Longtime West Virginia men's basketball coach Bob Huggins has agreed to a million-dollar salary reduction (believed to be one of the largest in college athletics), a three-game suspension and sensitivity training after using an anti-gay slur in an interview on the radio program The Bill Cunningham Show, ESPN reported.
His suspension will take place during the Mountaineers' first three regular-season games, and his contract will be amended from a multiyear agreement to a year-by-year pact that will begin May 10, 2023 and end April 30, 2024. Huggins' reduced salary will support the university's LGBTQ+ Center, the Carruth Center (a mental-health facility) and "other state and national organizations that support marginalized communities."
The school said it will partner with the university's LGBTQ+ Center "to develop annual training sessions that will address all aspects of inequality including homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism and more. This training and programming will be required of Coach Huggins and all current and future athletics coaching staff."
Discussing his in-city rivalry with Xavier back when Huggins coached the University of Cincinnati, Huggins initially said, "Any school that can throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn't do it, my God, they can get away with anything." Cunningham (known for his controversial stances) then responded, "I think it was 'transgender night,' wasn't it?" Huggins then said, "What it was, was all those f-gs, those Catholic f-gs, I think."
On the WVU Men's Basketball's Twitter account, Huggins issued an apology: "I used a completely insensitive and abhorrent phrase that there is simply no excuse forand 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."
Huggins was a long-time rival of Xavier as the head coach at Cincinnati during 1989-2005 before jumping to Kansas State and then to West Virginia, CBS Sports noted. Huggins has the most wins among all active coaches, sporting a 935-414 overall record.
Andrew Davis