These shots at Ole Miss are really comments on the state of college football coaching.
No, not the ones from Clemson coach Dabo Swinney a few months ago, accusing Ole Miss coach Pete Golding of “blatant tampering.”
No, not the Vanity Fair profile this week on LSU coach/walking human resources intervention Lane Kiffin, in which he contrasted the “campus diversity” at LSU with race-based recruiting challenges he faced at Ole Miss.
Let’s recognize Texas coach Steve Sarkisian for what he managed to pull off when he told USA Today’s Matt Hayes: “At Texas, we will only take 50 (percent) of a player’s academic credit hours. You may be a semester from graduating, but you’re going all the way back to 50 (percent) if you play here and want a degree. But at Ole Miss, they can take you. All you have to do is take basket weaving, and you can get an Ole Miss degree.”
Yes, that’s right, a Texas football coach made an attempt to claim a disadvantage. Truly remarkable. It may be getting more attention as the latest dazzling play in a surging American pastime — Ole Miss Bashing — that is hoping to overtake pickleball soon and be included in the Brisbane Games in 2032.
But it best serves as proof that there is no bigger group of complainers in the world than college football coaches. And this is coming from a longtime member of a profession that does it at a high level.
If Sarkisian can try to pass off Texas as a Rodeo Ivy, even though he has arguably the most talented team in the nation next season, backed by the biggest budget, bolstered by one of the top transfer classes, then what’s next?
Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire whining about market inflation? Miami’s Mario Cristobal screaming “Unfair!” at the beaches near William & Mary? Michigan’s Kyle Whittingham lamenting the attention and resources he must share with basketball while Indiana’s Curt Cignetti has no such annoyances?
Nothing should surprise, because the collective reaction of coaches to the chaos of the 2020s is to grouse about everything and solve nothing. Even though it’s better to be a football coach in these times than just about any other role that exists in college athletics.
If you doubt that, check out the raise and extension Alabama just gave Kalen DeBoer — a seven-year, $87.5 million deal — for being a mere disappointment and not a complete embarrassment. Well, at least not every week. DeBoer is 20-8 in two seasons, his most recent outing a 38-3 Rose Bowl Quarterfinal loss to Cignetti’s Hoosiers.
A lot of coaches could have come to Tuscaloosa and struggled to maintain the standard established by Nick Saban, but very few professions would expect a goldmine in return for the decline.
Coaches today can expect few breaks, constant concerns about resources for players, lying agents, the usual negative recruiting from rivals, the need to re-recruit every roster and more influence than ever from the wealthy folks who help pay the players. And if the rewards aren’t enough to offset those headaches, they’re welcome to join Saban and complain about it all on TV.
When one of them, especially one as advantaged as Sarkisian, uses an interview to rage about the state of the game on several levels, “disingenuous” doesn’t quite cover it. The Ole Miss comment is getting all the attention. But Sarkisian also riffed on failed NCAA enforcement, the lack of “guard rails,” the College Football Playoff format, the hypothetical Playoff formats and the CFP selection committee.
Boy, did he have a lot to say about the folks who correctly excluded 9-3 Texas, with its loss to 4-8 Florida, from the 12-team field. It kind of feels like that’s what’s really bothering Sarkisian about college football, the gall it had to snub his most recent team.
Though he did get a shot in on Cal and the university’s academic prestige contrasted with the acceptance of 32 transfers. See, it ain’t like that at the Harvard of Travis County.
To be fair to Sarkisian, this appeared to be a wide-ranging interview about the state of the game, whereas Vanity Fair writer Chris Smith told Paul Finebaum on his radio show that Kiffin’s comments about Ole Miss were unprompted. Then repeated. There’s only one coach in this sport who can be that level of petty and agenda-driven.
There are many who can be better. Do something. If your players get tampered with, be like Swinney and name names — this should be no problem for those with a clear conscience.
If you want “guard rails,” be like Boise State’s Spencer Danielson and others who have come around to the obvious conclusion that they won’t be legal if the players don’t have a voice in them. The sooner coaches and administrators rally around that idea and abandon prayerful glances toward Washington, the sooner things have a chance to improve.
Right now coaches seem to be rallying around a 24-team College Football Playoff and excuses to cancel attractive nonleague matchups. It’s as if they just want college football fans — you know, the reason there’s any money in this? — to join them in complaining all the time.
