Explaining the inexplicable, Part Deux

 Well, then. I guess West Virginia University is OK with embarrassing itself.

Because, as the Blob opined yesterday, it would have to show Bob Huggins the street if it didn't want to do that.

Instead it excused its basketball coach going on talk radio and slurring students at Xavier University as "Catholic f*****s,"  and we all know how to fill in the *'s. Gays and Catholics, that's a hell of a twofer slur for Hugs. As a friend quipped, it's the insult equivalent of a double-word score in Scrabble.

"But, Mr. Blob," you're saying. "West Virginia didn't excuse anything. It's cutting his pay by $1 million! It's suspending him for three games! And he has to undergo some pretty meaningful sensitivity training, too."

Well, yes, I suppose so. I mean, I don't know how Huggins, who pulled down a yearly salary of $4.2 million, can possibly get by on the $3.2 mill he'll now be making. And the Mountaineers will surely suffer for the three games Hugs will sit -- the first three games of the season, when WVU faces heavyweights Missouri State, Monmouth and Jacksonville State.

Oh, the humanity.

Of course, Hugs' sensitivity training will likely be somewhat more extensive than a moderator saying "Don't do that s*** again, Bob," and Bob replying "OK." And school president Gordon Gee and athletic director Wren Baker did release a statement saying "any incidents of similar derogatory and offensive language will result in immediate termination."

In other words, he's on double secret probation. 

In further other words, this is Gee's and Baker's version of  "If you do this ONE MORE TIME, Bob, you're really going to get it! Just try me, mister!"

What all this amounts to, all joking aside, is a slap on the wrist that was purely and simply a business decision. College athletics, as everyone knows by now, is big bidness. Huggins, a West Virginia grad, has been good for that bidness. Therefore it was a flight of fancy to think WVU was going to fire him, even if it should have.

And, yeah, sure, the university said all the right things about partnering with the university's LGBTQ+ Center to develop annual training sessions, and to require Huggins to meet with LGBTQ+ leaders from around the state. And blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda. 

Performance art, all of it. This was, after all, Gordon Gee laying all this out -- the same bozo who was forced out at Ohio State after saying the "fathers" at Notre Dame were "holy on Sunday and holy hell the rest of the week. You just can't trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or Friday."

In case you were wondering where Hugs gets it.

No, sir. The bottom line here is West Virginia will keep its successful and lucrative men's basketball program intact. That was the goal, and the goal was achieved.

No matter what you or I think.