Alright, Let's Talk About It

Lemon, it's Wednesday

It’s been a couple of days, so things have settled down enough to have a frank discussion about the most pressing issue with Texas basketball. I know people have strong opinions about this subject, but I think we can all be civil in our discourse over what has dominated the Texas Longhorns news cycle.

Tyrese Hunter’s Cramps

What’s up with Tyrese Hunter cramping every game? Is he running wind sprints in a sauna as part of his warmups? Are his mornings spent on Arrakis wrestling Fremen without a stillsuit? Is he allergic to electrolytes? Did a Gatorade CEO run over his dog? He never had these cramping issues at Iowa State and he was playing more minutes with a higher workload in Ames than he’s had at any point in Austin, so something is up. It seems pretty clear Texas is trying to manage his minutes early in games so he’ll be available later, but that isn’t working because he spent a chunk of the Illinois OT on the bench being Theragunned for the thousandth time this season. That massage gun is the most valuable member of the Texas S&C staff at this point, it seems to be doing more to help Hunter than any of the humans being paid to keep him available. (I doubt this would have happened under Andrea Hudy.)

Anyway, thanks for reading. If anything else notable comes up, I’ll be sure to let you know. Now let me take a large sip of this coffee and check my text messages from the last two days; my phone has been buzzing a lot lately but I’m sure it’s all cramp-related.

(see, he does know how to wear a mask!)

Welp

I probably don’t need to go over all the details for the people who frequent this site, but the Cliff’s Notes is that Chris Beard is currently suspended without pay and facing felony assault charges for allegedly choking his fiancée, biting her, & throwing her off the bed during an argument. You can read the arrest report, if you haven’t already, and come to your own conclusions about its veracity. I’m not really here to litigate whether or not he did it, there are plenty of other forums where people can parse the legal definition of ‘strangulation’ but this will not be one of them. Suffice it to say whatever happened that night scared his fiancée enough to call the cops and the cops saw enough evidence to take one of the most famous Austin residents to real-ass-jail and book him, so I’m inclined to believe her account until such time that it is disproven, if that ever actually happens. This piece is about next steps for Texas. Well, eventually it will be about next steps, but I want to address a couple of things first.

Am I Happy About This?

My general distaste for Chris Beard is pretty widely known at this point, and a fair number of people have messaged me asking me some variation of “I bet you’re enjoying this” or “you must be happy about this turn of events”. The short answer: not really. Part of my disdain for Beard surrounds his general ethos that wins are all that matters, and he doesn’t really care who he has to recruit or how he has to act to stack those wins. Whether it’s hiring an staff who is linked to more NCAA violations than a Rick Pitino limo service - back when that still mattered, things change pretty quickly these days - or recruiting players with their own domestic violence problems, Chris Beard is basketball Machiavelli. As everyone is now well-aware, he’s also a pretty singular asshole in a profession full of them, which is quite a bar to clear. He rides players so hard that they transfer, then badmouths them to other coaches when they’re in the portal. (This is true.) When you are of no more use to him, he is done with you and will discard you. Stories of this are all around him if you’re involved in the basketball scene, but because he gets in front of a microphone and talks about “uniting the family” or “building a culture” & makes fireside chat videos where he’s an asshole in a way people find funny instead of psychotic, he controls the narrative about him for the masses. For the past year or so I’ve referred to him as a “less handsy Bobby Knight”, but even I didn’t realize I was giving him too much credit with that characterization.

Fuck him, toss his ass out of Austin. He can go coach at Southwestern Christian University; they hired Dave Bliss, I’m sure Beard will seem like a saint in comparison. His sort of faux-sincere humility used car salesman shtick will go over like gangbusters there, assuming Liberty University doesn’t hire him first.

