Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly column on the Texas Longhorns.
From the Associated Press, apparently with a final publication timestamp of 7:07 PM Texas Time on Friday, December 23rd:
“The woman who called police to report a family violence assault by Texas basketball coach Chris Beard said Friday that Beard did not strangle her and she never wanted him arrested or prosecuted.”
The report goes on, it comes from a statement sent to the AP by Beard’s fiancée’s attorney, you can read it all here, and it covers every publicly known significant fact about the case. We know a lot about what happened, and we know a lot about family violence—especially that it is messy, confusing, and immensely painful for the people involved—but we do not know what exactly happened that night, and we likely never will. There’s an inherent level of unknown here. Chris Beard has not been exonerated, legally or publicly, but this is the latest update to the case, which is a sad, violent mess.
Now.
What a news dump.
Five hours before midnight the day before Christmas Eve?
On a Friday evening?
At the onset of college basketball’s deadest days of the year?
We don’t know who was responsible for the timing of the dump, whether it was strategic on the part of Beard’s fiancée’s attorney alone or strategic on the part of many involved, but we can assume both parties’ attorneys have been in contact, and we know the University of Texas is investigating, and how predictable. How predictable that something would come out about this case last night, whatever it was going to be.
The Nuts have been and are hesitant to say anything about what should or shouldn’t happen regarding this case. We’re not family violence experts, we’re not legal experts, there’s so much with the specific case which we do not know. But you would hope—you would really hope—that the University of Texas does right by its students, and especially the players, and that the example set is one where family violence is taken extremely seriously, both legally and in personal spheres. You’d hope, and you’d guess, that any cessation of Beard’s suspension would be accompanied by mandated counseling. Whether the clinical expertise says Beard should go back to work or not while that counseling begins (continues, more likely) is not something we know. But it’s important, we think, to not make a takeaway from this that “Chris Beard is innocent” and all should return to how it was, which is what a large share of people within and outside of the broader UT community seem to feel. Family violence is grayer than that. Especially here. Where there is so much we don’t know.
Hell of a news dump, everybody. Merry Christmas.
