Sitting down with Robert Khayat has always been an interesting experience. You can usually count on him to speak frankly, albeit with a certain amount of spin as you might expect from any head of a public university.
Here's an excerpt from the interview I had with Khayat regarding the "health of Ole Miss football." Here's what he had to say about the school's athletics facilities.
*ROBERT KHAYAT*
"We are a university, and you see a major commitment made to the academic programs and academic support. You see most of our student-athletes who we sign being eligible for admission. Add also, maintaining eligibility and increasing to graduation. Most all the trends are up since 1995, when Pete (Boone) and I started doing this together.
One of the real weaknesses in 1995 was the facilities, you know that. We’ve spent nearly $100 million on athletics facilities, so that now every facility is … in some cases we’re better than anybody else and in some cases we’re as good as anybody.
The only facility we have that could even be the subject of some kind of discussion of quality is the coliseum. The truth is, it’s a wonderful place to play. It has the same capacity, 9,000, as the building where Duke plays its basketball games, and you have a very strong homecourt advantage when you play here.
With the construction of the practice facility, we’ll end up with plenty of courts for men’s and women’s basketball, dressing facilities, etcetera. If you go around our campus and look at each of the facilities we’re certainly SEC competitive, sometimes dominant, and nationally competitive."
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