But am I happy about this? Am I happy that the Texas athletic department blitzed past any level of vetting that would have raised red flags to hire the guy the boosters had deified for the previous three seasons? Am I happy that Texas is now mired in a scandal the likes of which we haven’t seen in Texas athletics since…ever? (Seriously, the closest thing I can think of is Eddie Oran faxing Luke Axtell’s grades to an Austin radio station, and that’s not even in the same ballpark as beating up your fiancée.) Am I happy that the best Texas basketball team in a decade is now having to deal with questions that the athletic director & university president are staying silent on? Does this sound like a party to anyone?

I’ve had to eat a lot of shit from Texas fans over the past 18 months, and I get why those people would expect me to walk through the room grinning like the Cheshire Cat with my middle fingers raised high; if this was a situation where Beard was getting canned because the team was losing 20 games a year then my double birds would be suffering worse cramps than Tyrese Hunter carrying a bag of cement through the Sahara, but that’s not what this is. Beard (allegedly) choked the woman he’s supposed to marry & now his family is shattered and under a microscope that nobody in that house other than Chris Beard asked for. For however many weeks or months this drags on - especially if the university refuses to talk to anyone - his daughters and his fiancée are going to be dragged to hell and back by insane sports fans for reasons not of their making. Players like Timmy Allen & Marcus Carr delayed playing pro ball in Europe, burning a year of their finite careers based on a promise that’s been broken before they even hit conference play. Lots of people have had their lives upended by Chris Beard being a terrible person, none more so than those closest to him. It’s fucked up, and I didn’t want a new coach from a situation like this. I care about Texas basketball a lot, but somebody else made that monkey’s paw curl a finger.

So no, I’m not enjoying being right about Beard, because even in the ways I was right I still underestimated just how big a sack of shit he is.

Your Silence is Deafening

As of the time I’m writing this, notoriously online Chris Del Conte has gone a full 3+ days without tweeting. The last time he missed a single day of tweeting was a month ago, November 14th. (I checked, because of course I checked. I don’t have a good excuse, I am just this specific sort of weird.) The dude is always tweeting..and yet, nothing since December 11th! I’m sure he just left his phone charger at home and he’s spending this week of December visiting his Amish in-laws, it’s a total coincidence that this is the week he’s gone silent. Maybe he’s spending this week deep in thought, trying to figure out how he went wrong in his coaching search that consisted of one candidate who he met in a rural McDonald’s for an hour. It’s a puzzler, that one.

It’s okay to be wrong, and it’s not the end of the world when you make mistakes. What matters is how you respond to it & how you modify your approach moving forward. Choosing to refuse interview requests and turtling up in your fortress of solitude while you send an assistant coach out to face the media with no visible support is one way to handle things. It’s a dumb way that speaks to your shortcomings as a leader, but it is a way. I have no doubt that there is an armada of lawyers in Austin - and Brian Davis, congrats on that new job in crisis communications! - crafting every syllable that comes out of the Texas athletic department right now, but you never seemed to have trouble finding the microphone when things were going well. There was a man in Austin you professed to love who once said “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it”; well, he ain’t wrong.

I’m not employed as a crisis communications professional, but were I to offer up some advice to our fundraiser-in-chief on how to handle a situation outside of his wheelhouse - accepting checks and/or pats on the back from rich people - I would start with a statement about how saddened you are by recent events, express your support for the victim, and elaborate on how diligently you will work to revamp your vetting process on coaching hires going forward. Or you could continue saying nothing, I’m sure that won’t look just as terrible as everything else about your involvement in the rise & fall of Chris Beard. It also means your boss - Jay Hartzell, who is likely the one actually calling the shots right now - will eventually have to start talking in your stead, and I hope you’re confident his words won’t be spent throwing you in front of the train that’s headed at Texas. You’re doing great, sweetie.

Alright, let’s talk next steps.

