The No. 6-ranked Texas Longhorns start Big 12 play Saturday afternoon at Oklahoma. It may very well be an excellent season. Or a minimum of it ought to have been an excellent season. Right now it’s principally given Longhorn followers motive to avert their eyes from the wreckage and rejoice that national title in volleyball.
To perceive why Chris Beard continues to be technically employed by the University of Texas while suspended, and earlier than one will get round to questioning the justification for this example, one should take a look at the historical past. Texas males’s basketball barely has one. I say that as an alum who was the primary Daily Texan scholar to interview Abe Lemons after he was employed to switch Leon Black, a transfer that absolutely would extract the Longhorns from the darkish ages, not simply from Gregory Gym.
It form of occurred. And it form of didn’t.
Without going into higher element, the most effective basketball coach Texas ever had was Rick Barnes, and he received to 1 Final Four in 2003, dropping to Carmelo Anthony and Syracuse within the semifinals. Since the event expanded to 16 groups again in 1951, that’s the solely Final Four the Longhorns have reached. You can discuss Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge and the occasional convention title, however relating to reaching Final Fours, Texas is the equal of SMU. Or Virginia Commonwealth. Or George Mason.
When you do one thing about as soon as each 70 years, you’re actually not a part of the dialogue.
That is what introduced Beard to Texas in 2021. A coach who might raise Texas Tech to a nationwide championship sport — extra time, no much less — was absolutely the proper man to convey the Longhorns the title they’ve lengthy sought however by no means come near attaining.
Travis County Jail Chris Beard, reserving picture, December 2022.
Instead, right here is the place we’re, even with the staff ranked sixth within the land. Beard is on suspension with out pay, and his fiancee has released a statement saying, “Chris did not strangle me.”
She additionally stated, “It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted.” In addition, she apologized.
Let me repeat.
She. Apologized.
So that is the place at which we have now arrived, not simply with the ‘Horns and their basketball hopes, however in America close to the shut of 2022. If you suppose “Me Too” has without end modified the panorama concerning home violence, you can not presumably personal a tv, a newspaper or entry to the Internet.
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