Huggy the Coach

Ok so this is old news but with our recent discussions about the city of Cincinnati, I found this interesting blog from NY Sports Express regarding the great coach Bob Huggins..

If only I can vomit in someones car and be bought out for 2 million dollars. MJ, did you pay the person who vomited in your car 2 million dollars?



WELL, AT LEAST the Kenyon Martin thing worked out.
And to a lesser extent, Danny Fortson. But for the most part, the University of Cincinnati basketball program has been to the concept of the rule of law what the crosstown football Bengals have been to spirited, determined competition. When UC head coach Bob Huggins was arrested for a DUI last weekend and posted the most hilarious road test results since the waning minutes of The Man With Two Brains, the program came full circle. It is now college basketball's official "shirtless on COPS" representative, the roundball counterpart to Bobby Bowden's gridiron CrimiNoles.
Huggins, who had a massive heart attack two years ago that he claims was connected to a lack of sleep, was arrested last Friday night by police in the town of Fairfax, OH. Officers had caught Huggins drifting out of his lane late at night. When they peered into his car, they found vomit (real, manly coach vomit, dear readers) on the driver's door. The first words the Bearcats' coach uttered to police were, "Don't do this to me."
Police generously released the video of Huggins's field sobriety test last week. The coach was unable to maintain his balance during any part of the examination and repeatedly denied being drunk. When asked to recite the alphabet in order between the letters E and P, Huggins responded, humorously, "E, F, G, H, I, K, L, N, Z." Asked to count backward from 67 to 54, Huggins counted from 62 to 52. Police did not say if they had considered the possibility that Huggins is simply not all that bright, or a poor test-taker. The tests do seem a little on the hard side to us here at NYSX.
Huggins has been coach of the Bearcats for 15 years, during which time the school at one point was placed under probation for two years and stripped of scholarships for a variety of rules infractions. He also presided over one of the most interesting and varied student-athlete criminal records in sport.
One striking feature of the Bearcat criminal history is the beating-your-girlfriend-with-the-nearest-handy-object arrest, which has hit the school several times. The most recent offense came in 2003, when forward Eric Hicks was busted for hitting his girlfriend with a beer bottle. More interesting, however, was the 1998 case of D'Juan Baker, who was arrested for hitting his girlfriend with a flower pot. Police in that case arrived on the scene shortly after Baker hurled the pot across the room, striking Kara Jackson, the mother of his child, over the eye. In one of the more hilarious understatements in the history of student-athlete jurisprudence, the judge in that case, Ralph Winkler, told Baker that he was "setting a bad example for children."
"I'm not pinning any medals on you," Winkler said.
Why not? He didn't miss her, did he?
The most famous UC basketball crime may yet be overturned in the pages of history. NYSX readers should be familiar with the story of former UC center Art Long, who was arrested in 1995 on charges that he punched a police horse during a routine traffic stop (future Dallas Maverick rebounding stud Fortson was also arrested in the incident). The incident did tremendous damage to Long's reputation and followed him all the way to the NBA, when Seattle Supersonics teammates nicknamed him "Mongo" during the pine-riding year he spent with that team.
Long has always contended that he did not punch the horse, and that what he was actually doing was petting the horse after he was stopped by police. And now there appears to be evidence backing up his assertion. In the kind of coincidence that simply isn't possible in fiction, the horse who was allegedly the victim in the Long case, a 22 year-old quarterhorse named Cody, was named as the victim in another apparent assault. However, evidence has surfaced indicating that police manufactured the complaint. The defendant in the case, a peace protester and civil disobedience advocate named Brian Crum, was accused by two officers of punching Cody in the face during a 2003 visit to Cincinnati by George Bush. Officers testified at Crum's trial that the diminutive producer of the local access show Refuse and Resist! elbowed Cody in the nose. However, one officer testifying had to demonstrate Crum's actions three times, and only in the third go-around did the testimony indicate that Crum had done more than nudge the horse. Furthermore, Crum produced videotape which showed that he had not punched the horse. He was acquitted last year in time to mount an unsuccessful bid for City Council.
So there is a history of trumped up charges of abuse of that horse. Maybe Art Long was wronged.
An NYSX Blotter irrelevant side note: "Brian Crum" was also the name of the University of Florida linebacker who was arrested along with budding sportscrime star Channing Crowder for ripping the mirrors off of car doors in Gainesville, FL in the winter of 2003. On the day that charges were filed against Crum—Jan. 14, 2003—a 56 year-old man named Raymond Everest became the oldest convicted British soccer hooligan in history when he was jailed for five years for kicking a police horse. Creepy coincidence—or just a stupid space-filling factoid?
Well, we seem to have gone far afield here. In any case, UC has not yet decided what to do with Huggins, aside from an "indefinite suspension."