West Virginia Shouldn’t Give Bob Huggins Another Chance After Latest Controversy

The Mountaineers men’s basketball coach was arrested for driving under the influence in Pittsburgh on Friday night.

Editor’s note: Bob Huggins resigned Saturday night hours after this article was published.

Bob Huggins has let down many people over the past six weeks. But the first person he let down was the man he sees in the mirror every day, failing to comport himself with the level of accountability he has demanded from his players.

There is no joy in seeing someone immolate a Hall of Fame career the way Huggins has, but there also is no need to equivocate over what should happen next. Huggins narrowly kept his job as men’s basketball coach at West Virginia last month. This month, after another act of self-sabotage, it’s time for him to go.

He should recognize that without needing an administrative shove. Step down. Get help. Apply the no-excuses mentality he coached with to himself.

Surviving a stunning radio appearance in which the Hall of Fame coach referred to Xavier fans as “Catholic f***” was a testament to his clout in West Virginia. But Huggins pushed the limits of his power again Friday night, after being arrested in Pittsburgh on a charge of driving under the influence—his second DUI offense. His time as a college basketball coach should end soon.

At age 69, having given his alma mater’s image a pair of black eyes in a span of six weeks, president Gordon Gee and athletic director Wren Baker shouldn’t need much time to make the sad but obvious decision to fire Huggins or force his resignation.

Huggins used an anti-LGBTQ slur during a May radio appearance :: Scott Wachter/USA TODAY Sports

The details of his DUI arrest are ugly. According to the Pittsburgh police criminal complaint acquired by WCHS in Charleston, W.Va., Huggins blew a .21 on his breathalyzer test. That’s nearly triple the legal limit, a wildly dangerous and potentially lethal level of intoxication. Some context: a man who crashed head-first into a church bus in Kentucky in 1988, killing 27 people, blew a .24.

Huggins had a shredded tire on his SUV and was blocking traffic, according to police. After being instructed to move his vehicle, he did initially and then “started a three-point turn…almost hitting the wall behind him” and was told to put the car in park by police. Huggins could not explain how he shredded the tire, nor could he answer simple police questions.

“Huggins could not tell us how he got to this location,” the criminal complaint states. “In conversation, Officer Bertan asked Huggins where he thought he was. A few times, Huggins stated that he was in ‘Columbus.’ Officer Bertan took that as Columbus, OH since Huggins stated he was in an unknown location in Ohio for what he stated was a basketball camp. Officer Bertan asked Huggins approximately 10 times where he was actually at and he never once responded with the current city he was in."

According to police, Huggins was operating his vehicle while drunk to the point of incoherence. This was his second DUI arrest, having been busted while coaching at Cincinnati in 2004.

The fallout from that incident soured his relationship with the school administration and eventually led to his resignation. Whatever Huggins may have learned from that appears to be long gone by now. His personal slide this spring is alarming, and the number of people who are unsurprised by this latest incident is in itself troubling.

The anti-LGBTQ slurs he uttered during the May radio appearance were offensive enough that he should have been fired then. Instead, he was assessed an array of sanctions: a three-game suspension, a salary reduction of $1 million and a change in his contract status to year-to-year. He was also made to attend “annual training and programming sessions discussing disparities in homophobia, sexism and ableism that will be organized by the university.”

The contract changes will make terminating him relatively inexpensive for West Virginia, if it doesn’t just outright fire him for cause. This had the makings of Huggins’s final season anyway.

Sadly, it could have been a special one. He recruited the best collection of transfers in the nation, loading up the roster for one last big run in 2023-24, and now he appears to have blown the chance to coach this team.

It has been a tumultuous year for the WVU coaching staff, but Ron Everhart, a former head coach at Duquesne, Northeastern and McNeese State, could step in on an interim basis. That might be the best opportunity to hold the roster together instead of making an outside hire. (Huggins fired longtime assistant Larry Harrison in January. Another longtime staffer, Billy Hahn, died in April after a heart attack.)

But the logistics of who coaches West Virginia basketball next season aren’t the biggest issue on this Saturday. Bob Huggins has tarnished himself to the point where his career will end in a blaze of ignominy, not a blaze of glory. He only has himself to blame for that.