Congratulations to Bob Huggins, who, on Wednesday, officially became the most powerful person in the state of West Virginia. That might have unofficially been the case for years, but West Virginia University has now laid it out formally for the world to see.
In deciding to retain and moderately penalize its Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach in the wake of him crassly using an anti-LGBTQ slur on a Cincinnati radio station Monday, WVU made its pecking order clear. Nobody else at the university could have gotten away with that casual public spewing of hate speech and kept their job with relatively minor repercussions. Nor could any politician, coal baron or other leader in the state.
WVU is reducing Huggins’s 2022–23 salary from $4.15 million to $3.15 million, still a rather handsome living wage for a 69-year-old in the state of West Virginia, with the $1 million reduction “used to directly support WVU's LGBTQ+ Center, the Carruth Center and other state and national organizations that support marginalized communities.”
Huggins is being suspended for a whopping three games against mid-major opponents. His contract was amended to a year-by-year agreement—which, at this point in his career, is what it should be anyway. Oh, and there will be sensitivity training, which should just be quite an experience for the groups that have been asked to “enlighten” the glowering Huggs.
That’s the fallout after the most prominent university employee directly impugned the first 22 words of the school’s mission statement. It reads: “As a land-grant institution, the faculty, staff and students at West Virginia University commit to creating a diverse and inclusive culture …”
Cracking demeaning jokes about “f--s, Catholic f--s,” on a radio program isn’t terribly inclusive.
Either Huggins’s Monday apology struck a deep chord with university leadership or—slightly more likely—athletic clout and success and revenue once again won the day. As they so often do on college campuses.
The bottom line at West Virginia is this: Bob Huggins matters more than the community he denigrated.
This was an on-brand decision by WVU president Gordon Gee, who has been known to prostrate himself at the feet of a successful coach in a ticklish situation. While president at Ohio State in 2011, Gee was asked during an NCAA investigation of the Buckeyes’ football program whether he planned to fire Jim Tressel. Gee’s response: “No. Are you kidding? Let me just be very clear. I’m just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.” Even now, at age 79, Gee remains as devoted to popular coaches as he is to bow ties.
It also was an on-brand decision within the larger college basketball ecosystem, where all coaches who win are afforded many chances. WVU might have simply examined the landscape and figured it wasn’t out of line with industry standards. Look at Chris Beard (hired in March at Mississippi after being fired by Texas in January due to a domestic incident), Rick Pitino (recently upgraded to St. John’s from Iona after a trail of scandals), Sean Miller (hired last year at Xavier after being fired at Arizona amid a long NCAA infractions case) and Bill Self (lifetime contract at Kansas while still navigating a major infractions case), among others.
Let’s be clear about this triumph of expedience over mission statement: Anti-LGBTQ hate speech is not a fireable offense at West Virginia—at least not for a man who has won 345 basketball games as coach of the Mountaineers, and who in 2010 took the program to just its second Final Four in history, and who has assembled the No. 1 class of transfers in the nation for 2023–24.
The measly three-game suspension is undoubtedly a concession to the likely increase in competitiveness of this next WVU team. Per its listed 2023–24 schedule, Huggins will miss games against Missouri State, Monmouth and Jacksonville State—Gee himself could likely coach the Mountaineers to victories in those games—and then return for the Fort Myers Tipoff tournament Nov. 20.
If the thinking there was that the school didn’t want to hurt the team’s chances for success because of the coach’s bigoted thoughts, that sets an interesting precedent. If a star WVU player gets busted this season for something, will his suspension be minimal as well to protect the season?
A request for comment from the WVU LGBTQ+ center was routed through university relations, which issued the following statement:
We are disappointed in the casual and hurtful way that Coach Huggins spoke about the LGBTQ+ community, and while others may be surprised that the situation occurred and the result, we deal with this every day. Marginalized communities are constantly under threat, and the WVU LGBTQ+ Center pledges to continue fulfilling its mission as an educational institution to support and advocate for the LGBTQIA2S+ community. We will use this as an opportunity to strengthen and build bridges, and we look forward to working closely with Coach Huggins and WVU administration to continue improving our campus climate, especially for our students and student-athletes, and to bring increased awareness and education of this important issue to people across the state.
The university ultimately was free to act as it chooses, and it did. This was never going to be an easy decision—not every mistake should end a career, and Huggins’s long and meritorious tenure at the school clearly afforded him some leeway that others wouldn’t have gotten. But this was more than a slip of the tongue or a minor misstatement.
In offending millions of people he doesn’t know and disappointing many who do know him, Bob Huggins also lost a lot of his reputation Monday. The hope is that the remorse he expressed in his two public apologies this week is sincere. We’ll see how much of that reputation he’s able to regain in the coming months.
