What exactly is Bob Huggins trying to accomplish?

By insisting he didn't resign from West Virginia and demanding to be reinstated as coach, Huggins has turned a disheartening final public chapter into an embarrassing one. And for what?

When Bob Huggins was arrested for a DUI in Pittsburgh on June 16 and resigned from his longtime post as West Virginia’s men’s basketball coach barely 24 hours later, I had no intention of writing about it. 

Frankly, I didn’t see the need. A few weeks earlier, after Huggins blurted homophobic slurs on a Cincinnati radio station, the newsletter went into some depth on how this was simply the latest case of a lengthy and legendary college coaching career ending ignominiously. Only a few coaches amass the kind of resume Huggins has, but even fewer punctuate it gracefully.

When he blew a 0.21 on a sketchy side street less than a mile from where a Taylor Swift concert was occurring, Huggins’ saga took another sad turn. What came from that was predictable and straightforward enough. The incident brought further shame on Huggins, the university and its basketball program went into crisis management mode, and in just a matter of hours, Huggins did what was widely expected by resigning from his position and retiring from the sport that had consumed his life for the past 50 years. There’s not a whole lot left to add, right?

Well, not exactly. The program and the man as closely tied to it as anyone else is now engaged in one of the most bizarre, inexplicable and frankly dispiriting back-and-forths in modern college basketball history.

After several weeks of silence and the hiring of an interim coach to replace Huggins, David Campbell, a Cleveland-based attorney claiming to represent the coach, asserted that Huggins had in fact never resigned and intends to return as West Virginia’s coach upon completing a rehab program into which he is currently checked.

Lest you think this is a rogue lawyer not truly acting on Huggins’ desires, the coach confirmed that, yes, everything Campbell said was true.

“This false statement was sent under my name, but no signature is included,” Huggins said in a statement. “In addition, the false, unsigned statement, was accompanied by a joint statement from the President and Athletics Director that clearly implied that they had received this purported resignation letter.”

A tick-tock of how all of this has transpired only clears things up so much.

In a letter addressed to West Virginia president E. Gordon Gee, Campbell revealed that Huggins’ resignation statement was crafted and sent by his wife, June. He claimed the university’s public comments and statements indicating Huggins had resigned violated the employment agreement between the two parties, and that Huggins is “fully capable of returning to his duties” as the Mountaineers’ coach once he’s out of rehab and with his case in Pittsburgh “close to being fully resolved without charges.”

Campbell ends the letter by showing his cards.

Had WVU simply waited a weekend and looked at the situation with the benefit of speaking with Coach Huggins, we are confident that WVU would have chosen a different path. However,

regardless of WVU’s reasons for reaching this point, WVU is faced with the following choices: (1) Reinstate Coach Huggins to his Head Basketball Coach position once the rehabilitation program is completed pursuant to the plain terms of the Employment Agreement; or (2) remain in breach of the Employment Agreement and face litigation. The litigation will not only involve the breach of the Employment Agreement, but also WVU’s clear violation of state and federal law by terminating Coach Huggins without due process or even an interview to determine the true facts, not those reported by the media.

Campbell’s mere involvement created confusion for those at West Virginia, as Huggins had previously been represented by James “Rocky” Gianola and Bob Fitzsimmons, lawyers who the university had been in communication with as it determined its course of action following Huggins’ DUI (Fitzsimmons has since informed the school he no longer represents Huggins on matters related to the university).

After it was established that Huggins is indeed Campbell’s client, the university countered with a letter that was something between a thorough legal undressing and a diss track. The letter, drafted by West Virginia general counsel Stephanie Taylor, comes out firing.

After reading your recent letter, I am still confused by your allegations. Are you asserting that Mr. Huggins never resigned? Is it your position that Mr. Gianola, the longstanding lawyer for Mr. Huggins, engaged with the University on June 17 without the knowledge or authorization of Mr. Huggins? And then Mr. Huggins’ wife submitted his resignation without his knowledge or authorization? Finally, that Mr. Huggins did nothing to rectify this situation for almost three weeks? Or, are you asserting that Mr. Huggins did resign, but his notification did not meet the technical requirements under the Employment Agreement? Are you suggesting that the only way Mr. Huggins could resign would be through registered or certified mail?

Either way, the facts prove these positions meritless. I would again encourage you to do appropriate due diligence before asserting a position that is clearly contrary to the documented Evidence.

What followed were a series of notes from West Virginia that, while written in straightforward fashion, were soaked in annoyance.

Among the bullet points:

• Gianola represented Huggins in multiple conversations with the university on June 16-17 leading up to and following when Huggins resigned from his post and retired from the university.

• On the night of June 17, Gianola told the school Huggins had decided to resign and retire. West Virginia told him it needed that in writing. Gianola asked if West Virginia would accept the resignation via an email sent by Huggins’ wife because the 69-year-old coach doesn’t use email. The resignation email came from June Huggins’ email address.

• Prior to submitting that resignation, Huggins met with his staff and players to tell them he’d no longer be coaching the team. “We understand that Mr. Huggins specifically told the team that he was resigning.”

• Additionally, after meeting with the team but before submitting his resignation, Huggins called Steve Uryasz, West Virginia’s deputy athletic director and sports administrator for men’s basketball, confirmed that he had spoken to the team and was resigning, and discussed who may be appointed interim coach. The school understands that other members of the men’s basketball staff overhead pieces of this conversation as “Mr. Huggins had placed this call from the basketball locker room and was talking on speaker phone.”

• Huggins called Uryasz a few minutes after the notification was sent from his wife’s email address. At no point during that call did Huggins indicate he had changed his mind or the email was sent without authorization.

