Not even six months removed from getting fired from the University of Texas for being arrested for domestic violence, Chris Beard is in line to become the new Ole Miss head coach to replace the recently fired Kermit Davis. Beard and the Rebels are nearing an agreement, per Stadium's Jeff Goodman and ESPN's Pete Thamel and Jeff Borzello.

“Former Texas coach Chris Beard has emerged as the top candidate for the Ole Miss basketball job,” ESPN's Pete Thamel tweeted. “The sides have spoken and Ole Miss in in the process of doing due diligence on Beard.

Although Beard and Ole Miss haven't reached any official agreement, “it's trending in the direction of Beard being the next head coach in Oxford,” Goodman corroborated.

From a purely basketball perspective, Beard is a massive get for Ole Miss. Over his seven-plus years at Little Rock, Texas Tech and Texas, Beard has amassed a 171-73 record and made five of the last six NCAA Tournaments. In 2019, Beard led Texas Tech to a program-record 31 wins and the first Final Four and National Championship Game appearance in school history.

In many ways, most of college basketball's prevailing trends can be traced back to Beard. He popularized the no-middle defense that has become the defining scheme of this era of college basketball and became one of the first coaches to successfully mine the transfer portal for talent.

From a moral perspective, though, hiring Chris Beard is problematic. This past December, Beard was arrested at his home in Austin, Texas on a third-degree felony charge of assault against a family member for strangulation, which led to his Jan. 5 firing at Texas. Ultimately, his fiance, Randi Trew, recanted her accusation and the charges against him were dropped after the Travis County district attorney “determined that the felony offense cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”