Bob Huggins “resigns”, not because of his comments but THIS

And Mike, of course, he joins us on the Adam Gold show.

I thank you very much for your time. Before we get to Huggins the coach, do you think this was cumulative? Because they certainly moved past what he said about Xavier fans on that Cincinnati radio station about a month ago. Yeah, I do think it was cumulative, absolutely. And I'm not sure that it wasn't cumulative going back to the first DUI that he received back in 2004. I think you add that together with what happened in May, and then what happened this weekend, and it just becomes more than can be tolerated by an institution of higher learning. If these two incidents had been reversed, if the DUI had happened in May, and then the slur on the radio had occurred Friday, I still think it might have been the same result. But the police report from the Friday arrest for DUI was horrifying.

I don't think there's another word that could describe it. And it's very fortunate that that incident resulted only in a flat tire, and Huggins having to resign from his position. I don't want to speculate on what could have happened. But it's very fortunate that that was the outcome.

Yeah, I think you and I probably agree. And you're one of the few people who I believe drinks less alcohol than I do, and I'm pretty low on that list, is that I don't believe that drunk driving is treated seriously enough in the United States. We treat it as a traffic accident, a traffic violation, rather than a criminal act. And I've never understood why that's the case. I will say that at this point in time, in this point in history, there is less excuse for a DUI than there has ever been ever in the history of mankind, other than when there was nothing to drive.

You have an app on your phone. First of all, you can plan ahead. There's that. If you plan on drinking, hey, look, although you know I don't drink, I don't have a problem with people who do on occasion. It's just a personal choice. But you can plan ahead. But then, okay, so maybe you don't plan ahead. You have an app on your phone.

You can push the button. You can get a car to your spot in seven minutes, and they can take you to wherever you want. And if you're a high major college basketball coach, it's not going to break you. It may be different if you work at a fast food place, but you're a high major college basketball coach who makes multiple millions of dollars a year.

You can afford the Uber all the way back to Morgantown if that's where you want to go. So there's no excuse for this at this point. And the fact that he had one once before in his life, the fact that he was, it's interesting. It reminded me 23 years ago of when Bob Knight was put on zero tolerance by Indiana, and he didn't even make it to the next season. And that's kind of exactly what happened with Huggins. He was basically put in a position where he had to begin to comport himself properly, and it didn't happen.

And he couldn't even make it to, he couldn't even make it to the fall. So I think that the way I put it in my column was he needs to focus on his health. You could take that however you want to, but he needs to focus on his health. As a basketball coach, I mean, whether it was Cincinnati or Kansas State for a hot minute, or what he has done with West Virginia, maybe until recently, in having West Virginia among the top 25 teams in the country on a pretty regular basis. I mean, his ability as a basketball coach, and to relate, is legendary. I know he seems gruff and all that, but he also has a pretty warm side too. He does. He's done unbelievable work for a cancer foundation that he founded in the name of his mother, who he lost to cancer a while back.

He's done unbelievable work with that. What I've always said about coaches is, and I compare it to one of your favorite sports, golf, which is that not everybody's playing the same course. Like some people are playing the municipal course where there's no rough and the greens are soft, and some people are playing Pine Valley or Augusta National.

Huggins has always played the toughest courses. Cincinnati, Kansas State, West Virginia, those are not prime places. Cincinnati won national championships and made final fours in the early 60s. It was different then. By the time he got to Cincinnati in 89, it was a different program. They were never in a major league while he was there, and yet they made a constant NCAA tournament appearances. They were ranked number one in that year. I do remember very well it was 2000 because that was the last team that I covered as a regular beat writer. One of my things was I used to go in sports bars like Damon's or wherever, and there'd be those pages, newspaper front pages where the Reds won the World Series or the Pirates won the World Series or whoever. I decided it'd be cool to have one of those, and that was going to be mine, that 2000 season with the Bearcats until Kenyon Martin broke his leg. They were a phenomenal team, but I think more important was the fact that he took a lot of people that a lot of people would have discarded and turned them through recruiting to universities, whether Cincinnati or West Virginia or Akron or wherever, and turned them into really successful people, helped turn them into really successful people.

He did great stuff, but he needed to work on his own discipline more than he did, and instead it comes to this unfortunate end. Let me just flip to the men's national team that won their, I guess the Nations League has only been, this is the second edition of it, and the United States is the only CONCACAF Nations League winner ever. They're two for two, but this was to me was a lot different. First, can we just keep B.J. Callahan as the manager? They score all sorts of goals. I realize competition is not the same, but they certainly were in attack mode for the last two matches. It certainly looked good.

