Sorting through the mess that is going on at the University of Cincinnati this week, I have tried to find out who the winner is in this struggle of wills. Does Bob Huggins win? A victim of an overzealous new President. Does the University win? Finally ridding itself of an overbearing, rule-breaking coach with spotty personal issues. The sad fact is that nobody wins.
The Bob Huggins drama is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with college athletics today. One needs a sherpa in order to climb past all the hypocricy being spewed by both camps in this little drama.
Let’s get one thing straight first: Bob Huggins was, is and probably always will be, a jerk. Now let’s get another thing straight: He is an amazingly gifted basketball coach.
It is amazing that as we heard less and less about the latter we kept hearing more about the former.
Thus is revealed the biggest blemish in the life of college athletics. Presidents, athletic directors and coaches can talk all they want about how important it is that their student athletes are students first and athletes second. They can flaunt graduation rates till they’re blue in the face. In fact, there are some rare instances where these things are actually a priority.
However, in most cases, the bottom line is wins and losses.
If you win, graduation rates are frosting on your cake. If you win and have low graduation rates, people conveniently look the other way. But once you start losing, your sins are magnifyed.
Huggins had problems with players’ grades, players’ off-the-field problems to go along with his own attitude and health issues. As long as he went into the NCAA tournament with a top three seed, his sins were washed away and the city was consumed with March Madness.
Lately his teams have been winning, but have not been championship contenders. They were good teams, but not great. All of a sudden things that were okay years earlier are enough to ruffle feathers.
Bob Knight was an abusive jerk at Indiana. Sometimes it helped motivate players. Other times kids were treated harshly, unfairly and inappropriately. It ruined their confidence on and off the court.
But it was all okay as long as he was able to make the heartland of basketball a title contender. Once his program took a dip he was out the door.
Knight had a laundrey list of anger and ego problems, but they didn’t get him fired. That is, until he stopped winning.
And even worse, programs were clamoring for the abusive egomanic, hoping that he was the one to turn around their program.
The same will happen with the newly unemployed Huggins. And everything will be just fine, that is until he starts losing. There is no character flaw worse than that.
