MORGANTOWN — I have been in those visiting arenas, the ones where Bob Huggins has been villainized for his past transgressions, his health, his weight or for simply being the West Virginia University men’s basketball coach, a school located in a state with its own typecasts.
The chants, the catcalls, if you will, over and over until they’ve become uncomfortably piercing; Huggins has had to deal with it for years.
They have come from drunken idiots, or even worse, sober ones. Those people who wish to express their displeasure in such a way are moronic, childish, and let’s call them what they are, downright lunatics.
Huggins — with his legacy already cemented as a Hall of Famer and someone who has literally lived the American dream as a kid growing up poor in a trailer into becoming one of the most successful college basketball coaches in the country — was never meant to stoop to their level.
Except that’s exactly what he did Monday, when he agreed to appear on Bill Cunningham’s radio show on 700 WLW in Cincinnati and began yucking it up with Cunningham and Steve Moeller, a former Huggins assistant at the University of Cincinnati.
In the interview, Huggins must have thought he was playfully throwing jabs at a former rival in Xavier University. Instead, he poked fun at the Catholic religion. Worse, he used not once, but twice an anti-gay slur he surely knew better than to use.
It took just 118 seconds — and, quite honestly, some chuckles and egging on from both Cunningham and Moeller — for Huggins to stoop to such a level.
That’s maybe the saddest part of it all. You would think it would take so much more to get Huggins to express that side of himself. It did not.
In those 118 seconds, Huggins was no better a man than those who have jeered at him over the years. You can certainly make the argument he was worse.
He issued an apology, one in which Huggins included, “I am ashamed and embarrassed and heartbroken for those I have hurt.”
Coach, let me start by saying you have hurt me and my family.
Worse, you have hurt millions of others who barely can get through a single day without getting harassed in some sort of way — rather it be physically, mentally or both — simply because they are homosexual.
They are school teachers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They are more than just offended individuals. They have faces and names, something you need to realize rather quickly.
They are people who simply want to go about their daily lives, yet they are forced to deal with an imposed reality that they are somehow different every time somebody stands up and refers to them with the slur and hateful speech that you used.
You get harassed for a few hours during games spread out from November to March. They deal with it … every … single …. day for the rest of their lives.
As has been pointed out in publications across the country, the ball is now in the hands of WVU President E. Gordon Gee and the university’s board of directors.
It’s their decision to be made on how Huggins’ future at WVU will be handled, and the irony is not lost here that Gee was forced into retirement from Ohio State in 2013 after remarks he had made about Catholics and Notre Dame had become public.
“The situation is under review,” is how a separate statement from the WVU athletic department was worded on Monday.
The Morgantown Pride, a local organization that provides social and educational resources for the LGBTQ community in Monongalia County, called for the firing of Huggins on Tuesday.
“Morgantown Pride is horrified and disgusted by the rhetoric espoused by Coach Huggins,” the released statement began. “Using homophobic slurs and making light of transgender inclusion in sporting events is completely unacceptable behavior. Bob Huggins is a national public figure that represents our beautiful community when he speaks.
“Morgantown Pride calls for WVU athletics to, at a bare minimum, schedule a safe zone training for Bob Huggins and the rest of his staff. We believe that this incident requires the termination of Bob Huggins, as this type of rhetoric creates a space in which students, community members and most especially players, are not safe.”
At the very least, Huggins has forced WVU into a no-win zone.
If Huggins is suspended, that won’t be enough to satisfy a portion of the community, the state, even the nation.
If Huggins should be fired, that, too, will certainly set off a wave of disgruntlement that would likely lend to a drop in donations and fan support at a time when the school desperately needs both.
Unfortunately for Gee and the directors, there’s not much in the way of a middle ground, unless you draw upon the string of compassion and that we are all flawed and deserve opportunities for redemption.
It’s hard to see how WVU could retain Huggins’ services in today’s political climate.
Yet the fact that Huggins hasn’t already been terminated shows the amount of clout and respect he’s built, not only at WVU, but the entire state.
In truth, Huggins has done a tremendous amount of good for the school — both on the court and off — including helping raise about $16.5 million through his annual fish fry to help fund cancer research and the construction of a cancer hospital in Morgantown.
It took years for Huggins to build up that amount of respect, and yet, just 118 seconds to tear it all down. If nothing else, he seems to have recognized that.
“There are consequences for our words and actions, and I will fully accept any coming my way,” Huggins said.
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