Well, I think that it helps when you sign or recruit or whatever the prop. They got Falerin Balagoon, and it has completely changed their attack. They've never had a striker. In the history, going back to 1990 when they started making the World Cup, they've never had anybody like this, ever, and that goal he scored, the second goal against Canada, was evidence of something that we haven't seen before from him, and it was the entire performance, but that goal was just spectacular, and it's just the kind of thing that the U.S. Men's National team has rarely, if ever, seen, and it changed the offense, and of course, basically being forced to go with Gio Reyna as a starter because Tyler Adams was out, so the MMA midfield was broken up, so they go with Gio, and he played extraordinarily well. I think there's the question of would he have been as effective defensively as he was in that game if he's playing against England or France or Spain or who.

I don't know, but he did his job, and he did it beautifully. He was spectacular, and he made himself a viable option, but it's still a tough choice. I keep getting yelled at for supporting Berhalter, his position as the coach, believing that he's the right person, and constantly being second-guessed by the fact that Reyna didn't play in Qatar very much, and I keep saying, who do you take out of the lineup? Weah has been terrific every time he's been out there. You don't take Pulisic out there out of the lineup.

He's the best player you have, and so then you're left with those three players in the midfield. They gave you solidity. They gave you possession.

They gave you unbelievable defense. You controlled the games because of those three guys, so Greg's going to be left with a very difficult choice when he gets back on the job. What does he do? Presuming he has everybody healthy, what does he do? But one of the things that people overlook is now that Reyna's shown what he can do, they rarely have everybody healthy. Nice, true, and he left the match against Canada at halftime with a calf injury. What they have now is more depth than we thought, and more choices than we thought, and what really hurt them I thought against the Netherlands in the World Cup was the midfield was worn out, whether it's Adams or Moussa or McKenny or all of them, and this formation different than the one they used in the World Cup, which had Reyna basically behind Balogun. By the way, they looked like they had chemistry in game two that we had not seen from American players, and I loved Tim Weah's cross for the first ballistic goal against Mexico. It does look like they can be a little bit more attack minded, so maybe McKenny doesn't start or Moussa doesn't start in some matches. I don't think Tyler Adams ever comes out of the lineup. I think he is viewed in that way, and I thought they developed some depth right back with the way Joe Scali played against Canada, and you know, Dest is a dynamic player, but maybe Scali is a little bit more solid defensively in that spot, and the center backs were better. Richards and Miles Robinson looks to me to be the pair going forward, no?

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think those two would be the ideal selection. If they can keep them both healthy, that would be the choice. They both have had injury problems, but together they're terrific. I thought Scali was just magnificent.

He had help, but he did an incredible job of shutting it down. Alfonso Davies and that long pass that he put out there. I mean, that was like Dan Marino to Mark Duper.

You don't see that very often with that kind of precision from that distance. He was fantastic. I was really impressed by him, so I think that what they came out of this tournament with in addition to another trophy is a belief that they can be deeper, more versatile, more attack minded, and that's the natural evolution of what we hope this team would be. Because a year ago they were young, they were untested, they weren't sure exactly where, you know, exactly sure how many guys they'd have because guys had been hurt a lot. They hadn't had much time together because of the pandemic, and then they were right into qualification, and all of those are reasons why the results that Bert Halter got through qualification, through those two tournaments in 21, and then in the and then in the World Cup were certainly acceptable results. He didn't have a great day against the Netherlands, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Louis van Gaal wants you to believe because he wants you to think he's a genius.

And I think that Bert, the fact, people think that like this was all about U.S. soccer. They didn't hire Crocker so he could come in and say, yeah, you're right, everything you say is right. They brought him in for new ideas and he looked at the process and said, no, this is the best guy for the job. The players love playing for him. The door keeps opening to bring in new players because the players love playing for him, and we're good enough.

And they're going to fix some things tactically and maybe bring in some different people to advise, but I think they're in great shape. I think you and I disagree about the reappointment or the rehiring of Bert Halter. I think there was an opportunity to take the program a step forward, but all of that is speculative. And the known is that Bert Halter built the foundation that players want to be a part of. So, even though I'm not a fan of rehiring him, I recognize what he did. And I also think that the pool of candidates clearly wasn't awesome. And if it was awesome, then Bert Halter would not have been rehired. I think that's probably fair. I think that's the whole point is that people have this dream that Pep Guardiola wants to be their coach.

It's not out there. People were mad because Thierry Henry didn't get hired. I got a bunch of tweets about Thierry Henry has coached 49 games at the high level, division one level, and he's lost 27 of them. But he's Thierry Henry, so what difference does it make?

Let's get him. He's very handsome too. Also bald.

So, I have a soft spot, like I must have for Greg as well since he has no hair either. Mike de Courcy, you're the man. I appreciate your time. As always, sir, I'll talk to you soon.