West Virginia Suspends Bob Huggins and Cuts His Pay Over Homophobic Slur
Bob Huggins will keep his job as the head men’s basketball coach at West Virginia, the university said Wednesday, but will be suspended for three games and receive a pay cut after he used an anti-gay slur twice and derisively mocked Catholics during an interview with a Cincinnati radio station this week.
The university said it would rework Huggins’s contract and reduce his annual salary by $1 million, down from $4.15 million. He will be required to undergo sensitivity training and will miss the first three games of the 2023-24 season.
In a joint statement, the university’s president and athletic director said Huggins, the winningest active coach in Division I men’s basketball, would be immediately fired if he made any similar offensive comments in the future.
During an interview Monday on the Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW, Huggins described fans of Xavier University, a Jesuit institution, using a homophobic slur and underscored the school’s religious affiliation. While discussing his 16-season tenure with the University of Cincinnati and the school’s intracity rivalry with Xavier, Huggins twice directed a homophobic slur toward Xavier fans, referring to those who would “throw rubber penises on the floor, and then say they didn’t do it.”
Source: The New York Times
