West Virginia suspends Bob Huggins and cuts his pay for homophobic libel
Bob Huggins will keep his job as head men’s basketball coach at West Virginia, the university said Wednesday, but will be suspended for three games and take a pay cut after he twice used an anti-gay slur and derisively mocked Catholics during an interview with a radio station in Cincinnati this week.
The university said it would rework Huggins’ contract and cut his annual salary by $1 million, down from $4.15 million. He will have to undergo sensitivity training and will miss the first three games of the 2023/24 season.
In a joint statementthe president and athletic director of the university said Huggins, the winningest active coach in Division I men’s basketball, would be fired immediately if he made similar offensive comments in the future.
During a Monday interview on Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW, Huggins described fans of Xavier University, a Jesuit institution, with a homophobic insult and underlined the school’s religious affiliation. While discussing his 16-season tenure at the University of Cincinnati and the school’s rivalry with Xavier, Huggins twice issued a homophobic insult to Xavier fans, referring to those who would “throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn’t. do it.”
The 69-year-old Huggins apologized as part of the university’s statement, saying he deeply regrets his comments and the pain they had caused.
“I have no excuse for the language I used and I take full responsibility,” he said in Wednesday’s statement. “I will adhere to the actions outlined by the University and Athletic leadership to learn from this incident. I have had several conversations over the last 24 hours with colleagues and friends whom I deeply respect and admire, and I am well aware of the pain I have caused.”
Aside from the pay cut, Huggins will make a personal donation to Xavier to support his Center for Faith and Justice and his Center for Diversity and Inclusion, although the amount of the donation was not specified. He will also have to meet LGBTQ leaders from across the state of West Virginia.
In August 2021, Huggins signed a contract extension through the 2023–24 season, making him one of the highest paid coaches in college basketball. Under his previous contract, Huggins would have had options to coach “or extend his relationship with the university” until June 2027. In Wednesday’s announcement, the university said Huggins’ current contract would be changed to an annual agreement that would end on April 30, 2024.
The university’s statement said the $1 million cut from Huggins’ salary would be used to support the LGBTQ center, mental health counseling center and other organizations.
“While the university has never approved and will never approve the language used on Mondays, we will use this moment to educate how the casual use of inflammatory language and implicit biases impact our culture, our community, and our health and well-being,” said the statement. said.
Huggins has been coaching in West Virginia since 2007. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022 and is one of only six men’s coaches to have 900 career wins in Division I.