Alex Rychwalski | Huggins' arrest an all too familiar story

Jun. 22—"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues." — William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, Act 4, Scene 3

West Virginia University is lucky that Bob Huggins' only repercussion from his DUI arrest last Friday was his termination, and Huggins is even luckier.

The Hall of Fame basketball coach has spent a career altering the lives of young men, from all walks of life, and giving them chances — often second chances — that few else were willing to.

That fire and compassion intertwined with his basketball genius resulted in an illustrious career spanning 41 years that left him as the third-winningest coach of all time with 935 victories, behind only Mike Krzyzewski (1,202) and Jim Boeheim (1,015).

He's fortunate he didn't alter further lives over the weekend, as the only victim of his self-destructive bender was a shredded tire and his own career.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a person dies as a result of drunken driving in the United States every 39 minutes.

That probability would've increased exponentially if Huggins ended up in Pittsburgh a little later than the 8:30 p.m. time he blew a .210. Taylor Swift went up on stage less than a mile away at 8 p.m. in an Acrisure Stadium packed with 70,000 'Swifties.'

We should all thank the service of the Burger King in Washington, Pennsylvania — the last place Huggins remembered being seven hours before the arrest — for its exceptionally slow service.

Huggins knows he made a mistake, and it was a mistake so good he made it twice (his tenure at Cincinnati came to a crashing halt after a DUI arrest in 2004 contributed to his resignation the following year).

He was asked to resign Saturday and fairly so, especially after he was placed on a short leash after uttering a three-letter homophobic slur denigrating Catholics on a Cincinnati radio station not too long ago.

However, I wouldn't have felt compelled to write this column if not for the comments made by Huggins' daughter Jacque Huggins on Twitter, which brought back all-too-familiar memories of how these things happen.

Fiercely loyal as all immediate family members should be, she took WVU President Gordon Gee and the board to task, saying, "You're the classless ones, the cowards, the backstabbers and most of all hypocrites."

Bob Huggins wasn't stabbed in the back, he stabbed the university that made him in the back.

West Virginia took a chance on the hometown hero in 2007, and it gave him a second chance after his radio comments with a slap on the wrist when other schools would've let him go.

Call an Uber. Employ a driver. Or, better yet, don't drink that much?

How much exactly did Huggy Bear drink? Using a blood alcohol content calculator (far from a science, I know), a man of Huggins' weight, which I generously estimated at 270 pounds, would have to drink 12 beers in an hour or around 20 beers spread over a whole day to blow a .210.

He wasn't just buzzed, he was gone. He lost track of seven hours, thought he was in Ohio and couldn't remember what leg he had gotten surgery on.

If that doesn't result in getting fired from your job, then what does?

You don't accidentally find yourself in the wrong state trying to change a tire in the middle of the street. Nor do you carry around bags full of empties in the company car because you're an avid recycler.

You find yourself in that position because you have a problem.

I call it a problem because a man with Huggins' track record of selflessness would only put the careers of players and staff members in jeopardy if he was suffering from a disease.

His daughter disagrees, saying, "My dad is not an alcoholic, he drinks like 90% of us do."

Ah, yes, who among us hasn't lost two multi-million dollar jobs following DUI arrests. Unless he's the most unlucky drunk driver of all time, getting pulled over the only two times in his life he's been over the limit, he's done it before.

I don't follow Huggins around counting his beers — although clearly, someone should — but to deny he has a problem is a part of the problem.

I've witnessed Alcoholism in my own family, as I'm sure most people reading this have since 1 in 10 people struggle with alcohol addiction according to the National Institute of Health, and it's often far more subtle than Huggins' case.

It isn't always like on television when a drunken father or uncle screams at his family or is physically abusive as a result of their addiction.

It can manifest in a quiet corner, going unnoticed until a marriage falls apart or a person's life comes to a destructive end.

I've had a relative decide to quit drinking for his health, only to drop dead because his body had become dependent on it.

In one family member, it took a DUI arrest like Huggins' to enact change, as therapy and regular visits to Alcoholics Anonymous saved their life.

It scares me that Huggins' own daughter denies that he has a drinking problem, and that he only offered to go to a 60-day rehab stint, per her post, to retain his job.

After Huggins' mom died of colon cancer in 2003, he helped raise tens of millions of dollars for cancer research in his home state of West Virginia.

He's helped 20 players get drafted into the National Basketball Association and given hundreds, often from underprivileged beginnings, the opportunity to earn a college degree for free.

It's about time you start looking out for your own well-being coach. You have too much good to offer.

Alex Rychwalski is a sports reporter at the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter @arychwal.