OXFORD, Miss. — The lights in the Tuohy Center flickered well past midnight.
Ole Miss coach Chris Beard, tasked with resurrecting Ole Miss basketball, wasn’t diagramming plays or reviewing tape.
Instead, he was sifting through hours of Tom Brady interviews, podcasts, and documentaries, searching for clues inside the mind of the NFL’s most decorated quarterback.
What Beard found was more than a playbook. It was a blueprint for leadership, resilience, and, he hopes, a new era for the Rebels.
This wasn’t just a casual offseason curiosity.
Beard, who enters his third year at Ole Miss with a nearly overhauled roster, spent “a lot” of time dissecting Brady’s approach to winning on and off the field.
“One thing that I’ve always done each offseason is I’ll try to study winning. It doesn’t always have to happen in the form of basketball,” Beard said in June. “If you listen to a guy long enough and you study about him or her, you can kind of understand what makes them tick.”
Brady’s rise from a lightly regarded draft pick to a seven-time Super Bowl champion has become part of American sports folklore.
What drew Beard in, though, was not just the accolades but the relentless self-improvement and commitment to the team that defined Brady’s career.
“With Brady, it’s like the ultimate chip on his shoulder,” Beard said. “Wasn’t supposed to be a draft pick, ends up being the best player. All of his teams won. I think his relationship with his teammates, relationship with his organization. I really enjoyed trying to learn as much as I could about him.”
The timing couldn’t be more critical. Ole Miss is coming off its first Sweet 16 run since 2001, and the 2025-26 roster is almost unrecognizable from last season.
Only four players return, just two of whom saw significant minutes a year ago.
Beard has added a dozen new faces, including nine upperclassmen, six of them seniors, tasked with quickly forging chemistry and leadership in a conference that punishes teams that hesitate.
If there’s one lesson Beard pulled from Brady, it’s that leadership is a shared responsibility.
“What most people might perceive as our leader, that guy’s not the leader unless he has people in the organization that want to follow,” Beard said last week. “I’m trying to encourage all these guys to pick and choose their moments and lead in certain ways.
“What’s non-negotiable is everybody on this team is going to have to find their ways to lead in certain ways and everyone’s going to have to be a follower as well.”
This echoes Brady’s own philosophy, which he’s articulated in interviews and in a September 2024 essay for Harvard Business Review.
“Leadership comes down to two things,” it said. “Do you care about your teammates and their role on the team? And do you care about winning, which is what you’re ultimately trying to do together?”
Beard distilled months of study into a “Cliff Notes” version for his players, believing that actionable wisdom matters more than grand speeches.
Beard’s approach isn’t unique among top coaches, but the degree to which he’s internalized Brady’s team-first mindset and expects his players to do the same is unusual in college basketball’s current climate, where transfer portals and NIL deals have made continuity a luxury.
“Every guy on the team has to be a leader in his own way,” Beard said. “First thing we try to explain to the players is there’s no leader if there’s no followers.
Tom Brady, I studied him a lot this offseason, and he said it in several interviews over the years, ‘I get the identity of being the quarterback, it comes with the job, but I can’t lead if other guys don’t want to follow.’”
This team-wide mandate is more necessity than theory.
With so many new players, Beard has emphasized collective ownership both in the locker room and on the floor.
According to team insiders, summer practices have featured rotating player-led segments, where seniors and freshmen alike take turns directing drills and film sessions.
The idea, staffers say, is to “build trust and buy-in before the games begin.”
For a coach whose own path has been marked by moments of both controversy and acclaim — a National Coach of the Year, a Sweet 16 run with Texas Tech, and a high-profile firing at Texas before landing in Oxford — Beard’s pivot to culture over tactics is striking.
“Chris has always been a relentless competitor, but I’ve never seen him more focused on the people side of the job,” said Mark Adams.
Brady’s influence goes beyond X’s and O’s. Beard has instituted routines inspired by the quarterback’s famous “TB12 Method,” emphasizing self-discipline, nutrition, and recovery.
Players are encouraged to track their sleep, nutrition, and mental wellness, a nod to Brady’s relentless attention to detail.
The renewed focus on accountability and wellness, Beard believes, will pay dividends when the SEC gauntlet begins.
“Self-discipline and self-regulation, beyond his football accolades, Tom Brady has become well known for his ‘TB12 Method,’ a self-driven approach that has allowed him to play at a high level well into his forties,” wrote leadership consultant Ross Shafer, echoing Beard’s new direction on LinkedIn.
As the Rebels prepare for a schedule that includes powerhouse matchups and the weight of new expectations, the question remains if NFL wisdom really move the needle in the nation’s most competitive basketball conference?
For Beard, the answer is simple.
“I don’t expect my guys to spend four months on YouTube watching Brady interviews,” he laughs. “But if I can give them five minutes of what I learned, and it helps them win one possession or lift up a teammate, then it’s worth every second.”
This is more than a coaching trend, it’s a cultural experiment in the heart of the SEC.
“The thing about Tom Brady is, he never stopped learning, never stopped leading,” Beard said. “That’s what I want for us. Not just a good team, but a program where everyone owns a piece of the success.”
Time will tell if the Rebels warm to Beard’s vision.
But as summer heat gives way to fall practice, one thing is certain. The standards and the stakes have never been higher in Oxford.
