Between The Eers: It's Time to Move On
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:10 Good Thursday morning everyone Skylar Callen here for
00:13 another episode of between ears and we will continue our basketball talk this week.
00:18 Somewhat around the coaching search but
00:21 more so around former West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins.
00:26 Came across the Hoppy Kirchoff article of Metro News the other day and
00:31 found it quite interesting.
00:33 There's some things in there that I agreed with some not so much.
00:37 Maybe not a lack of agreement, but
00:41 maybe just a surprise that he put some of the things in there that he did.
00:44 But nonetheless, here's a little bit of a piece here from that article again from
00:51 Hoppy Kirchoff WV Metro News one name that will not in all capital letters be on
00:57 the news radar is Bob Huggins the Hall of Fame coach in West Virginia sports legend
01:02 was forced to resign last year after dropping an anti-gay slur on a Cincinnati
01:06 radio show and weeks later getting arrested in Pittsburgh for drunk driving.
01:11 Huggins made matters worse by claiming he never really resigned and
01:15 threatening to sue the university.
01:17 And went on to say about how he has pretty much burned
01:23 all of his well earned goodwill with the university over the years.
01:28 And yes, I agree with a lot with what was said there.
01:32 I don't see him being in this coaching search.
01:38 If he is, I don't see him seriously being considered for the job.
01:44 And yeah, you could probably say that he did probably burn some of that goodwill.
01:51 I mean, he's done a lot for this university, he's done a lot for
01:55 the state, but he probably lost a lot of trust
02:00 from a lot of folks within the administration and within the athletic department.
02:06 However, I don't know if the tone here
02:14 is really warranted.
02:18 And it's not necessarily a shot at Hoppy,
02:23 that's not at all what I'm going with here.
02:25 It's more so just, I think it's time, okay?
02:32 It's time for not only Bob Huggins,
02:37 but everybody to move past what happened last summer.
02:42 It's been several months, and we all knew what was going to play out.
02:47 We all knew that there's probably gonna be a little bit of back and
02:51 forth between Huggins and the university.
02:54 We all kinda knew that this was gonna be a trickle down effect into the season,
03:00 and how they would probably find some struggles.
03:03 And that it would put Josh Allert in a tough position.
03:09 And when this coaching search came back around this spring,
03:15 that this discussion would come up and his name would be
03:19 wanted by a significant portion of the fan base and so on and so forth.
03:23 But I think at this point, there's really no need
03:31 to talk about what he did on the radio show or
03:37 getting the DUI in Pittsburgh.
03:41 It is what it is, it happened, happened a long time ago now.
03:44 And I think for the majority of West Virginia fans,
03:52 they're ready to move on from that too.
03:53 And that same portion of fans would probably like to have him back, some may not.
04:01 But I think we can all agree that we're ready to move on past what happened last
04:06 summer, It doesn't do the university,
04:11 it doesn't do the program any good to sit here and
04:15 marinate in it almost a year later.
04:17 What Bob Huggins has done, and again, I have not really shared my
04:26 opinion on this whole matter before.
04:32 But here it is, what he did was a mistake.
04:37 There's no question about it.
04:39 But at the end of the day, the man has taken accountability for
04:47 his actions and has done so repeatedly.
04:52 And when you do that, when you kind of keep an arm's
05:00 length away from the program and actually what's going on at the basketball facility.
05:06 He's done that, he's let Josh have his room, he's not intervened.
05:11 I don't understand why we're still talking about this and
05:18 why I'm having to come up here on this show and talk about this.
05:23 But here we are, it's time to move on.
05:29 But it's also time, really in my opinion,
05:33 this is really what this episode is for,
05:37 is to recognize everything that Huggs did while he was
05:42 the head coach at WVU in what he is still going to do.
05:48 Moving forward, whether that's again, returning as the head coach,
05:55 or just being a citizen of West Virginia.
06:01 The amount of money that he has raised for the fish fry is unbelievable.
06:04 All that money going to cancer research, and
06:08 obviously it's something that's near and dear to his heart.
06:11 But as can be said for a lot of folks, not only in just West Virginia, but
06:17 across the world, He doesn't have to do stuff like that.
06:25 He doesn't have to do basketball clinics like he's done over the years.
06:27 He doesn't have to do all these guest appearances, but he does.
06:31 He takes time out of his day to show up and make a difference.
06:37 And he's going to do that again with the fish fry this year,
06:42 even though he's not the head coach anymore.
06:44 He could easily look at the situation, say, you know what,
06:48 with everything that went on in the summer, I don't know if
06:54 me doing this may cause a distraction and may bring up a lot of that.
07:00 At the event, he doesn't care.
07:04 He's moving forward.
07:05 That's what everyone else should do.
07:08 But to treat hugs like, He doesn't mean anything, but
07:18 [LAUGH] like say a Dana Holgers.
07:23 The guy that just came here basically just coached for a handful of years, right?
07:27 That's disrespectful.
07:32 Hogan's did a whole hell of a lot on and off the court while he was the head coach.
07:38 We can have our opinions about whether or not he should be returning his head coach
07:44 or not.
07:45 I've even shared my opinion on that this week.
07:47 I said, no, I don't think it makes sense.
07:50 I'd love to see it.
07:52 I would, but not in this circumstance.
07:55 I think it's just time to move in a different direction.
08:01 And it's okay to feel both ways.
08:03 It's okay to recognize everything that Huggins has done and
08:06 respect everything he's done.
