THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BOB HUGGINS GETS ONE CHANCE TOO MANY

So ends the career of a Hall of Fame coach, who was arrested for drunk driving only 39 days after voicing anti-gay and anti-Catholic slurs — obviously, sins that weren’t punished severely enough

     Unless you happen to be Jonah, whose livelihood didn’t depend on March Madness and KenPom rankings, second chances aren’t guaranteed in life. Bob Huggins had at least three. His sins were condoned, over and over, because he routinely led teams to the NCAA tournament and made fortunes for schools.

     First, he was forced to resign at the University of Cincinnati after a drunk-driving conviction and quickly landed at Kansas State, which gave him Chance No. 2. He fled after only one season to his dream job at West Virginia, his alma mater, where he stayed 16 years and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The worst-kept secret in Morgantown, and throughout the college hoops industry, was that Huggins had serious drinking issues. We saw him early one morning in New Orleans, at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street, and wondered if Huggy Bear — as he was fondly called by his brethren — might fall into the gutter with the beads, spilled Hurricanes and half-eaten Po’ Boys.

     Then Huggins dropped anti-gay and anti-Catholic slurs about Cincinnati’s intra-city rival, Xavier, during a disturbing radio interview last month. Somehow, he was allowed to keep his coaching gig with a million-dollar salary reduction and a piddly three-game suspension, constituting Chance No. 3. “I am truly sorry for the damage I have done,” he said in an elaborate apology. “And I am grateful for the chance to move forward in a way that positively represents this University and our state.”

     His gratitude lasted 39 days.

     On Friday, after working a basketball camp with his brother in eastern Ohio, Huggins made his way 80 miles east to Pittsburgh. At sunset, as Taylor Swift was beginning her set about a mile away at Acrisure Stadium, he was ordered to move a black SUV that was blocking traffic. A tire was “flat and shredded,” according to the police report, and when Huggins couldn’t properly steer the vehicle, officers assumed he was intoxicated and subjected him to field sobriety tests. As he was failing those, they looked inside the vehicle and saw garbage bags loaded with empty beer containers. Several times, he was asked if he knew the name of the city where he was standing.

     “Columbus,” he said, more than once.

     His blood alcohol content: 0.21 percent, nearly three times the legal limit in Pennsylvania.

     All that remains is whether he’ll be fired or allowed to resign in shame.

     So ends the career of another high-profile college coach, paid handsomely to teach lessons to young adults, who was allowed to stick around too long with one chance too many. Bob Knight comes to mind, for more maniacal reasons, and in both cases, university officials were so swayed by the popularity of the men within local domains that they couldn’t identify emerging realities. Huggins should have been eased out after he’d said of Xavier fans, “What it was, was all those fags, those Catholic fags, I think,” after a reference to “rubber penises.” But school president Gordon Gee and athletic director Wren Baker chose to keep him with minimal punishment, knowing he had guided the Mountaineers to 11 NCAA tournaments as a reliable cash cow. The slurs were “inexcusable,” they said, but he was excused anyway.

     For their complicity, the administrators get what they deserve: more chaos, more ignominy. They were hoping he’d make it through another season without an incident, assuring him only one more year in an amended contract. Instead, Huggins drifts into infamy as the only coach in recent memory — can you think of another? — who exited two jobs for DUI busts 19 years apart. The first time, he was required to seek rehabilitation. Now, weeks from his 70th birthday and without basketball in his life for the first time in five decades, you worry what will happen to him. He was given break after break, his last coming amid the substantial weight of 21st-century cancel culture, and we’re left to hope he isn’t a tragedy waiting for a bourbon bottle.

     The man had a bar in his office. It was part of a rambling, gambling image that worked in West Virginia and Cincinnati, where he’d go anywhere to find talented players — education be damned — and maximized their skills. Kenyon Martin and Nick Van Exel were his best, channeling their coach’s toughness and going on to productive NBA careers. No doubt the man could extract the most from a team, as one of six college coaches with 900 or more career victories, including two Final Four appearances.

     But if Mike Krzyzewski has been the paragon of the profession, Bob Huggins was the town tippler. Was he drinking the night he talked about “Catholic fags” on WLW radio? The better question: When was he not drinking? You might say he has only himself to blame, but what about the bosses who enabled him? Thank heavens he didn’t crash in Pittsburgh and kill another person, if not himself. He never should have been anywhere near the steering wheel of a moving vehicle.

    He should have been in rehab, Day 39.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.