Alcohol 2, Huggins 0

 OK. So maybe the question was NOT unfair, even if I characterized it that way a month ago.

Remember?

I don't know Huggins, so I don't know if he's a drinking man, although a DUI helped cost him his gig at Cincinnati two decades ago. And therefore the thought that popped into my head the other day was probably unfair, even if it was also unavoidable:

Was Bob Huggins drunk?

I wrote that after the West Virginia basketball coach called Xavier University's basketball players a bunch of "Catholic (gay slurs)" on a Cincinnati talk-radio show back in May, which got him a weak-kneed response from his administration -- suspended for three nothing games at the beginning of next season. 

Then came Friday night.

That's when police in Pittsburgh came upon his car stopped in the middle of the highway, door hanging open, tires shredded. When a disoriented Huggins -- he didn't even know he was in Pittsburgh -- couldn't successfully move his car off the road, the cops on the scene Breathalyzed him.

He blew .21, more than twice the legal limit. And Saturday, it cost him his job for the second time in 19 years.

And so maybe my hunch from a month ago was more intuition than hunch. It seemed the only reasonable explanation for why Huggins, who's hardly stupid, would say the sort of recklessly hideous stuff he said on a public radio show.

Was Bob Huggins drunk?

Seems likely now. Because he sure was the other night, when driving drunk may have cost him not only his job but his career, seeing how Huggins is 69 and well into retirement age.

If that's what happens, here's hoping he takes some time to get a handle on his issues with alcohol, which apparently are his personal demon, And, yeah, maybe it's unfair and assumptive to say that, too, even if the available evidence suggests otherwise.

I mean, a coach who built his reputation on personal responsibility having none himself?

That sort of hypocrisy doesn't just spring from the ether. It springs from something far darker, and against which its victim seems clearly powerless.

Another assumption, perhaps. But so be it.

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