08:07 But in the end, still feel like it's a better thing to go in a different
08:12 direction, especially when you have a new AD that
08:16 you got to make sure the sire is the right one.
08:22 He's got to have the backing of the administration and
08:24 of the people in that athletic department.
08:26 But this guy has done so much again, not only off the court, but on it.
08:37 He made West Virginia into a national conversation every year,
08:44 mostly every year, with the exception of two or three seasons.
08:51 Took this team to a Final Four for the first time in 50 years,
08:54 won a Big East Championship, first ever.
08:56 Took them to three consecutive Big 12 Championships,
09:00 three consecutive Sweet 16s.
09:03 That kind of stuff didn't happen on a regular basis around here.
09:06 Bob Huggins brought that to Morgantown.
09:12 So we need to put some respect on Huggins' name.
09:20 Even with all the stuff that happened a year ago.
09:22 This program, this job, we talked about the coaching search
09:29 here a little bit recently, it would not be as attractive of a job
09:33 if it weren't for Bob Huggins.
09:36 That's just the flat out truth.
09:38 So I think we can get caught up into, again, all the off court stuff.
09:43 We can continue to regurgitate that as much as we want to, but
09:46 it's not going to do anything.
09:47 It doesn't do any good.
09:48 It doesn't make any sense to dwell on it.
09:51 He's moved on, we all need to move on.
09:54 Going back to my point here, it's okay to feel both ways.
09:58 It's okay to want something different, but
10:05 still respect the guy that brought West Virginia so much success over the years.
10:10 And I think there needs to, this divide of the fan base,
10:15 it needs to go away too.
10:17 There's this half that says, yes, Huggins has got to come back.
10:22 The university did so much wrong for him.
10:25 Yada, yada, yada.
10:26 Got to bring him back.
10:27 And then you have this side that's absolutely not.
10:30 Hell no, Huggins did put the program through a mess and
10:35 he should never be able to have anything to do with WV basketball and da, da, da.
10:39 It's so far in each direction.
10:42 And that divide has got to go away.
10:46 [BLANK_AUDIO]
10:49 This is one of the reasons why I believe they just need to go in a different
10:54 direction, it's not the main reason.
10:56 The main reason is because I think it's just time to go in a different
11:00 direction anyways, even if Huggins comes back.
11:03 I mean, how long are you really talking here?
11:05 I mean, he was, I wouldn't say he was contemplating retirement,
11:11 but I mean, he had hinted, he was getting closer.
11:15 I don't know how many more years he would have gone, but
11:19 I'm sure at some point he would have just liked to kick back and enjoy life.
11:25 And not be in charge of all this crap that's going on with the NIL portal and
11:31 God knows what else is coming next.
11:34 But I think that divide needs to go away and
11:39 a big way to do that or an easy way to do that,
11:43 is you hire a coach, a young, exciting head coach.
11:50 He's got a pretty strong resume and
11:53 that can come in and just win the whole fan base over.
11:57 As crazy as it is, I'm about to say this because now there is sort of a divide
12:02 there, but similar to Neil Brown, right?
12:06 When Neil first was hired as the head football coach, everybody,
12:10 everybody was on the same page.
12:13 This is the guy for the job.
12:15 He won you over with the press conference.
12:17 He was polar opposite from Dana Holgerson and I think that was a huge win for
12:24 Neil because a lot of people didn't really care for Dana.
12:26 And even though he's not from West Virginia, he's from this region.
12:34 He understands what it means, what it takes, he gets it.
12:40 That's the biggest thing from his very opening press conference,
12:44 you can just tell he gets it.
12:46 The results weren't there for the first four years and
12:48 that's what caused the friction within the fan base and frustration.
12:53 Now there's an on win season.
12:54 But on the basketball side of things, if you can get a hire like that,
13:02 you get a hire that everyone can get around and say, yeah, he gets it.
13:09 He understands it.
13:10 I can get behind that.
13:11 Then we can all kind of push this friction between the two sides of
13:17 the fan bases aside in regards to Huggins and
13:20 start to really truly appreciate everything that he did.
13:25 Because that can't get lost.
13:29 That can absolutely 100% cannot get lost.
13:37 At some point, and I would even argue it should have happened already.
13:40 Because again, this is months, months ago,
13:45 what we're talking about here that happened.
13:48 He should be honored at WVU Coliseum.
13:53 And not just the ordinary, here's Bob Huggins,
14:01 let's give him a round of applause and do a tribute video.
14:06 I'm talking, let's throw his name on the court or
14:10 let's put a monument outside the Coliseum, something significant.
14:17 Again, he's one of two people to take West Virginia to the Final Four.
14:24 He won a Big East Championship.
14:28 This guy's done a lot.
14:32 He's one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history.
14:37 And he's a Morgantown guy.
14:38 He's from West Virginia.
14:40 You need to honor that.
14:41 So again, we can get lost in all this mess about the stuff that
14:48 happened last summer, but it doesn't do anything for anybody.
14:51 Let's move on from it.
14:54 It's time.
14:55 It's time to move on.
14:57 It's time to recognize what he's done.
15:01 And move into this next era of West Virginia basketball
15:04 with whoever the heck they decide to hire.
15:08 That'll do it for me here this morning on Between the Ears.
15:11 I'm Skylar Callum.
15:12 Make sure you hit the subscribe button on YouTube at Mountaineers.
15:15 Now give us a like while you're at it and a follow on X at the same handle.
15:20 We'll be back tomorrow to wrap things up with another episode.
15:23 [MUSIC]
15:31 (upbeat music)