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OP-ED: Bob Huggins’ golden opportunity

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Last season, before tip-offs at West Virginia University home basketball games, the public address announcer would call the crowd’s attention to the school’s promise to treat every person with respect.

The pronouncement usually came amidst a welter of noise and other distractions, but amplification inside the Coliseum is good, so that it’s probable that most people got its drift: WVU was heart and soul committed to the idea of inviting everyone inside its big academic tent.

No one would be excluded. To the point, no one would be discriminated against. More than that, every soulful person would be treated with the dignity and the respect that everyone yearns for and should expect as God’s chosen.

Besides this divine imperative, there is this: America is the home of the live and let live.

The state university of West Virginia, officially at least, was woke, in the sense that it was OK to be anything you wanted or needed to be without fear of harassment or retribution. There was one unspoken exception to this rule: You couldn’t be a bigot. Or maybe even a fellow traveler.

Head basketball coach Bob Huggins apparently didn’t get the message. Last week, on a Cincinnati radio sports talk show, he used a three-letter word that begins with an f and ends with a g and has an a in the middle, in reference to Xavier University.

Xavier, a Catholic-affiliated school, is a crosstown rival of the University of Cincinnati. Huggins was head coach of the Wildcats for 16 years, ending in 2005.

Apparently, some time during his 16-year stay in the Queen City, Xavier fans were so riled up for a game against Cincinnati that they threw “rubber penises” (Huggins’ words) on the floor.

“I think it was transgender night,” said radio host Bill Cunningham, a 75-year old juvenile who was having a good-old time with Huggins.

It was around this time that Huggins said, “It was those fags, those Catholic fags, that threw them.” For good measure, the coach added, “They were envious they didn’t have one.”

Within hours, his frequently boorish public behavior having caught up with him, Huggins issued an apology. It was a good one, shorn of all of the weasel words but one which top-dogs employ to deflect guilt or stupidity, or both.

“There is simply no excuse” he could offer that would suggest the use of the phrase “Catholic fags” was anything thing other than “abhorrent,” he said.

“I will fully accept any (consequence) coming my way” he continued. “I am ashamed and embarrassed and heartbroken for those I have hurt. I must do better, and I will.”

There were predictable media calls for Huggins to step down or be fired. On Thursday, after what must have been some pretty frantic and feverish messages and face-to-face meetings, university president Gordon Gee and athletic director Wren Baker announced their decision.

Huggins, they said, would lose a million dollars in salary, sit out the first three games of next season’s play, donate an unspecified amount of money to Xavier’s Center for Faith and Justice and its unfortunately named Center for Diversity and Inclusion, and meet in some form and fashion with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer West Virginians.

Does the punishment fit the transgression?

Here it needs to be pointed out that Huggins’ salary has been bumped down to a mere $3.2 million a year, and that the Mountaineers’ first three opponents for the 2023-24 season, as now scheduled, are against schools that went a combined 37-59 last season.

As for the donations, no amount was specified, and the speculative meeting sounds like it could be more ceremonial than substantive.

Perhaps something more is required. Someone on Twitter suggested Huggins step behind the bar at Vice Versa, a LGBTQ hangout on High Street in Morgantown. Odds are Huggs would make a great bartender while perhaps learning important lessons in tolerance in a practical setting.

Another suggestion is that Huggins make a public statement of contrition before a packed house at the Coliseum.

West Virginia and its citizens get plenty of abuse. But the state has done remarkable things. It’s the state of Jerry West and of John Kennedy’s defining victory over anti-Catholic bigotry in 1960. Perhaps it will now render another extraordinary service: a chastened Bob Huggins helping the rest of us become our better, more tolerant selves.

Richard Robbins can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.

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