Bob Huggins Suspended by WVU for Anti-Gay Slur, Has $1M Docked from Amended Contract

Bob Huggins is going to return for a 17th season as the head coach of the West Virginia men's basketball team.

According to a release from the school, Huggins will undergo sensitivity training, be suspended for the first three regular-season games of the 2023-24 season and have his salary docked by $1 million after using an anti-gay slur during a radio appearance.

Huggins' contract has also been "amended from a multi-year agreement to a year-by-year agreement that will begin on May 10, 2023, and end on April 30, 2024."

The school added it has "made it explicitly clear to Coach Huggins that any incidents of similar derogatory and offensive language will result in immediate termination."

Terms of Huggins' return come after he used an anti-gay slur during an appearance on 700 WLW's Bill Cunningham Show on Monday. He was discussing his time as head coach of the Cincinnati Bearcats from 1989 through 2005 when he used the slur.

Joe Lucia of Awful Announcing transcribed some of the conversation:

"Huggins: "Any school that can throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn't do it, by god they can get away with anything."

"Cunningham: "I think it was transgender night wasn't it?"

"Huggins: "It was a Crosstown Shootout, yea, no, what it was, was all those f--s, those Catholic f--s I think."

"Cunningham: "All right."

"Huggins: "They were envious they didn't have one."

Huggins released a statement in the aftermath of his comments in which he apologized to Xavier, Cincinnati and West Virginia:

"As I have shared with my players over my 40 years of coaching, there are consequences for our words and actions, and I will fully accept any coming my way," it said. "I am ashamed and embarrassed and heartbroken for those I have hurt. I must do better, and I will."

West Virginia also released a statement, which said the comments "do not represent our university values."

It also said the school was reviewing the situation and would address it in the future:

Xavier-Cincinnati remains one of college basketball's most heated rivalries, and Huggins has expressed dislike toward the Musketeers program in the past even after he was done leading the Bearcats.

After leaving Cincinnati, he coached at Kansas State for one season in 2006-07 before accepting the West Virginia job.

He has led the Mountaineers program since 2007 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022.

Huggins signed a two-year extension in August 2021 that runs through the 2023-24 season but also gives him the option to extend his tenure through the 2026-27 academic year. The original terms of the deal paid him an average salary of $4.15 million, with all but $250,000 of that figure coming in supplemental pay.