• On June 18, the following day, Huggins went to West Virginia’s practice facility to clean out his office. He was met there by athletic director Wren Baker and the two talked for “approximately 15 minutes” and discussed Huggins’ resignation and retirement. At no point did Huggins assert he hadn’t resigned or retired.

The letter ends by shooting down Campbell’s threat.

We accepted his resignation in the form requested by counsel to Mr. Huggins. There is no support in the law or on these facts to suggest that Mr. Huggins may now ignore his resignation and his actions upon which all have relied, undo his voluntary separation, and return to work as if none of this ever occurred. 

I am certainly willing to have a conversation with you, as I have previously done with Mr. Huggins’ other lawyers. But let me again restate the obvious: the University will not accept Mr. Huggins’ attempted revocation of his resignation, nor will it reinstate him as head coach of the men’s basketball program.

While the details add clarity to an increasingly messy situation, they don’t answer a relatively simple question: Huggins really doesn’t think he’s getting his job back, does he?

Huggins clearly believes he has leverage or, perhaps, he’s so accustomed to wielding immense power and influence that he believes he can simply fight his way back to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his.

In reality, he’s got nothing.

The coach was fortunate to keep his job after making homophobic and anti-Catholic remarks in May. Despite calls to do so, West Virginia opted not to fire him, instead suspending him for three games, re-working parts of his contract, shaving $1 million from his salary and donating that money to various LGBTQ+ causes, and requiring him to undergo sensitivity training.

As I wrote at the time, there are many reasons to be supportive of the move, primarily because it ideally would reform Huggins rather than discard him and allow that bigotry inside him to remain – or fester into something worse. For Huggins’ sake, it gave him another chance. Only a figure of his stature or the coach at Liberty could have survived such a self-inflicted wound and because he did, he had the opportunity to coach one of his most talented teams in years.

He managed to blow that, too. If you’ve forgotten some of the circumstances of his DUI arrest, let this serve as a refresher:

• Huggins could not explain how he got to Pittsburgh from a basketball camp in Ohio

• He said he stopped at a Burger King on the way, but unsuccessfully produced five receipts before finally getting to the one from Burger King

• When asked, Huggins could not explain anything that happened from the time he stopped at the Burger King in nearby Washington, Pa. to when he stalled out his car in Pittsburgh

• Huggins said on multiple occasions he thought he was in Columbus, Ohio, nearly 200 miles west of where he was at the time of his arrest

• He was asked roughly 10 times what city he was currently in and each time, he failed to correctly identify it

• He claimed he was in the area visiting his sister-in-law, but said he had no idea where his sister-in-law lived

• He was unable to remember which leg he had surgery on when deciding what leg to stand on for a field sobriety test

• Huggins needed the standing-on-one-leg test explained to him three times

• Empty beer cans were found in a white garbage bag on the floor of the passenger’s side of the car. In the trunk was another white garbage bag, this one with empty metal beer bottles. An empty, wet cooler was found behind the center console.

With a blood alcohol concentration nearly three times the legal limit, Huggins is fortunate nothing else beyond his car and reputation were harmed. It also makes whatever case he and his lawyers believe he has for returning to his job that much more confounding.

Campbell repeatedly cited Huggins’ employment agreement with West Virginia in his letters, but in the amended contract Huggins signed on May 9 following his fateful radio hit, it states that “For any act or omission, whether occurring prior to or during the Term, that the University determines constitutes a violation of the terms and provisions of Coach’s employment, the University reserves the right to impose appropriate disciplinary action why may include, suspension without pay, or other appropriate penalties consistent with the University’s existing disciplinary practices.”

While Campbell seems hung up on the minutiae of whether or not Huggins actually resigned and what that means for his employment status based on contract legalese, he seems to be missing an obvious outcome.

Huggins being offered the opportunity to resign was a favor to the decorated coach, allowing a native son and graduate of the school to go out on something resembling his terms without the indignity of being ousted. If Huggins truly refuses to resign, which he seems intent on doing, then West Virginia would simply do what it could have a month ago and fire him for cause.

For such a revered figure, it’s a sad scene, like a chess player who thinks he has out-witted his nemesis only to not realize the opposing queen is sitting right next to his king.

There are potential explanations for Huggins’ misguided decision-making this past week, but each one of them is varying degrees of bleak. It’s quite possible a man who has been defined by his occupation and the status it has afforded him for so much of his life doesn’t want to let that go, especially in such an unceremonious fashion. Perhaps all of this is a money grab. Because he resigned, West Virginia was not required to pay him what remained on what had become a one-year contract. If he truly believes he didn’t resign or if he successfully forces West Virginia to fire him, he could sue and get one final payout.

To this point, though, all he has done is turn a disheartening final chapter into an embarrassing one.

In a different timeline, Huggins would have never gotten behind the wheel that June day and remained the Mountaineers’ coach, maybe leading what could have been his final team to just the third Final Four in school history before riding off into the proverbial sunset. Or, even without removing the DUI, he could have gone into rehab, worked to address his apparent addiction and become a living, breathing beacon of hope for all of those who struggle with alcoholism. For a man whose time at West Virginia came with an unmistakable redemptive arc, it would have been a fitting final public act.

It’s still very likely that if Huggins is ever brought back and honored during the break of a game before a capacity crowd at the WVU Coliseum, he’ll be cheered. There’s too much goodwill and too much genuine affection for even his most ill-advised choices to completely wipe away.

But if he continues to barge forward with what can’t even be generously described as a plan, that day may very well never come.

(Photo: Topeka Capital-Journal)