00:00Bob Huggins, pictured here, is the winningest coach in the history of University of Cincinnati
00:04athletics. And Bob Huggins, still pictured here, was forced to resign from the very same
00:11University of Cincinnati. Huh. Seems odd.
00:18Let's first get into who Bob Huggins was at the University of Cincinnati. He was hired in 1989.
00:25Cincinnati was a very bad basketball program at that point in time.
00:30I'm talking no tournament in more than a decade. I'm talking losing season after losing season after
00:35losing season. I'm talking empty arenas. Huggins was hired to bring about a new era, a better era,
00:41where it felt good to wake up in the morning and say, I'm a Cincinnati fan. And then also say,
00:48and there's a game tonight I will pay money to go to. No easy task. But he won the community
00:54over in
00:55his very first game. Huggins was jumping up and down. He got a tech sticking up for his guys,
01:00and the Bearcats beat a ranked team at the buzzer. Sounds kind of fun to watch.
01:06In his third year, the Bearcats made it to the Final Four. This was a program that hadn't been
01:11that deep in the tournament for nearly 30 years. In other words, they hadn't been to the tournament
01:16in the amount of time it takes for a person to go from birth to childhood to adulthood to the
01:22first
01:22time in adulthood where you look in the mirror and say, I'm getting old. That's how I like to
01:27measure time. It's good for my self-hatred. It took Huggins three years to turn the program from a
01:33non-entity to a nationally recognized basketball school. Pretty impressive. Especially when you
01:40consider that it wasn't easy to recruit in Cincinnati. The years of losing the urban campus,
01:46having to compete with other bigger Ohio schools all worked against Bob Huggins.
01:51He ended up heavily recruiting from junior colleges. There were eight JUCO players on that
01:5692 Final Four team, including future NBA All-Star Nick Van Exel. Huggins got a little criticism for
02:02the JUCO recruiting. It's not great long-term planning. But what the hell? He got results.
02:08The year 2000 was Huggins' best year ever until National Player of the Year Kenyon Martin broke his
02:15leg in the conference tournament. Pretty big bummer. But hey, at least after the summer's NBA draft,
02:20Cincinnati could boast a number one overall draft pick. And for the first time ever, they could boast
02:26two of their players going in the first round. And you may have noticed that UC had a lot to
02:31be proud
02:31of, and I haven't been talking about any beef for some time now. Well, let me introduce you to this
02:37lady, Nancy Zimfer, who became president of the University of Cincinnati in the spring of 2004.
02:42And she came in with an agenda. She wanted to raise the reputation of UC, upping academic standing with
02:49a focus on producing responsible and ethical students. That's nice. What was UC's reputation
02:55at this point in time? Well, basketball titan, of course. They weren't Harvard, sure, but they weren't
03:02no scrubs either. And also Thug U was a nickname. In large part because of some things I neglected to
03:10tell you about the basketball program under Bob Huggins. Player graduation rate could have been
03:15better. But Huggins argued those numbers weren't fair because at the time the NCAA didn't include
03:21junior college kids or students who came back after five years to complete their degree. And UC had a
03:27program to encourage people to do just that. Plus, what about the guys who went on to play in the
03:32NBA
03:32or overseas? Athlete graduation rates shouldn't make or break a school's reputation. So what gives?
03:39Okay, let me tell you about the other thing I left out. For one reason or another, Bob Huggins' players
03:44and former players kept getting arrested. Sometimes for funny reasons like stealing condoms. Just let them
03:51have them. It's for the greater good. And actually, that's the only funny one. The other
03:57reasons were various types of fucked up. Alleged assault. Alleged domestic violence. Alleged drunk
04:03driving. One basketball player allegedly punched a police horse while drunk. I'm saying allegedly a
04:09lot, I know, but a fair amount of these charges ended up dropped. I don't want to be sued. And
04:14also,
04:14I don't want to be on anyone's bad side because, for example, one student athlete was accused of
04:21kidnapping and torturing his roommate who may or may not have stolen money from him. Horrific,
04:27fucked up shit. And, you know, not the best stuff for a university's reputation.
04:32So was the new president gonna go after the basketball program? Well, let's just say as Bob
04:39Huggins watched his new boss's boss climb a pyramid of male cheerleaders to celebrate his accomplishments,
04:46he probably wasn't too worried. Then, shortly after the 04 season, this happened. And it's kind of even worse
04:54than it sounds. Huggins failed the field sobriety test miserably. He couldn't recite the alphabet.
05:01There was vomit on the driver's side door. One report said he vomited on the arresting officer.
05:08And there was dash cam footage of it all. He could barely keep his balance during the field sobriety
05:15test. News of his DUI broke, in other words, that video hit the internet, on new president Nancy Zimpher's
05:23first commencement day. Coretta Scott King was speaking. Zimpher was not pleased. But the university
05:31didn't come down that hard on Huggins. Suspended with pay for the summer. And back in time for the
05:38season. In December, Zimpher sent him a letter being like, wow, good job, go Bearcats. I'm paraphrasing,
05:45of course. We've seen it before in college sports. Winning coaches have a wide berth to do exactly as they
05:51please. And while Zimpher talked a big game, she didn't end up seeming like she would stand up to a
05:57winning...
