Solomon Beebe, as his attorney was pleading down three animal cruelty charges to one, was obviously never in any real danger of losing his $9,000-a-month job with the UVA Football program, where Tony Elliott has proven himself adept at the deft deployment of the blind eye.
Beebe, who was arrested in August after a housekeeper at his apartment complex reported three separate instances in which the backup tailback and kick returner had abused his dog, a pit bull named Jeb, was eventually, albeit ultimately temporarily, suspended from the team, though it took a while – eight days from the Aug. 17 arrest to the Aug. 25 announcement – to even get there.
It’s almost like they had to be shamed into pretending to do the right thing.
You’ll soon pick up on that as being the theme to this story.
From the archives
- Coverage of the Solomon Beebe animal cruelty case: click here.
And actually, regarding the announcement of the suspension, announcement is overstating how the news got out – there was no release from UVA Athletics, just whatever a single reporter was told ahead of an already scheduled Elliott press conference; the transcript of the press conference includes no mention of the suspension coming up during the Q&A.
Beebe’s name was on the roster page for the program throughout his, ahem, suspension, and he even traveled with the team to its only, to date, road game of the 2026 season – per reporting from the Daily Progress, Beebe received a modification to the court order setting out terms of his bail that allowed him to travel to Charlotte on Sept. 18, ahead of the Sept. 19 game between the ‘Hoos and West Virginia at Bank of America Stadium.
Good news – now that Beebe’s lawyer, Thomas Weidner, a UVA Law alum based in Staunton, who was in the news earlier in the summer after being given a public reprimand by the Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board, has been able to plead down the three charges to one, with a hearing on that one extended out into October 2027, with conditions including Beebe agreeing to take anger management classes, and not being able to own a dog for five years, Elliott doesn’t have to pretend anymore.
This is where you see why I kept making an issue of the responses from TE to dumb questions from the jockbros in the UVA Football media about unrepentant convicted dogkiller Michael Vick.
ICYMI
- UVA Football: Tony Elliott fanboys over dogkiller Michael Vick, to his, and our, shame
- UVA Football: Tony Elliott, egged on by local media, falls on his sword for Michael Vick, again
Beebe, like Vick, hasn’t been exonerated.
The housekeeper didn’t recant.
The kid was able to buy his way out of having to sit out the season and hit the transfer portal in January, which, that’s how things work in big-time college sports anymore.
All Beebe had to do was acknowledge, in the statement that somebody in UVA Athletics almost certainly drafted for him, “the mistakes I’ve made,” and that his “heart is also broken for the impact this had on Jeb,” to be able to get back out on the field – after punching his dog in the face multiple times in one incident, striking his dog seven times and picking him up off the ground by his neck in another.
Gotta love the lawyer that Beebe overpaid here, Weidner – per reporting from the Progress, Weidner tried to dismiss the severity of what his client had done in court on Thursday, saying Beebe had “used an open hand when hitting the dog.”
Oh, well, OK, then, a series of open-hand slaps from a 5’10, 199-pound Power 4 conference football player, no big deal there – just love taps, amirite?
Keep in mind, Elliott is welcoming back with open arms a sixth-string tailback and backup kick returner here – and if the argument in favor of him doing so is, Well, he’s paid his debt to society, no, actually, he hasn’t, not yet.
Let the kid perform the 100 hours of community service, complete the anger management class and court-ordered mental health treatment, and then, we can go from there.
Elliott isn’t doing that because waiting for Beebe to even begin to start paying his debt would keep him off the field for the rest of the 2026 season.
And nothing – nothing! – can be allowed to get in the way of winning football games.
ICYMI
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Chris Graham
