Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said Tuesday that he regretted his choice of words regarding Ole Miss' degree requirements.
Sarkisian said earlier in May that "all you have to do is take basket weaving and you can get an Ole Miss degree."
"I could have used macroeconomics. I could have used engineering. It wouldn't have mattered," Sarkisian said Tuesday, according to ESPN's Heather Dinich. "The class was irrelevant, and that was a poor choice of words on my part."
Sarkisian said he was trying to discuss inequalities in college athletics relating to the transfer portal 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," Sarkisian explained. "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."
Sarkisian said the SEC didn't punish him for the basket-weaving comment.
He said he used Ole Miss as an example due to his friendship with the program's former coach and current bench boss.
"The only reason the Ole Miss thing came up is because two of my best friends were there, in Lane Kiffin and Pete Golding," Sarkisian said last week, according to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger's Sam Hutchens. "And so I know, when we would compete with them, that they were able to take kids and they would be able to graduate."
Sarkisian has been one of the more outspoken Power 4 coaches this offseason as college football debates expanding the CFP field, among other topics. He attracted some attention last week by taking a shot at an unnamed in-state program when discussing schedule inequalities among Power 4 conferences.
"There's a team in our state in another conference with a schedule that I would argue, if I played with our twos and threes, we could go undefeated, and they'll probably make the CFP this year," Sarkisian said, according to the Austin American-Statesman's Thomas Jones.
Texas posted a 10-3 record last season in Sarkisian's fifth year at the helm. Arch Manning, Colin Simmons, and Cam Coleman headline the Longhorns' 2026 roster ahead of their season opener against Texas State on Sept. 5.