They Have to Go

Cedric Golden wrote a piece at the Statesman with the basic premise of “if Chris Beard is found guilty, you have to fire him” which is a reasonable thing to say if you don’t have a grasp on advanced concepts like “the speed of the legal system”, or “recruiting windows”, or “the passage of time”. I assume Cedric either was handed this piece pre-written by CDC or wrote this while on NyQuil, because the idea that Texas can sit around for months waiting for the legal process to play out is…not really feasible. The reality of the situation is that the athletic department cannot sit on their hands for months without doing severe damage to the basketball program; if you don’t think coaches all over the country aren’t already knee-deep in the DMs of both current players, committed recruits, and anyone Texas is currently recruiting, you do not understand how much blood is in the water right now. (Hell, the Texas assistant coaches are probably chatting up their buddies about new gigs. This is not a profession of people who sit still in moments of uncertainty.) Even if CDC, Hartzell, and the Board of Regents don’t have an ethical issue with what Chris Beard is charged with - which, to be clear, they absolutely should - from a purely practical point of view they can’t wait on his verdict. They’ve got to cut him loose. Name Rodney Terry the interim head coach, let it be known that there will be a coaching search in March, and give Terry the chance to win the job. It will calm the waters for awhile and give the current staff a pathway to not having to look for new gigs if they succeed. You can preach stability to everyone who will listen instead of making an already difficult roster situation for the next coach even worse.

(Just to put this in perspective: Allen, Bishop, Carr, Mitchell, & Rice are gone after this season, and Cunningham & Disu would have to use their COVID year to return. Even with zero transfers or extra NBA declarations, the new coach is going to be hitting the portal hard just to field a team next season.)

And you’ve got to nudge Arterio Morris out the door, too. With Beard’s charge has come significantly renewed interest in Morris’ off-court issues. Beard historically does not seem to give a shit if his players beat up women, and if you thought this is where I use the university’s own words against them then come collect your prize.

Oh, you take matters of interpersonal violence involving members of your community seriously, you say? That’s great news, I’ve got just the “matter” to bring to your attention!

Texas and/or Beard have been trotting out a horseshit line about not being able to comment on an active Title IX investigation, knowing that 1) there’s not really a way for reporters to find out if Morris is being investigated because of privacy laws & 2) it’s incredibly unlikely Morris is being investigated by the university when the alleged assault happened while he was still technically in high school. Reporters are now talking about Morris as part of the Beard story, and the school’s inaction to date looks a whole lot worse than it already did. It says a lot about where things are that when I say somebody from Texas had a hearing on their assault charge today, I have to specify it was Morris. The smart PR move is to get Morris to move on; they can quietly nudge him to the transfer portal if they’re too chickenshit to suspend him outright. The guy who kept Morris around isn’t allowed on campus any more, it’s time to send Morris on his way as well. I know this makes the roster math worse, but he needs to go.

Start An Actual Coaching Search

Tell Rodney Terry he has a chance to earn the permanent gig, and mean it. Call up Royal Ivey, apologize profusely for treating him like a Rooney Rule candidate last time, and mean it. Then start putting out feelers to the biggest names out there: John Calipari, Nate Oats, Eric Musselman, Matt Painter, Tommy Lloyd. Most of them will be non-starters for various reasons; Nate Oats’ buyout is nearly $10m, Matt Painter seems happy at Purdue, John Calipari is going to cost double what Chris Beard did, etc. But you still have to do the work. See if Royal Ivey is still interested in working for you despite how you acted ~20 months ago, and then look further afield at options like Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Brad Underwood (Illinois), Leon Rice (Boise State), Pat Kelsey (Charleston), or maybe consider some higher-risk backup options like Mark Few’s longest-tenured assistant Brian Michaelson. But more than that, come up with an actual goddamn plan this time. Quantify the type of team you want to see, the type of person you want to lead the program, and look around for coaches who check those boxes. THEN VET THEM. Like, actually talk to people other than Texas boosters. Do your homework so you’re less likely to be back in this position 24 months from now. You might still pick the wrong coach for the job; in fact you probably will, this shit is hard to get right even when you do put in the work. Good luck, CDC, wherever you are.

EDIT for the web crowd: Tim & I revived Pretend We’re Football for a day to talk about the last week and how to move forward.