MIRAMAR, Fla. -- Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said the SEC didn't punish him over his recent comments about "basket weaving" and the requirements to get a degree from Ole Miss.
Sarkisian conceded, however, that he made a "poor choice of words."
Sarkisian told USA Today earlier this month that "all you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree." Speaking to reporters Tuesday on the first day of SEC spring meetings, Sarkisian said he was talking about the inequities in college athletics as it pertains to transfers and teams.
"We have a rule at the University of Texas, we can only take 50% towards your degree, no matter how many hours you've completed," he said. "Other schools can take all of your hours that you take. To me, that's an inequity in our sport. Those are some of the things that we have to work through.
"I could have used macroeconomics. I could have used engineering. It wouldn't have mattered. The class was irrelevant, and that was a poor choice of words on my part."
Sarkisian was one of nine football coaches expected to address the media Tuesday, along with first-year LSU coach Lane Kiffin, who also made controversial comments about Ole Miss in a recent interview with Vanity Fair.
In the four-hour interview, Kiffin, who was the head coach at Ole Miss before taking the same job at LSU, said some top recruits would tell him they weren't interested in coming to Oxford, Mississippi.
"[They would say], 'Hey, Coach, we really like you, but my grandparents aren't letting me move to Oxford, Mississippi,'" Kiffin told the magazine. "That doesn't come up when you say Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 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.'"
According to the article, Kiffin clarified his remark one day later: "I just hope [my comment] comes across respectful to Ole Miss. ... There are some things that I'm saying that are factual; they're not shots."
Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter later posted on X: "Kind of amazing how uncomfortable our success is making some people." Ole Miss coach Pete Golding was not listed among the coaches expected to speak formally at the podium Tuesday.
