THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: With coaches like Huggins, wins trump slurs, insults

You may remember the little line from a well-known John Denver song.

“Almost heaven, West Virginia … ”

I still have a ball cap with those words, because I have a soft spot for West Virginia.

Yes, I lived and worked there, covering WVU football and basketball for the Charleston Gazette — and the people I encountered were mostly wonderful.

That also goes for the university, and I loved the job despite having to drive 135 miles to Morgantown a couple of times each week.

It’s neat to tell people that my apartment was actually in Mink Shoals, about 3 miles north of Charleston along the Elk River.

The next little town up the road was Big Chimney, home of the closest grocery store.

This sounds a little strange, I admit, but I always felt proud of West Virginia — a state that people who’ve never been there feel comfortable targeting with insults.

Likewise, I’ve always bristled when folks make fun of West Virginia University, which I believed to be an excellent institution.

SADLY, I don’t feel quite the same way today.

I was appalled — but not surprised — when longtime basketball coach Bob Huggins tossed off homophobic slurs and insults aimed at Catholics during a radio interview.

Huggy is crude by nature, and believes the world at large should simply accept him that way.

So, it was no shock when he launched into a stream of invective directed at Xavier University, a Jesuit school in Cincinnati.

Huggins coached at the University of Cincinnati for 16 years, so he’ll carry that rivalry around forever.

It’s fair game in sports to take light jabs at teams you dislike — we hear it every day on TV and podcasts — but a blunt homophobic insult and a stream of insults directed at Catholics is WAY beyond acceptable for a big-time basketball coach.

Once new broke of Huggins’ language, I assumed (as did most people) that it would cost him his job.

It should have.

West Virginia University simply cannot have its best-known voice and personality spitting out such things.

It sullied the entire state.

And yet …

The school pondered for a couple of days, then issued a statement condemning the language — but leaving Huggins in his job with a $1 million salary cut (to a paltry $3.15 million, plus incentives).

WVU also ordered Huggins to attend sensitivity training, which — if you know Huggy at all — seems almost hilarious.

Oh, he’ll do and say and what’s necessary to remain employed, but Bob Huggins will remain exactly the same person who casually tossed off that string of slurs on a radio show.

Bottom line, that’s him.

Maybe he’ll learn to save his especially crude remarks for a circle of friends, and keep public comments on the safe side.

It is now necessary that he be a good boy to keep the WVU hoops job.

For me, this is all a sham.

Huggins should have been fired, as almost all major college coaches would have been if they’d been dumb enough to get in the same situation.

It goes almost without saying …

I sincerely hope that Gonzaga would not schedule a Huggins-coached West Virginia team.

SO, HOW did Huggins get off with a slap on the wrist, and a financial penalty that likely will be made up by a group of fawning WVU boosters?

Well, let’s consider his boss.

The man who ultimately made the call on Huggins was university president Gordon Gee.

The prez surely understood where Huggins’ cultural sneering — especially toward Catholics — was born.

Gee, in fact, has a history of insults toward that same religion himself.

His first reaction to news of Huggins’ rant was probably a chuckle — before he got around to figuring out how to word the university statement keeping Huggins as his basketball coach.

Here’s a dispatch from the Associated Press in 2013 …

“The president of Ohio State University said Notre Dame never was invited to join the Big Ten because the university's priests are not good partners, joking that "those damn Catholics" can't be trusted, according to a recording of a meeting he attended late last year.

“At the December meeting of the school's athletic council, Gordon Gee also took shots at schools in the Southeastern Conference and the University of Louisville, according to the recording, obtained by The Associated Press under a public records request.”

IF YOU’RE wondering how bigots like Huggins and Gee remain in jobs that make them extremely wealthy, the answer is simple.

Gee is a world-class university fund raiser, and Huggins wins a lot of basketball games.

They’re successful in their fields, and big schools put up with them.

Rule of thumb …

Pretty much anything can be overlooked with a useless statement of apology.

I feel badly for my old state of West Virginia — which has the highest number of transgender young people in the country — and for WVU.

Having Gee and Huggins in positions of power is embarrassing.

And dangerous.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”