Bob Huggins will preserve his job as the pinnacle males’s basketball coach at West Virginia, the college mentioned Wednesday, however will probably be suspended for 3 video games and obtain a pay reduce after he used an anti-gay slur twice and derisively mocked Catholics throughout an interview with a Cincinnati radio station this week.
The college mentioned it might rework Huggins’s contract and scale back his annual wage by $1 million, down from $4.15 million. He will probably be required to endure sensitivity coaching and can miss the primary three video games of the 2023-24 season.
In a joint assertion, the college’s president and athletic director mentioned Huggins, the winningest lively coach in Division I males’s basketball, could be instantly fired if he made any related offensive feedback sooner or later.
Throughout an interview Monday on the Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW, Huggins described followers of Xavier College, a Jesuit establishment, utilizing a homophobic slur and underscored the varsity’s non secular affiliation. Whereas discussing his 16-season tenure with the College of Cincinnati and the varsity’s intracity rivalry with Xavier, Huggins twice directed a homophobic slur towards Xavier followers, referring to those that would “throw rubber penises on the ground, after which say they didn’t do it.”
Huggins, 69, issued an apology as a part of the college’s assertion, saying he deeply regretted his feedback and the damage they’d precipitated.
“I’ve no excuse for the language I used, and I take full accountability,” he mentioned in Wednesday’s assertion. “I’ll abide with the actions outlined by the College and Athletics management to study from this incident. I’ve had a number of conversations with colleagues and buddies that I deeply respect and admire during the last 24 hours, and I’m keenly conscious of the ache that I’ve precipitated.”
Apart from the pay reduce, Huggins will make a private donation to Xavier to help its Middle for Religion and Justice and its Middle for Range and Inclusion, although the quantity of the donation was not specified. He may also be required to fulfill with L.G.B.T.Q. leaders from throughout the state of West Virginia.
In August 2021, Huggins signed a contract extension by means of the 2023-24 season that made him one of many highest-paid coaches in faculty basketball. Based on his earlier contract, Huggins would have had choices to educate “or lengthen his relationship” with the college by means of June 2027. In Wednesday’s announcement, the college mentioned Huggins’s present contract could be amended to a year-by-year settlement that may finish on April 30, 2024.
The college’s assertion mentioned the $1 million trimmed from Huggins’s wage could be used to help its L.G.B.T.Q. heart, its psychological well being counseling heart and different organizations.
“Whereas the College has by no means and can by no means condone the language used on Monday, we are going to use this second to coach how the informal use of inflammatory language and implicit bias have an effect on our tradition, our neighborhood and our well being and well-being,” the assertion mentioned.
Huggins has coached at West Virginia since 2007. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2022 and is one in every of solely six males’s coaches to build up 900 profession wins in Division I.