May 8, 2023 5 min read

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Throughout his long career as a Hall of Fame basketball coach, West Virginia’s Bob Huggins has lived off creative defenses, the most famous of which was Press Virginia.

But, staying with the Press Virginia defense theme, Huggins will be hard pressed to come up with a defense for a homophobic statement he blurted out on a Cincinnati radio show early Monday afternoon.

Since returning to his alma mater after 16 years at Cincinnati, where he got caught up in a number of controversies that the national media latched onto and eventually wound up being fired in a showdown with President Nancy Zimpher, Huggins has become a cult figure and a community leader.

His charitable work toward bringing a Cancer Research Hospital to Morgantown and the North Central West Virginia area has led to one of the year’s top social events – the Bob Huggins Fish Fry, which this year had Charles Barkley as its special guest – and raised millions of dollars toward that end.

But it is difficult to judge where Monday’s comments will take Huggins, who offered this statement of apology late in the afternoon:

“Earlier today on a Cincinnati radio program, I was asked about the rivalry between my former employer, the University of Cincinnati, and its crosstown rival, Xavier University,” Huggins said in a statement released by WVU. “During the conversation, I used a completely insensitive and abhorrent phrase that there is simply no excuse for, and I won’t try to make one here.

“I deeply apologize to the individuals I have offended, as well as to the Xavier University community, the University of Cincinnati and West Virginia University. As I have shared with my players over my 40 years of coaching, there are consequences for our words and actions, and I will fully accept any coming my way. I am ashamed and embarrassed and heartbroken for those I have hurt. I must do better, and I will.”

• Speaking about the Crosstown Shootout between the Cincinnati Bearcats and the Xavier Musketeers with Bill Cunningham, a longtime Cincinnati talk show host who also had a combative TV show and who had a Xavier lean to his show and often was at odds with Huggins, the coach referred Xavier’s fans as “Catholic Fs”.

Oddly, the demeanor on the show was quite upbeat, which is out of character for Huggins, who normally takes a low-key approach to media sessions, even if he were to say something controversial, as he often does.

Perhaps it was that he was in Wheeling on the annual WVU Coaches Caravan, which is normally light-hearted “fan” talk that had Huggins as upbeat as he was, but Cunningham led him into the rivalry discussion and Huggins took the bait.

This is a transcript of how it played out on air:

Cunningham asks Huggins: You have the best portal transfers. Have you poached any Xavier guys to play for Cincinnati?”

Huggins: “Catholics don’t do that.”

There was some laughter, then:

Huggins: “Any school that can throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn’t do it, by god they can get away with anything.”

Cunningham: “I think that was Transgender Night, wasn’t it?”

• Huggins: “It was Crosstown Shootout, yea, no, what it was, was all those fs, those Catholic fs I think.”

Where this will lead is anyone’s guess. A few years back in Cincinnati, Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman made a homophobic comment that went out over the air and lost his job over it.

WVU is taking a cautious approach, according to its statement:

“Coach Huggins’ remarks today on a Cincinnati radio show were insensitive, offensive and do not represent our University values. Coach Huggins has since apologized. West Virginia University does not condone the use of such language and takes such actions very seriously. The situation is under review and will be addressed by the University and its athletics department.”

In this day and age such conduct is unacceptable and there certainly will be some action from the school. Huggins’ contract gives the school the option of ending the relationship “for cause” without a buyout.

There are eight examples listed, including this one:

“Conduct by coach that is clearly contrary to the character and responsibilities of a person occupying coach’s position, offends the traditions of the University, brings discredit to the University or harms the University’s reputation.”

This comes at a time when Huggins is riding as high as he has since reaching the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament in 2010. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., this year; became the winningest active coach in college basketball and had been praised across the nation for the way he has rebuilt his teams with the No. 1 transfer recruiting class.