Let me stop you right there.

You, an Ole Miss fan, read that headline and you got ready to fire back at me about the judicial system as it relates to Chris Beard, who is reportedly close to an agreement to become your school’s next head coach, according to ESPN. You, an Ole Miss fan, had some sort of response ready about “you’re innocent until proven guilty in this country” or “she dropped the charges.”

You’re right. You are innocent until proven guilty in this country. You’re also right that Beard’s fiancée, Randi Trew, dropped the charges against the then-Texas coach after she called the police on him for “choking her from behind, biting her and hitting her” when they got in an argument.

That incident led Texas, then the No. 2 team in America, to deem Beard (a Texas graduate) “unfit” to be its head coach.

But fit for Ole Miss? It appears so. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Texas wasn’t desperate to jump through hoops to keep Beard in the wake of his domestic violence arrest on Dec. 12. Yes, the university made that decision before Trew dropped the charges, wherein she admitted she instigated the altercation. While Trew’s decision not to press charges against Beard still didn’t explain why she called 911 in the first place — I’m no police officer but I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of choking from behind and biting out of self-defense — it did prompt a statement from Beard.

“I am pleased with the announcement that the charges against me have been dismissed,” Beard said in a statement at the time. “While I always had faith and confidence in the truth and this outcome, it has been extremely challenging to wait patiently and not publicly respond. I’m sorry and deeply remorseful to my family, friends, all my players and staff both most recent and past, and everyone at my alma mater The University of Texas.”

If you think that Ole Miss just pulled off a coup and lands Beard, you probably need a little context. Is he a fantastic coach? You could argue he’s one of the best there is. He took Little Rock to the second round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament, and then he one-upped that by leading Texas Tech all the way to a national championship berth in 2019. Bobby Knight couldn’t even sniff that kind of success in Lubbock.

There’s no denying that Beard knows what he’s doing on the court. Off of it? Well, let’s just say Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter is praying that he never wakes up to a call like the one Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte got. Nothing will give you a case of the Mondays quite like hearing your $5 million/year, national championship-contending coach was arrested after accusations of domestic violence.

I don’t mean to make light of that situation, but that context is needed because you can see right through this.

Nobody would be surprised if Ole Miss floated the initial Beard interest out to the media on Wednesday in an effort to gauge public reaction. As long as the reactions weren’t mocked mercilessly by those in the business, Ole Miss was going to stress that it did its “due diligence.” Take that for what it is. I estimate in this instance that “due diligence” as weighing whether the PR hit is worth taking if it means Ole Miss basketball has a chance to do something it has so rarely done in program history. That is, have yearly relevance. The Rebels are the No. 13 seed in the SEC Tournament and their season will end with their next loss, which could come Thursday afternoon against Tennessee. They haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2019 and haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2015.

Beard won as many NCAA Tournament games (5) in his national runner-up year at Texas Tech as Ole Miss has in program history. Since 2016, Beard led Little Rock to more NCAA Tournament wins (1) than Ole Miss (0). By virtue of reaching the Round of 32 at Little Rock, Beard tied the second-best NCAA Tournament run ever at Ole Miss.

Three Round of 32 exits and 1 Sweet 16 berth in 2001 is all the March glory that Ole Miss has to speak of. If and when Beard wins his first NCAA Tournament game as Ole Miss’ head coach, he’ll instantly move into a tie for second place on the program’s all-time list.

Desperate? Yeah. Kermit Davis couldn’t find a sustainable formula, and neither could Andy Kennedy. Were they great men and great coaches? By all accounts, absolutely. But this job, for one reason or another, spent the vast majority of its existence chewing up coaches and spitting them out.

Beard would certainly be the most accomplished coach to ever take the job. Davis was the first coach Ole Miss ever hired who had previously led a program to the NCAA Tournament. And with all due respect to Davis, who led 15-seed Middle Tennessee to an improbable upset of 2-seed Michigan State in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Tournament, his résumé was built on what he did at the mid-major level. It’s not an equal comparison to Beard, who led 3 different programs to NCAA Tournament victories in the past 7 seasons.

If that wasn’t on Beard’s résumé, there wouldn’t be any sort of “due diligence” process by Ole Miss. If his résumé was comparable to Davis’, Beard wouldn’t be getting looked at by any Power 5 program in the wake of Texas’ decision that he was “unfit” to be its head coach.

That’s not the world we live in, though. We live in a world where SEC basketball depth is at the best place it’s been in the 21st century, and it’ll only become more challenging to stay afloat in the conference once, ironically enough, Oklahoma and Texas join the fray in 2024. If Beard can avoid any future off-court issues, he’ll give Ole Miss a better chance at relevance than any time in its history.

Just don’t assume that’s not without consequences.

That includes Ole Miss faithful who choose not to support Beard as a result of his alleged actions. Instead of defaulting to “the charges were dropped,” some will hold the program accountable and share their displeasure that it was willing to look past the incident that made Beard available to begin with. Without it, there’s no way that Beard would’ve been a realistic candidate at a place way down the Power 5 totem pole like Ole Miss.

But no matter what both parties say, one can see right through it — desperate times led to a desperate measure.