Why?
Never in four decades of sports journalism have I been a fan of one sentence, one-word leads, but I didn’t see anywhere else to go with this.
Why would West Virginia coach Bob Huggins use the word -- the slur -- he did Monday afternoon in any circumstance, let alone on a radio station with a 50,000-watt signal and an Internet site that can spread its content worldwide?
Why would he do it twice? Why would he throw in a major religion to amplify the offensiveness of its use?
These are questions I obviously would love to pose directly to Huggins, and he was given that opportunity but has not yet responded.
MORE: Huggins uses slur during radio interview
Huggins was speaking on radio station WLW of Cincinnati on right-wing host Bill Cunningham‘s afternoon program when he dropped the other F-bomb in reference to Xavier fans throwing objects onto the floor in a long-ago Crosstown Shootout rivalry game between his Cincinnati Bearcats and the Xavier Musketeers.
I’m not comfortable typing out the word he employed. There’s a chance you’ve heard through the audio clip. The word long has been the most common slur against gay men.
Huggins acknowledged its use in an apology issued later Monday, after initial reports of his dreadful language had been confirmed by Awful Announcing, which shared the clip on social media. He did not explain, though, how he could have been so obtuse.
“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. 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,” Huggins said in a statement released by WVU and his own Twitter account.
“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.”
Huggins is an intelligent person. He was an excellent student at West Virginia, and owns an advanced degree. It’s baffling how someone so smart could do something so foolish.
He surely is aware of what occurred three years ago, when one of his Cincinnati team’s former broadcasters, Thom Brennaman, used the same word in a conversation he believed to be off the air but instead bled onto that night’s Cincinnati Reds game broadcast. Brennaman lost his position as television announcer for the Reds, as well as national work he was doing for Fox Sports. Brennaman has spent the years since working publicly and privately with LBGTQ groups to understand more intimately and personally what the impact of that word can be.
There is no way to know what West Virginia University’s reaction will be, beyond the statement the athletic department released subsequent to the Huggins apology. He had been scheduled to appear at a Coaches Caravan event in Wheeling, but those in attendance were informed he’d been called back to Morgantown.
“Coach Huggins’ remarks today on a Cincinnati radio show were insensitive, offensive and do not represent our University values,” read a statement from the WVU athletic department. “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.”
Beyond the Bearcats fan base, Huggins was a widely unpopular coach during his days at Cincinnati. He began to be celebrated, though, after the compassion he demonstrated at the 2010 Final Four, when star forward Da’Sean Butler tore his ACL and Huggins embraced Butler and comforted him as he was prone on the floor. His “Press Virginia” teams with first-class point guard Jevon Carter in the latter part of the previous decade came to be celebrated by basketball fans nationally. In 2022, Huggins was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
For a terrible, tasteless joke, Huggins wrecked the reputation he had repaired and put himself at risk of consequences similar to what Brennaman has endured. It’s too early to say if Huggins will lose his job over this; it would not be outlandish if he did, but he certainly deserves to lose something tangible. In either case, like Brennaman, his pledge to “do better” should be followed with some substantive work.
In the end, the “why” doesn’t really matter. It happened. He owes the public, particularly those too frequently targeted with that slur, more than an apology.