Perception or reality? Cincy prez has target on Huggins

Without four years on his contract, Huggins and his staff cannot fairly recruit against Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun and the other heavyweight coaches waiting in the Big East. It's simply not possible.

According to a source, Zimpher hasn't yet decided not to reinstate Huggins' four-year rollover. But her hesitation looks like another attempt to force him out.

This time, she might just get her wish.

Huggins isn't talking to the media about his latest stare-down with Zimpher. Most other employees of the athletic department aren't talking, either. No one wants to leak the wrong nugget of information that could trigger Huggins's wrath -- or worse, his dismissal.

But Huggins must be tired of all this staring. He's a street fighter who has won more at Cincinnati than the two coaches he followed, and won more than the two coaches who will follow him, but this might not be a fight worth fighting.

Based on her hardball handling of the DUI and the contract rollover, Zimpher seems to lack affection for her glowering men's basketball coach. Supportive athletic director Bob Goin has buffered Huggins, but Goin is retiring after the 2005-06 season. Goin's replacement will be handpicked by Zimpher. Huggins' buffer? Gone.

Huggins? Shocking as this seems, he might just be gone, too.

A source said that Zimpher already has proposed a roughly $1.5 million buyout of the final two years of his contract, and if Huggins declines, the president has drafted a document that underscores the hoops Huggins must jump through to remain the head coach at the University of Zimpher.

Huggins is 51. He suffered a heart attack in 2002. He has won 567 games, reached 14 consecutive NCAA Tournaments, won almost every Conference USA title in league history. He might not want to jump through hoops.

It has been a bad few months for Huggins. The only former UC player on his coaching staff, Keith LeGree, was indefinitely suspended after being cited for DUI. Freshman Roy Bright was kicked off the team this week after carrying a pistol onto campus. Another freshman, Vincent Banks, left the team for personal reasons.

Anti-Huggins fans will translate "personal reasons" as a euphemism for "got in trouble," but it's just not true. Banks left school to care for his father, who is dying of AIDS in Georgia. Life's hard. Banks did what he had to do to.

Now Huggins faces a choice of his own. Whatever happens here, it won't be a tragedy. Life will go on for the Bearcats, and for Huggins.

But without Bob Huggins, the University of Zimpher will lose in its new league. Unless the Big East turns basketball into a poetry-reading contest.