Following graduation, he took a job at Central State University and served as assistant coach and defensive coordinator of the school's football team until 1977.
[4][5] Beard was named the head coach of the school's resurrected football team after Prairie View's first choice, Luther Booker, accepted the job, but resigned in February 1991 before playing a single game.
Prairie View was the only school in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) not to award football scholarships, largely because a request for donations from alumni only got 150 responses out of 30,000 letters sent.
In a post-mortem interview with Sports Illustrated, Beard claimed that the circumstances he faced made it impossible for him to field a competitive team.
He claimed that the handicaps he faced were so severe that he was forced to field what amounted to an "intramural or club football" team at the Division I-AA level.
[11] On November 12, 1994, Beard's Panthers lost to Jackson State, 52–7, for Prairie View's 45th consecutive loss, thus passing Columbia's 44-game losing streak of 1983–1988 as the longest in Division I-AA history.