The No. 6-ranked Texas Longhorns begin Big 12 play Saturday afternoon at Oklahoma. It could be a great season. Or at least it should have been a great season. Right now it’s mostly given Longhorn fans reason to avert their eyes from the wreckage and celebrate that national title in volleyball.
To understand why Chris Beard is still technically employed by the University of Texas while suspended, and before one gets around to questioning the justification for this situation, one must look at the history. Texas men’s basketball barely has one. I say that as an alum who was the first Daily Texan student to interview Abe Lemons after he was hired to replace Leon Black, a move that surely would extract the Longhorns from the dark ages, not just from Gregory Gym.
It sort of happened. And it sort of didn’t.
Without going into greater detail, the best basketball coach Texas ever had was Rick Barnes, and he got to one Final Four in 2003, losing to Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse in the semifinals. Since the tournament expanded to 16 teams back in 1951, that is the only Final Four the Longhorns have reached. You can talk about Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge and the occasional conference title, but when it comes to reaching Final Fours, Texas is the equivalent of SMU. Or Virginia Commonwealth. Or George Mason.
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When you do something about once every 70 years, you’re really not part of the discussion.
That is what brought Beard to Texas in 2021. A coach who could lift Texas Tech to a national championship game — overtime, no less — was surely the right man to bring the Longhorns the title they have long sought but never come close to attaining.
Instead, here is where we are, even with the team ranked sixth in the land. Beard is on suspension without pay, and his fiancee has released a statement saying, “Chris did not strangle me.”
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She also said, “It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted.” In addition, she apologized.
Let me repeat.
She. Apologized.
So this is the place at which we have arrived, not just with the ‘Horns and their basketball hopes, but in America near the close of 2022. If you think “Me Too” has forever changed the landscape regarding domestic violence, you cannot possibly own a television, a newspaper or access to the Internet.
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