant, by the way — hopped on X to announce he was "grateful to coach at a top 10 public university that also offers advanced basket weaving," which is a genuinely excellent troll that nobody is giving him enough credit for. The Ole Miss AD fired back with a vague "kind of amazing how uncomfortable our success is making some people" post, which is the athletic director equivalent of sending a read receipt and then going completely silent.
Full Ole Miss scoreboard for the week: their former coach implied their campus has a diversity image problem, their new conference rival called their diploma basically decorative, their AD had to do crisis PR via social media, and Clay Travis is already predicting that Lane Kiffin's return to Oxford on September 19 will make the mustard-bottle Knoxville incident look like a parade. Mustard. Bottles. That is the benchmark.
Elsewhere in SEC Adults Behaving Calmly: Greg Sankey is still single-handedly blocking the 24-team CFP expansion that basically everyone else in college football wants. The Big Ten wants it. The ACC wants it. Kirby Smart, Josh Heupel, and a majority of Sankey's own league coaches want it. Sankey's stated position is that changes must be backed by "analysis and information, not speculation," which is a very elegant way of saying the SEC Championship Game generates over $80 million a year and he is not torching that so Tennessee gets a third playoff bid. Tennessee would have made a 24-team field three straight seasons. Which is precisely why the answer is no.
And over in Tuscaloosa, CBS Sports noted this week that outside of the Alabama athletic department and Nick Saban — who has a financial stake in DeBoer succeeding — basically nobody nationally thinks the long-term extension was warranted yet. DeBoer responded by declaring that winning championships requires a "physical nature," which is remarkable commentary from the head coach of an offense that ranked 125th in rushing last season. Sir. The physicality has not been located. Keep looking.
