Bob Huggins will keep his job as head coach of the West Virginia men’s basketball team, the university announced Wednesday, but he will be suspended for three games and given a pay cut after he made two anti-gay comments and mocked Catholics during an interview with a Cincinnati radio station this week.
The university said it would review Huggins’ contract and reduce his annual salary by $1 million, 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 university’s president and athletic director said Huggins, the most successful active coach on the Division I men’s basketball team, would be fired immediately if he made similar offensive comments in the future.
During an interview Monday on Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW, Huggins targeted fans of Xavier University, a Jesuit institution, with a homophobic slur and highlighted the school’s religious affiliation. While discussing his 16-season tenure at the University of Cincinnati and the school’s intracity rivalry with Xavier, Huggins twice directed a homophobic slur at Xavier fans, referring to those who would “throw rubber penises on the ground and say they didn’t do it.”
Huggins, 69, apologized in a statement released by the university, saying he deeply regretted his comments and the pain they caused.
“I make no excuses for the language I used and I take full responsibility,” he said in Wednesday’s statement. “I will abide by the actions outlined by the university and athletics officials to learn from this incident. I have had several conversations over the past 24 hours with colleagues and friends whom I deeply respect and admire, and I am acutely aware of the pain I have caused.”
In addition to the salary reduction, Huggins will make a personal donation to Xavier to support the Center for Faith and Justice and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, though the amount of the donation was not specified. He will also be required to meet with 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 through June 2027. In Wednesday’s announcement, the university said Huggins’ current contract would be modified to a year-to-year deal that would end on April 30, 2024.
A statement from the university said the $1 million deducted from Huggins’ salary will go to support the LGBTQ center, the mental health center and other organizations.
“While the university has never condoned and never will condone the language used on Monday, we will use this moment to highlight how the casual use of inflammatory language and implicit bias impacts our culture, our community, and our health and well-being,” the statement said.
Huggins has been coaching at West Virginia since 2007. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022 and is one of only six male coaches to have 900 career victories in Division I.
