With its basketball program at rock bottom, Ole Miss hiring Chris Beard says the quiet part out loud
Winning is all that matters, and the Rebels are tired of being the doormat of the SEC
For the better part of the last two seasons, when Keith Carter has entered the Pavilion and settled into his usual seat, nestled about 15 rows behind the Ole Miss bench in the Courtside Club, a quick gaze around the building usually painted a pretty bleak picture of the state of the Ole Miss Basketball program.
Thousands of empty seats, fueled by a losing product on the court, produced a lifeless environment in an otherwise glistening $96 million arena erected just seven years ago. From a financial standpoint, empty seats adversely affect the bottom line. It is also a symptom of irrelevance. This scene would be an eyesore for any athletics director in the country, but perhaps even more so for Carter, who is an Ole Miss Basketball alum and played in an era that could arguably be dubbed as the Golden Age of a program with little tradition. It’s the program that brought him to Oxford roughly 25 years ago, from a one-stoplight town called Perryville, Arkansas, which was ultimately the starting point on his path to the position he holds today.
On Monday, the school announced former Texas coach Chris Beard as the program’s next head basketball coach. With this hire, Carter and Ole Miss essentially said the quiet part out loud: winning matters above all else. Fans, and sometimes media, too, often bristle at this notion, particularly when a hire like this — a proven winner with a checkered past — occurs. But it’s not some earth-shattering revelation. Fans prefer to view things through a wholesome lens. They want to believe there is an element of purity in their favorite teams’ and programs’ pursuit of success — and there often is, to some degree. But only when it coincides with that path to success, rather than thwart it. Major college basketball is a zero-sum game: winning is the only judgement criteria. It’s the only currency within the economy. Beard’s hiring underscores that.
In a normal scenario, Ole Miss could never sniff landing a coach of Beard’s caliber. In its 115-year history, the program has a total of nine NCAA Tournament appearances and has won just five NCAA Tournament games. There is little history and tradition. The Rebels have largely been the doormat of the SEC for the bulk of the program’s existence.
Beard has won everywhere he’s been. In his lone year at Arkansas-Little Rock, he led the Trojans to a 30-5 record and to the Round of 32 of the 2016 NCAA Tournament. The 30-win season was the best in program history. Little Rock had won 20 games just twice in twenty years prior. The Trojans’ Round of 64 win over Purdue is one of two NCAA Tournament wins in their history. At Texas Tech, Beard took the Red Raiders to the program’s first ever Elite Eight appearance in his second year, and then to the National Championship game in his third season. Two years later, he took the head coaching job at his alma mater, Texas. In seven full seasons as a D1 head coach, he’s made the NCAA Tournament in all but one, and has won a game in four of the five appearances (the 2020 season was cut short due to Covid). He is an elite basketball coach in every sense of the term.
Of course, the reason Ole Miss was able to massively outkick its coverage was due to the manner in which Beard was fired from Texas.
At 2:07 a.m. on December 12, 2022, less than two days after the 2nd-ranked Longhorns destroyed Arkansas Pine-Bluff 88-43, to move to 7-1 on the year, police were dispatched to Beard’s West Austin home. He was arrested and charged with third-degree felony assault on a family member (domestic violence), stemming from a dispute with his fiancée, Randi Trew, in which she told responding officers that Beard “strangled, bit and hit,” her during a confrontation inside the residence. Texas fired Beard on January 5, for cause, three weeks after suspending him without pay while the school conducted an investigation into the incident. It was a shocking nosedive for a man who orchestrated a meteoric rise to the pinnacle of his profession.
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So, how did Beard become the head coach at Ole Miss after all of this? The series of events that occurred between his December 12 arrest and today’s announcement offer an explanation for that. The justification of it is what is up for debate.
On December 23, 2022, eleven days after Beard’s arrest, and 14 days prior to Texas firing him, Trew released a statement in which she recanted some of what she told officers that night. She backed-up Beard’s claim of self defense and labeled herself as the instigator.
"Chris and I are deeply saddened that we have brought negative attention upon our family, friends, and the University of Texas, among others," Trew said in the statement. "As Chris' fiancée and biggest supporter, I apologize for the role I played in this unfortunate event. I realize that my frustration, when breaking his glasses, initiated a physical struggle between Chris and myself. Chris did not strangle me, and I told that to law enforcement that evening. Chris has stated that he was acting in self-defense, and I do not refute that. I do not believe Chris was trying to intentionally harm me in any way. It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted. We appreciate everyone's support and prayers during this difficult time."
On February 16, all charges against Beard were dismissed by the Travis County District Attorney’s office. Almost immediately, his name entered the wild arena that is college basketball’s yearly coaching carousel. Eighteen days after Beard’s legal troubles were behind him, reports surfaced that he met with Ole Miss officials last Monday, Carter presumably among them. Beard’s name started to become associated with the Ole Miss job the day Kermit Davis was fired on February 24. The reported meeting solidified his candidacy, and ultimately, led to Monday announcement.
The reason for this hire is bred from two overarching factors: an unquenchable thirst for relevance (winning), and just the right amount of inculpability. Let’s examine the latter first.
Beard was never convicted of a crime. The dropped charges are the only reason this column is being written today on the heels of this hire. Obviously, a clean legal wrap sheet does not equate to a moral track record free of blemishes. The police affidavit from that night is very much a relevant piece of evidence in the court of public opinion.
