Bob Huggins and Bill Cunningham, two Cincinnati characters, were yucking it up Monday like old times. And by old times, I mean the 1970s or earlier, when part of manly banter meant slinging around anti-LGBTQ slurs like it’s the funniest thing in the world.
There were two problems with this Cro-Magnon colloquy: It’s 2023, not the 1970s; and Huggins was live on air on The Bill Cunningham Show on 700 WLW on a 50,000-watt radio station.
In discussing the old Cincinnati-Xavier crosstown rivalry that Huggins once was part of as coach of the Bearcats and Cunningham once was part of as a baseball captain of the Musketeers, the West Virginia men’s basketball coach busted out an old anti-LGBTQ slur. He said it not once but twice, thereby removing the “I misspoke” excuse from his inevitable apology. He went straight Thom Brennaman—but in this instance, Huggins knew he was live on air at the time he tried to light his career on fire.
It was wildly offensive. It could be fireably offensive for Huggins, whose West Virginia campus will likely be the scene of LGBTQ protests by Tuesday if he’s still employed. It almost certainly would be fireably offensive for any other prominent WVU employee to make those remarks publicly. It might even have repercussions for Cunningham as well, although his cringe-inducing schtick has been tolerated for decades at WLW, and this fiasco could actually enhance his knuckle-dragging street cred.
Cunningham and studio guest Steve Moeller—a former Huggins assistant at Cincinnati—got Huggs on the phone Monday. Cunningham noted West Virginia’s remarkable success in the transfer portal this spring, landing top talent from all over, then asked, “Have you poached any Xavier guys to come play for West Virginia?”
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“Catholics don’t do that,” Huggins responded.
“No, we’re above the fracas, aren’t we?” Cunningham said.
“Absolutely,” Huggins affirmed. “I tell you what, 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.” (Huggins was referring to an incident during a Xavier-Cincinnati matchup during his time coaching the Bearcats.)
“Rubber penis?” Cunningham asked.
“I think it was at the Crosstown Shootout,” someone else in the studio interjected.
“I think it was transgender night, wasn’t it?” Cunningham said, doubling down on the offensive direction of the discussion.
“It was the Crosstown Shootout. What it was, was all those f--s, those Catholic f--s, I think,” Huggins said. “They were envious they didn’t have one.”
“Steve, your comments about Bob Huggins?” Cunningham said. “Is he the best?”
“He’s the best,” Moeller said.
“The best ever,” Cunningham said.
This was the worst ever. At age 69, Huggins revealed a part of himself that tarnished a Hall of Fame career and could end it. But no one in a leadership position in Morgantown was willing to go that far Monday.
The damage-control statement was released by West Virginia basketball’s Twitter account at 5:21 p.m., roughly four hours after Huggins’s remarks were aired. How much damage the statement will ultimately control is not yet known. We’ll see how staunchly West Virginia wants to stand behind its beloved coach.
“I used a completely insensitive and abhorrent phrase that there is simply no excuse for—and I won’t try to make one here,” read the statement, which was attributed to Huggins. “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.”
The athletic department statement came next: “Coach Huggins’s 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 athletic department.”
If it’s the end for Huggins, he will have gotten himself forced out of the two jobs he held longest and loved most. He was pushed out at Cincinnati in 2005 as the school’s winningest coach, and now his career could end here.
The WVU president is 79-year-old Gordon Gee, a big sports fan and politically savvy navigator of collegiate CEO pathways. He has been the president of five schools, two of them twice—Ohio State and West Virginia. (While at Ohio State, he once famously said he hoped football coach Jim Tressel wouldn’t fire him, at a time when Tressel was embroiled in an NCAA investigation that led to major sanctions.)
Gee has even less tread left on his tires than Huggins; does he want to take on firing a legend at this juncture? That might depend on how sincerely offended he is. (And his board of governors.)
This much is certain: No small percentage of the WVU student body of nearly 25,000 figures to be outraged by Huggins’s remarks. No one should have tolerance for that hate speech, but younger generations certainly cannot abide by it. Huggins is so far on the wrong side of history here that it’s hard to believe he really understands how damaging this was.
A lesser coach with shorter ties to the school might already be gone. Huggins is a WVU alum who has put in 16 years of excellent work as coach—including taking the program to its first Final Four in 41 years in 2010—and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. He is a hard guy to fire.
But Monday, he’s an even harder guy to still keep around. Kowtowing to Huggins’s clout and cachet would send a signal that West Virginia cares more about him than those he marginalized by speaking his closed mind.
