Bob Huggins will hold his job as the top males’s basketball coach at West Virginia, the college stated Wednesday, however will probably be suspended for 3 video games and obtain a pay minimize after he used an anti-gay slur twice and derisively mocked Catholics throughout an interview with a Cincinnati radio station this week.
The college stated it will rework Huggins’s contract and cut back his annual wage by $1 million, down from $4.15 million. He will probably be required to bear sensitivity coaching and will miss the primary three video games of the 2023-24 season.
In a joint assertion, the college’s president and athletic director stated Huggins, the winningest energetic coach in Division I males’s basketball, can be instantly fired if he made any related offensive feedback sooner or later.
During an interview Monday on the Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW, Huggins described followers of Xavier University, a Jesuit establishment, utilizing a homophobic slur and underlined the college’s non secular affiliation. While discussing his 16-season tenure with the University of Cincinnati and the college’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, and then say they did not do it.”
Huggins, 69, issued an apology as a part of the college’s assertion, saying he deeply regretted his feedback and the harm they’d brought about.
“I’ve no excuse for the language I used, and I take full duty,” he stated in Wednesday’s assertion. “I’ll abide with the actions outlined by the University and Athletics management to be taught from this incident. I’ve had a number of conversations with colleagues and pals that I deeply respect and admire during the last 24 hours, and I’m keenly conscious of the ache that I’ve brought about.”
Aside from the pay minimize, Huggins will make a private donation to Xavier to help its Center for Faith and Justice and its Center for Diversity and Inclusion, though the quantity of the donation was not specified. He may also be required to fulfill with LGBTQ 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. According to his earlier contract, Huggins would have had choices to teach “or prolong his relationship” with the college by means of June 2027. In Wednesday’s announcement, the college stated Huggins’ present contract can be amended to a year-by-year settlement that will finish on April 30, 2024.
The college’s assertion stated the $1 million trimmed from Huggins’s wage can be used to help its LGBTQ heart, its psychological well being counseling heart and different organizations.
“While the University has by no means and won’t ever 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 group and our well being and well-being,” the assertion stated. stated.
Huggins has coached at West Virginia since 2007. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022 and is one among solely six males’s coaches to build up 900 profession wins in Division I.