Responding officers on the scene that night observed a bite mark to Trew’s forearm, abrasions on her eyebrow and left leg, a cut on her thumb and scratches on her back and right eye. What those details portray in terms of Beard’s culpability and the corroboration of Beard’s claim of self-defense, are open to interpretation. Only two people know what really happened on that December night: Beard and Trew.
The proverbial due-diligence process when making a hire like this is often mocked as a farce, seen as more of a hollow term that is part of a public relations campaign rather than a legitimate screening mechanism, but contrary to what internet critics would have you believe, there is merit in the process Carter and his staff employed when vetting Beard. That process doesn’t include some imaginary moral purity test. It entails gaining, to the best of their knowledge, an understanding of what happened that night, the likelihood of it ever happening again, and ensuring there isn’t any additional information that is not currently (publicly) known that will come to light after the hire and blind side Ole Miss, furthering an already dicey public relations initiative when it comes to justifying this hire.
Of course Ole Miss wants to hire Beard. As we discussed earlier, he is a proven winner that, without his current baggage, would be in a different stratosphere in terms of coaches the program would be able to hire. On paper, Beard is the best and most accomplished coach in the program’s history. This is a statement of fact before he ever coaches a game.
Beard is highly-respected within the coaching industry. The story linked above speaks to that. The quotes from SEC staffers are telling. They believe Beard will turn Ole Miss into a winner, despite the job being seen as one of the tougher in the conference in terms of achieving and maintaining success. He offers more of a guaranteed path to consistent on-court success than any other candidate in the program’s history, one that wouldn’t normally be available to Ole Miss. That’s the reason for making this hire.
Which brings us to the other factor in this: the aforementioned desire for relevancy. Ole Miss Basketball is at rock bottom. It has won one conference home game since January of 2022. It cannot get any worse in terms of on-court futility. The program is in desperate need for an injection of energy. Similar to Carter hiring Kiffin in 2019, the program needs to make a splash. If you recall, Carter stated as much in Kiffin’s introductory press conference. I spoke with Carter about that very topic less than a month after Kiffin was hired, in which he cited the same challenges the basketball program currently faces.
In most cases, when it comes to coaching searches, the word “splash” is a hyperbolic descriptor that usually has little to no effect on the long-term success of the program. But multiple years of empty seats begin to ring loud. A story published in the Clarion-Ledger noted that Ole Miss Basketball attendance in 2022 was the lowest since the Pavilion opened. It’s highly unlikely that 2023 attendance figures will tell a different story. The notion of making a splash is not hyperbolic or short-sighted in this scenario. It’s an apt description. Ole Miss needs to reinvigorate interest in the basketball program amongst its fanbase.
Because of the grim nature of Beard’s December incident, Ole Miss is going to endure a media beating for this hire. The sources of this backlash are predictable, to the point of knowing how the column will be written before it is published. The preliminary stages of that began before the hire was announced. And, if we are being honest here, while the genuineness of the media scolding can rightfully be questioned, fan reaction is a different story. If you’re an Ole Miss fan reading this and you are uncomfortable with this hire, there really isn’t any rebuttal to be offered. You’re not wrong or off-base to have that belief, particularly female fans. As I did in a previous newsletter, I will refer you to a segment in my friend and colleague Neal McCready’s Ten Weekend Thoughts column in which he solicited anonymous feedback from female Ole Miss fans. Almost all of it was negative, and can you really blame them? But, at the same time, the blunt truth of the matter is that this will be a net-gain in terms of program interest, despite all of that. Season ticket sales will spike because of this hire.
Carter is ultimately judged on the health and success of the athletic programs he oversees. How he’s evaluated, and in turn his job security, is far more heavily-weighted on wins and losses than it is the altruistic nature of the coaches he employs. It’s the sometimes unfortunate nature of the business of college athletics. Desperation often breads an increased appetite for risk. Hiring Beard is a risk. But the risk is what could potentially happen in the future rather than what happened in the past. Moral high ground is great in theory, but it’s an incompatible qualifier when impedes the ability to hire a coach who will win at a high level.
Look around the SEC. Brandon Miller, who drove a gun to the scene of an eventual homicide, is still playing basketball for an Alabama team that is a national title contender. Will Wade coached two seasons at LSU after it was made public he was a subject in an FBI investigation into college basketball’s slimy recruiting underbelly. The examples go beyond just basketball. Hugh Freeze and Bruce Pearl are currently coaching at Auburn despite a checkered past when it comes to NCAA violations. Are all of these transgressions equal in their degree of malice? Of course not, and unfortunately, conversations like this ultimately devolve into fruitless debates of whataboutism. But the point remains: morality is not a digestible hiring qualifier in the pursuit of winning in this ruthless industry. Here’s the reality of it all when it comes to Beard: someone was going to hire him. Why not Ole Miss? If Carter balked at the notion, and hired another, less-accomplished coach who did not pan out, while Beard caught on somewhere else and built a winner, who loses in that scenario? The answer is Carter. It’s his job to put the program in the best position to win games.
Carter cares deeply about every program he oversees in his role as Ole Miss AD, but one would think the basketball program is especially dear to him. The decision to hire Chris Beard is one that sends a clear message: Ole Miss Basketball is tired of being a doormat, and that winning matters above all else. When reminded of that, people often bristle, but it’s not some earth-shattering revelation. Ole Miss is simply saying the quiet part out loud.
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