GRIN AND HUGGY BEAR IT

Slur-Slinging College Basketball Coach’s Salary Slashed by $1M

Bob Huggins, the head coach of West Virginia University’s men’s basketball team, will also be required to participate in sensitivity training.

Bob Huggins is expected to keep his job as head coach of West Virginia University’s men’s basketball program after he made homophobic remarks in a live appearance on a Cincinnati radio station Monday. In exchange for returning to the sidelines next season, the 69-year-old Hall of Famer will take a three-game suspension, participate in sensitivity training, and watch his contract be amended from a multiyear agreement to a year-by-year one. Huggins, who goes by the nickname “Huggy Bear,” will also be hit with a $1-million pay cut, reducing his salary from $4.2 million to $3.2 million, a reduction believed to be one of the biggest in collegiate sports, according to ESPN. “We have made it explicitly clear to Coach Huggins that any incidents of similar derogatory and offensive language will result in immediate termination,” university officials said in a statement. “We will never truly know the damage that has been done by the words said in those 90 seconds. Words matter and they can leave scars that can never be seen. But words can also heal.”