Bob Huggins is a fossil who doesn't understand most young players hate his bigotry
The thing that fossilized toads like Bob Huggins don't understand, and what's often lost whenever someone like him crawls out of the Mesozoic Era, is that most of the players he coaches, and most young people in general, don't feel the way he does.
Many young people, people the age of his players, grew up around the LGBTQ community. They have gay friends. They have transgender friends. They march alongside them to fight for their rights. They see the humanity of that community. They care about them. They love them. They are part of a mix of all kinds of people, and you know what? They love that mix.
They hang with them at proms. They text with them. They crack jokes, they have dinner at each other's houses, they complain about school, they play on the same sports teams. They've been friends since grade school. They get closer in middle school. They sit next to each other in classes in high school. By the time they get to college, most of them have spent their entire lives around people who don't look like them, or later, love like them, and they are totally, absolutely cool with it.
TIME TO MOVE ON Bob Huggins can't stay at West Virginia after gleefully using a homophobic slur
They are the future. They are a future that some people hate and fear but that future is coming whether those people like it or not. In fact, that future is already here.
This is the America these young people know. It's 21st century America. Huggins is stuck not just in the past, but in a past that, again, most of his players probably despise.
Surveys of young Americans have consistently shown for years overwhelming support of the LGBTQ community. One from 2016 showed that "92 percent of young adults support HIV and AIDs prevention, 90 percent support equal employment, and 80 percent support LGBT adoption. Across racial and ethnic groups, broad majorities support training police on transgender issues, government support for organizations for LGBT youth and insurance coverage for transgender health issues."
“People who don’t identify as heterosexual are human like we are, and should be entitled to the same kind of rights,” one person told pollsters. “I have friends who are LGBT and I feel that it’s discrimination to not allow them adoption or employment or whatever.”
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A Gallup poll of 2022 data showed the number of American adults who identified as LGBTQ doubled in a decade from 3.5% of adults to 7.1%. The increase is driven by Generation Z (people born from 1997 to 2004). But make no mistake, it goes younger than even that.
Are there young athletes who are homophobic? Of course. But they are outliers.
This is what Huggins misses. When Huggins made his bigoted statements to two radio buffoons who should be fired right along with him, he sounded worse than a grandpa screaming at his television about days long dead. He sounded worse than out of step. He sounded vile. I promise you: there are players in that locker room who think Huggins is just that.
During his appearance on the Bill Cunningham Show on Newsradio 700 WLW, Huggins was asked about his former rivalry against Xavier during his time as coach at Cincinnati. "Any school that can throw rubber penises on the floor and then say they didn't do it, my God, they can get away with anything," Huggins said in the interview.
Cunningham then responded and said, "I think it was 'Transgender Night,' wasn't it?"
It was then when Huggins used an anti-gay slur.
Huggins, and people like him, will be left behind. As they should be. And the people who will shove him back into the pit where he belongs will be the young people. The future.
Maybe even his own young players.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bob Huggins should be fired at WVU after vile anti-gay comments
