West Virginia Mountaineers men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins could be out of a job soon, and it would have nothing to do with how his team has performed on the court.
Huggins appeared on 700 WLW’s Bill Cunningham Show on Monday morning and leveled a notorious homophobic slur against fans of the Xavier Musketeers, the one-time rival of Huggins when he coached the Cincinnati Bearcats.
Huggins called Xavier fans “Catholic f**s” during the radio hit for reasons known only to him.
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.”
You can hear the incident in the clip below, but warning, it comes with the attached homophobic language:
⚠️ Here’s the audio of Bob Huggins calling Xavier fans “Catholic f–s” during an appearance on Bill Cunningham’s WLW radio show in Cincinnati pic.twitter.com/JTftGx9rQE
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 8, 2023
Huggins coached the University of Cincinnati from 1995-2005. He coached the Kansas State Wildcats for two seasons before jumping to West Virginia in 2007. The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inducted “Huggy Bear” in 2022.
After the incident went viral, sports fans quickly pointed to an old tweet of Huggins, in which he boasted of a friendship with former longtime Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman.
Huggins brought Brennaman to West Virginia to speak to his team about “accountability” months after the Reds fired him for using the same homophobic slur on a baseball broadcast.
The sports world was quick to react to the friendship being seen in a new light:
HUGGINS – of note given what was said today on @700wlw radio. Huggins had Thom Brennaman speak to his team about accountability – after Brennaman lost his job over use of the SAME HOMOPHOBIC SLUR.
Let that sink in…. @WCPO https://t.co/PGbPJOJxSw
— Evan Millward (@EvanMillward) May 8, 2023
We live in a simulation you can’t script this stuff 💀 https://t.co/8m6mRmquSw
— Grant Peters (@Real_GP) May 8, 2023
The Onion can't compete https://t.co/Dy7byjjdEr
— Michael (@GoReds1994) May 8, 2023
Oh, yeah … learned a lot. https://t.co/mYKsa4MftV
— Tony Paul | Detroit News (@TonyPaul1984) May 8, 2023
It’s all making so much sense now https://t.co/XnAEYHwFFf
— Alec Rohr (@ARRohr) May 8, 2023
as there's a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that'll be a home run. And so that'll make it a 4-0 ballgame. https://t.co/iZWmU7dXoM
— Philly Burners (also Bets) (@_PHIL_osophy) May 8, 2023