Williams: For West Virginia’s Bob Huggins, an ending like this was inevitable
Someone who worked with Bob Huggins for many years once told me they feared Huggins would die on the basketball court — that a man who could give up neither the game he loved nor his notorious hard-living lifestyle would eventually succumb to both.
The seeming end of Huggins’ decorated college coaching career wasn’t that tragic, fortunately, but it was still plenty woeful. The head coach of West Virginia men’s basketball, 69, resigned on Saturday, one day after he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence. The incident came just over a month after Huggins’ job was in jeopardy when he twice used an anti-gay slur in a live interview with a Cincinnati radio station, and nearly two decades after a 2004 DUI that precipitated Huggins’ similarly ignominious ouster as coach of the Cincinnati Bearcats.
A proclivity for alcohol and profane language have long been part of the Huggins folklore. The man hasn’t coached at Cincinnati since 2005, but every deep-rooted Bearcats fan has a random Huggins story from his time in town, often about the off-color joke they heard him tell at a clubhouse or banquet or the night they witnessed him close down a bar. In the more charitable retellings, it was an endearing part of his everyman persona. In light of recent developments, it felt like an ill-fated harbinger of what was to come.
Regardless, this latest misstep is hardly a plot twist. Much like in Morgantown, Huggins remains revered by many in Cincinnati for his 14 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including the 1992 Final Four run, and putting a derelict program back on the map over the course of his 16 seasons. But it’s tough to think about Huggins and the Bearcats without thinking about how it ended: a series of off-court embarrassments, including that 2004 DUI, and ultimately banishment by then-university president Nancy Zimpher, who made no attempts to hide her disdain.
Huggins rebounded. He was far too good of a coach not to get another chance, first for one season at Kansas State and then another 16 at West Virginia, the native and favorite son returning to his alma mater. Aided by his continued on-court success — another 11 NCAA Tournament berths and a second Final Four appearance in 2010 — that homecoming provided Huggins some cover and security. The grueling combination of Huggins’ profession and vices were self-evident. He suffered a heart attack in 2002 on a recruiting trip and collapsed on the court during a game in 2017. Yet he never slowed down. As numerous sports columnists have noted in recent days, he had a bar installed in his office at WVU. His reputation preceded him, but over time it became part of his charming legacy, the hard-living and hard-winning coach — Huggy Bear. Right up until the inevitably Shakespearean final act.
First there was the absurd and homophobic radio interview in May. What seemed like a fireable offense to many was almost too shamefully on the nose to be Huggins’ last straw, speaking randomly and inexplicably with a controversial daytime talk-show host about former rival Xavier and the Crosstown Shootout, in an old-school sports town where Huggins hasn’t worked for 18 years but still looms confoundingly large. All of those familiar circles coalesced into a strange Venn diagram of disgrace, but Huggins survived, slapped on the wrist with a three-game suspension, $1 million pay cut and training sessions with WVU’s LGBTQ+ Center.
The doomed postscript came less than six weeks later. Another DUI, this one just before 8:30 p.m. Friday night in Pittsburgh courtesy of an SUV blocking traffic with a flat tire and Huggins unable to safely maneuver it off the road. According to the police report, Huggins was administered a breathalyzer test and blew a .210, more than double the legal limit in Pennsylvania.
“My recent actions do not represent the values of the university or the leadership expected in this role,” Huggins said in a statement announcing his resignation. “While I have always tried to represent our university with honor, I have let all of you — and myself — down.”
Public figures tend to be defined by their worst moments, but like most of us, usually consist of so much more. Mistakes Huggins made don’t negate all the good he’s accomplished, professionally and interpersonally. The 934 coaching wins and Hall of Fame career. The civic pride he’s sparked and lifelong fans he’s engendered, many still lining the seats of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena and WVU Coliseum. All the millions of dollars and awareness Huggins helped raise for cancer treatment and research in honor of his late mother, Norma Mae. The countless lives of coaches and players, men grown and still growing, he’s positively impacted and changed for the better.
That influence is real. It also doesn’t excuse his mistakes — the hurtful comments, the selfish and potentially harmful actions — or the demons Huggins is wrestling with. To echo others, it’s possible to hope someone gets the help they need while also holding them accountable for poor decisions. All of this becomes Huggins’ true legacy: a pair of DUIs 20 years apart, wounding homophobic, anti-Catholic comments on the radio, and too many additional reaffirming stories to wave those instances away as unfortunate accidents or happenstance.
At some point, it became unlikely Huggins would get to go out on his own terms. This is how it was going to end, a man fueled by his perpetual drive for on-court results undone by the off-court flaws that kept catching up to him, again and again. Sad, yes, but also self-inflicted. And preventable. And predictable.
Huggins could have walked away with one of the most successful and celebrated coaching careers in college basketball history. Instead he’ll be remembered for all the things that came with it.
