History shows Beard will get second chance
Many of life's most vexing questions your intrepid reporter cannot answer with a reasonable degree of certainty. Can Dak Prescott rebound from his most turnoverprone season? Will the Rangers' rotation remain upright? Will Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic remain side-by-side?
Does a bag of Cracker Jack ever have more than two nuts in it?
These mysteries remain beyond my abilities to divine, but if you're asking if Chris Beard will coach again, the answer is yes. Maybe sooner than you'd like.
The first step came when the Travis County district attorney opted not to move forward with a case once Beard's fiancée, Randi Trew, recanted statements to police that led to domestic violence charges against Texas' basketball coach. Beard's next step toward a return will be a mea culpa a little more accountable and forthcoming than the generic tone he adopted once the case was dropped.
But, once he finally comes around and sits out a year as penance, Beard will coach again at a big-time school under the terms of our sliding scale of forgiveness, which goes like this:
The better you are, the quicker you're forgiven.
Look, I'm not saying it's right, only that's how it goes, especially here in the sports department. Any time I've written that an athlete or coach ought to be untouchable, readers wonder why I don't believe in second chances. Of course I believe in second chances. I grew up Baptist. A guilt-ridden fellow in our little church responded to so many altar calls, we kept one eye out for him.
There's no story better than a tale of redemption. They're just hard to believe sometimes outside the New Testament.
And, frankly, some of you so quick to turn the other cheek don't always take into consideration the unintended consequences. A coach sets a culture. Brings athletes onto a campus or into a community. Not everything that happens from that point forward can be blamed on the coach, of course, but try taking that point of view with the parent of a victim.
Art Briles is the most public example of a coach who didn't enjoy the benefits of our sliding scale. A great coach, he's never gotten another college job since the Baylor scandal, and he never will. Not that he didn't come close. Maybe even at Texas Tech.
The problem for any potential employer has been the blowback every time Briles' name comes up. At 67, he's not likely to outlive it.
Billy Gillispie fell all the way from Lexington to Stephenville, though at least he got his second chance. Even a third. Larry Brown, maybe the best basketball coach I ever knew, also got every place he ever worked in a jam with the NCAA. His road to perdition finally ended at SMU.
No one's handed out more second chances than Jerry Jones. It's not that he has a soft spot for hard cases. He's not running a reform school. He's simply been willing to overlook an offense or two if the guy's good enough. More often than not, his risk-taking hasn't paid off, which might be why he hasn't stuck his neck out as much recently. His last great reform effort was Greg Hardy, who packed domestic violence allegations of his own. The experiment lasted one season, at which point the Cowboys gave up on him, concluding, among other things, that he was a bad influence on younger team members.
The latest local example of just letting bygones be bygones is the Mavs and Kyrie Irving. No need to rehash that history here. Suffice to say, if Irving hadn't loomed among the greatest talents in Mavs history, we'd all still think Christian Wood remained Mark Cuban's biggest conundrum.
As for Beard's prospects going forward, his name has already decorated message boards across the nation, from Ohio State to Ole Miss to Oklahoma. My guess is his next job won't be far from his roots. Except for a layover in South Carolina, he's spent the rest of an eclectic career within a day's drive of Austin. Like he didn't want to be too far from home in case mama called.
Outside those historical parameters, I could see Beard following Bobby Hurley at Arizona State.
Patrick Ewing at Georgetown? Not so much.
Wherever he ends up, Beard will win, because it's all he's ever done. He's a great coach. Maybe he could even be a great role model. Tell his players every year where he went wrong, how to treat women, be a gentleman. If he does all that and doesn't get in any more trouble, then he'll prove he deserved his second chance when it comes. That's the thing about a tale of redemption. It's supposed to be for keeps.