When Sean Miller was hired as the new/old coach of the Xavier Musketeers in March 2022, he played to the home crowd by extolling the virtues of Cincinnati institutions Skyline Chili and Graeter’s ice cream. He declared that Xavier has “a culture that I love and trust.” He was still under investigation for NCAA violations that occurred while he was the head coach of the Arizona Wildcats, but the school that employed him from 2001–09 was willing to take some flak to bring him back.
“It’s very, very exciting to coach at a place where there is a shared vision and alignment,” Miller said at his introductory news conference, which came 13 years after he left Xavier the first time and less than a year after he’d been fired by Arizona. “To have that opportunity to come back to it … I’m just excited about that.”
The excitement wore off. As of earlier this week, Miller is now the coach of the Texas Longhorns.
It was the second time Miller jilted Xavier for somewhere else. The first was when he went to Arizona as his star was ascending. This time, it was after Xavier offered him a fresh start. The school played its role in laundering his image long enough to make him attractive to a program with deeper pockets.
The modern scandal cycle of college sports works like this: talented coach gets fired from a high-level job; talented coach is out of work for some period of time; talented coach gets second chance at a lower-level job; talented coach uses that school to rehab his rep, remind everyone what a winner he is and return to a higher level. For the most accomplished coaches, the championship chase can be interrupted, but almost never terminated.
What do the image rehab schools get out of the deal? A bump in victories, attendance, exposure, revenue—maybe even enrollment. But not often a lasting bump.
This NCAA tournament has had its share of coaches now coming out on the other side of the scandal cycle.
There is Rick Pitino. He was fired by the Louisville Cardinals in 2017 after a succession of scandals, got the rehab job with the Iona Gaels in ’20, spent three seasons there and bounced to the St. John’s Red Storm. In his second year with the Johnnies, Pitino took them to the Big East title and an NCAA No. 2 seed. The season ended ingloriously in the second round, but Pitino’s return from the wilderness was complete.
Iona, meanwhile, has gone 33–34 in two seasons post-Pitino and fired his successor, Tobin Anderson. The Gaels were 29–33 the two seasons before Pitino. Rick’s impact was a blip, not a trend.
There is Will Wade. He was fired by the LSU Tigers in 2022 for a buffet of NCAA violations, got the rehab job leading the McNeese State Cowboys in ’23, served a 10-game suspension and had his ability to recruit restricted, earned two NCAA bids and last week skedaddled to North Carolina State of the Atlantic Coast Conference. How he does remains to be seen, but Wade’s Wolfpack have a strong-ass chance of competing in an underachieving power league.
Were Wade’s two years in Lake Charles, La., transformational for McNeese? Administrators are talking a big game, but that remains to be seen. Don’t bet on the Cowboys becoming Gonzaga of the Bayou.
There is Miller, who took Xavier to the NCAAs twice in three seasons after it had missed the previous four tournaments. Two of his Arizona assistants were hit with lengthy show-cause sanctions by the NCAA—a 10-year penalty for Emanuel “Book” Richardson and a four-year penalty for Mark Phelps. (Both men are now coaching at the pre-college level, Richardson in Virginia and Phelps in California.) Miller rather miraculously escaped sanctions, making him one of several head coaches bailed out by the NCAA handing its most complex and controversial cases to a new hearing panel of collegiate outsiders—people well-versed in boardrooms, not bag men.
College football has its own navigators of the scandal cycle. The most prominent one in recent years: Hugh Freeze, who resigned under considerable pressure as the coach of the Ole Miss Rebels amid both professional and personal embarrassments in 2017. By ’19, Freeze had his rebound job with the Liberty Flames, where he went 34–15 to clear-cut a pathway back to the SEC. He’s now with the Auburn Tigers and trying to justify his continued employment after going 11–14 in his first two seasons.
Speaking of Ole Miss and returning to basketball: Chris Beard is comparatively at an earlier stage of the scandal cycle. The coach of the Rebels has the program in the Sweet 16 for the first time in 24 years and just the second time in school history. Beard is in his second season in Oxford, Miss.
He wound up there after he was fired at Texas in January 2023, a few weeks after he’d been arrested following a domestic disturbance with his fiancé, Randi Trew. She showed Austin police photos and physical evidence of injuries she said she sustained from Beard; he said Trew initiated the conflict and attempted to injure him. Trew wound up asking for the felony domestic violence case to be dropped, and the Travis County District Attorney ultimately did. That provided enough cover for Ole Miss—the least-accomplished basketball school in the Southeastern Conference—to hire Beard.
The coach was fortunate that Keith Carter had become the athletic director at Ole Miss a few years earlier. Carter was a star basketball player for the Rebels, and he stoked the ambition of a football-centric school. When the case was dropped against Beard, Carter went and got him.
As he recently told ESPN: “Being very candid, the situation that unfolded [in Texas] certainly allowed us to get our name in. And a coach at that level—I mean, he’s a top-10 coach in the country, there’s no doubt about that.
“Would Ole Miss be able to get a guy like that in a normal situation? I don’t know. But things work out for a reason, and I think it’s worked out really well.”
The reason things work out for Beard is that he wins. As coach of the Little Rock Trojans in 2016, he won 30 games and scored a shocking first-round NCAA upset of the Purdue Boilermakers. As coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders, he took the program to its first Final Four in ’19 and nearly won the thing, falling to the Virginia Cavaliers in overtime for the title. He was on his way to success at Texas before sabotaging his career with the domestic incident.
That necessitated a detour, although Ole Miss—like Xavier with Miller—offers a chance to compete at the high-major level. (And get paid. Carter gave him an enhanced contract last year, before his first season was complete.) Maybe Beard is in it for the long haul with the Rebels. But rest assured, he will have other options at places with greater basketball history—the Arkansas Razorbacks inquired last year, for one.
The bottom line in the scandal cycle is this: The first school to hire a coach after his career hits the rocks is performing a service that may benefit them, but will definitely benefit the coach. Any pronouncements of fealty and gratitude from the damaged coach to the school come with an expiration date a couple years down the road. He’ll mean it at the time, but not for a long time.
Know your role, rehab schools. You’re being used. Hopefully you get something lasting in return.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Men’s NCAA Tournament Showcasing Coaches’ Rehab in Scandal Cycle.
