No one has ever mistaken the University of Cincinnati for a bastion of morality, but head basketball coach Bob Huggins has had a bad week, even by Bearcat standards. Last Tuesday night Huggins was pulled over after police officers spotted his car slipping in and out of its lane; he explained to the officers that he had spent the evening talking to recruits and had had a couple of beers. Had it been me, I don't think I would've mentioned the recruits. In the early reports of the incident, it almost sounded as if Huggins were drinking beer with the recruits, but reports late Friday night included a statement from the player's family indicating that there had been no alcohol consumed in their presence.
Anyway, back to the arrest. The best part of the whole thing was that the Fairfax Police released the cruiser video of the arrest, so anyone who's watched ESPN in the past twenty-four hours has seen Huggins staggering around in the dark like a typical Friday night drunk; but it was only Tuesday. Here's my favorite part of the arrest report:
Asked to recite the alphabet from the letter "E" through "P," Huggins said, "E, F, G, H, I, K, L, N, Z," according to the police report. Asked to count backward from 67 to 54, he counted from 62 to 52, the report said.
Poor Bob. I know he's had a rough time of it lately, having suffered a heart attack two years ago (he says his heart medication contributed to his inebriated state), but if you fail the alphabet and counting, I think you've got a problem.
Huggins appeared at a press conference on Friday afternoon to apologize for his actions, and the University will respond to the situation on Saturday morning. It's expected that Huggins will be suspended for at least six months, meaning that he will miss the first two months of basketball season.
I actually had the pleasure of having a short conversation with Coach Huggins at the 1998 Final Four. We happened to be in line next to each other waiting to get in to the Alamodome, and I asked him what his team's future prospects were, but he didn't really want to talk about that. Instead, he decided to explain why his current team hadn't advanced further in the tournament. He said something like, "You can't expect to win too many games when your point guard shoots 30% from the field."
For Huggins, it must have been comforting to know that it wasn't his fault his team had underachieved; it was his point guard's fault. For this week's DUI, however, he has no one to blame but himself. Here's the word you're trying to think of right now: karma.
Did you get a look at Huggins hair on the police video? I always imagined that his Ditka-Maruicci special would look fantastically awful when flummoxed.
Posted by: Rett | June 14, 2004 at 10:15 AM