05:57Oh, what's this? After the 05 season, Zimpher sent Huggins a letter with two options.
06:04Take a $1.4 million buyout now, or stay on for two more lame duck years to finish his contract,
06:10and then get out. What followed was called a civil war between Zimpher and Huggins.
06:16Or, as I like to call it, beef. Huggins chose to be a lame duck and stay for two more
06:22years.
06:23But he didn't say it like that, and he didn't say it privately to the university, either.
06:28He held a press conference to essentially say,
06:32Look how they're trying to massacre your beautiful boy.
06:35Again, I'm paraphrasing.
06:37The university saw going public as a low move, a breach of trust.
06:41The public saw it as Huggins sticking up for himself while under attack.
06:47Zimpher took the opposite approach from Huggins. She was silent in the press.
06:51Going so far as to put an arm around a reporter's shoulders and firmly guide her out of her office.
06:58Zimpher was maligned in the press.
07:00And whenever she appeared in public to do other university president stuff,
07:03she was just nailed with Bob Huggins' questions and accusations.
07:08From an alumni association breakfast, to an ice cream social with max 50 students.
07:15As you'd expect, she was booed at a pep rally celebrating the Bearcats entering the Big East.
07:19Now, you might not have expected that she was booed so much she cut her remarks short.
07:25Meanwhile, Huggins was receiving a lot of love.
07:29Local bookstores sold I Support Huggins t-shirts.
07:32Alums were calling Zimpher and the UC board to de-pledge donations.
07:37And boy band Hunk and Cincinnati native Nick Lachey wrote in to support the coach.
07:42Now, you might be wondering, why does everyone love a drunk driver and hate the lady who wants
07:47to better a school?
07:48Because basketball is and has been good for the school.
07:52In terms of community pride and also bringing in money.
07:56And look, if she wanted to fire him for drunk driving, she should have done that when it
08:00happened instead of pretending to be his friend for a year.
08:02Not necessarily the most convincing arguments to me, but I didn't grow up watching Bob Huggins
08:08bring pride to the school in the city.
08:10In the months that followed, increasingly aggressive letters went back and forth between
08:14Zimpher and Huggins' legal teams.
08:16Basically, the coach's lawyer kept asking for a contract extension.
08:20Huggins was finding it impossible to recruit without one.
08:23And the university president's lawyer kept saying no for three main reasons.
08:29One, Huggins' DUI, which is very bad.
08:32No way around that, even if it was a year old.
08:35Second reason was his graduation rates.
08:37Because, as Zimpher's representation argued, ignoring the NCAA stats and using the data Huggins'
08:43own lawyer provided, the numbers still looked bad.
08:46Now, it was possible the university was still disregarding NBA and overseas professionals
08:51when they damned Huggins for low graduation rates.
08:54And it's also possible they were ignoring another of the coach's lawyer's points.
08:59A lot of successful people don't have degrees.
09:02Bill Gates, anyone?
09:04And the third reason for not extending him, the 21 players over 16 years who had had run-ins
09:10with the law.
09:11In short, the university concluded that Huggins recruits and or fails to foster players who
09:17will become good citizens slash good representations of the new and improved university.
09:22And he isn't one himself.
09:24Huggins was pretty pissed.
09:27And it does seem like UC was painting with a broad brush, letting the worst actors define
09:32the group.
09:33Huggins claimed Zimpher said a degree from UC would be worth more once he was gone.
09:38His lawyer accused the school of talking out of both sides of its mouth.
09:42See, the letters got pretty aggressive.
09:43The administration was not swayed, and on August 23rd, 2005, Bob Huggins was given 24 hours
09:50to quit or be fired.
09:52He chose to quit.
09:55Zimpher was declared the winner of the Civil War and stood proudly by her convictions.
09:59But did she win the beef?
10:02Locally, Zimpher wasn't the most popular figure.
10:06But outside of Cincy, she was praised for standing up to a winning coach.
10:10The basketball program suffered.
10:12There were no longer any celebratory human pyramids for Zimpher to climb.
10:16But she did end up raising UC to a Tier 1 U.S. News and World Report school.
10:22So, kind of 50-50 on if she won the beef or not.
10:25Bob Huggins certainly did not win the beef.
10:28Pushed out of his job and all.
10:29He found another job, first at Kansas State, then he spent over a decade coaching at his
10:35alma mater, even making it back to the Final Four in 2010.
10:39In 2023, he retired after using a homophobic slur on air and another drunk driving incident.
10:47Er, he didn't actually retire?
10:50Eh, he's not doing well, I wouldn't say.
10:53He didn't get his job back.
10:55But maybe in this dark hour, he'd saved a few newspaper clips to remind him of the good,
11:01impressive, inspiring, meaningful work he did at the University of Cincinnati.
11:06That might cheer him up.
11:10That might a good one.
11:13That might be the first one.
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