Dan Dakich continues to target Huggins, state

There is certainly some responsibility there, as there is for the engineer who later allowed it to slip through onto the air and for the station failing to stand up and accept some of the blame for what transpired.

But that is what these talk shows live for, and if you want to know how, I spent a year and a half as a host of one, having filled Bob Trumpy’s seat when he left WCKY for WLW. I can honestly say it was not a happy time or a successful career experiment, for my idea of talk radio was entertainment and information, and they and the talk show host they put me with left no doubt they wanted controversy.

It’s inherent in the business from Geraldo Rivera and Morton Downey Jr. to Howard Stern to Jerry Springer to lean towards being outrageous and it goes on today.

No offense, but I can’t watch Stephen A. Smith even though he is intelligent. But he overwhelms whatever good he has to say by also being belligerent. And Skip Bayless, I prefer to call him Skip Useless and we’ll leave it at that.

But the biggest offender among sports talk show hosts of being belligerent, egomaniacal and downright vindictive and nasty is our old “friend” Dan Dakich, who comes into this conversation because of the hatchet job he did on Huggins during this mess.

You may remember Dakich as the man who took Gale Catlett’s basketball coaching job at West Virginia for all of eight days, leaving after he discovered what he says was wrongdoing and later having added to a long list of dirty laundry he opted to simply throw away rather than try to clean up, he claimed he and his wife were threatened by then-WVU President David Hardesty.

Forgive and forget is not in Dakich’s moral makeup, for he has ever since he left been sniping at WVU and Huggins on his show in Indianapolis, but he just went too far through this, pulling open the curtain on what seems to be an evil side he has.

Forget that for some reason he included me in one of his tweets, even though I was the only journalist from this area to offer him a chance to give his side of the story, approaching him when WVU was in the Final Four at Indianapolis and asking him if he would be willing to talk, only to get blown off completely.

I can handle it. I’ve been shot at by the best from Bob Howsam in Cincinnati to Gale Catlett, so when someone as scatter-mouthed as Dakich spews his venom he best know I’ve got a lifetime supply of antidote.

But this is how low the guy will go.

He jumped Ethan Bock of West Virginia Sports Now, a kid who graduated WVU just this week, a talented, enthusiastic beginner in a business that needs young blood.

This was the tweet:

This has to crush lil @ethanbock_ Despite DUI’s and lifelong cheating by Huggins lil Ethan has always been a nasty lil fella in his idol’s defense.. Today is lil Ethan’s grow up day!! You become a man today Lil Ethan and see that your emperor has no clothes and never has.

Huggins’ has thick enough skin to take Dakich’s darts, but what he had to say about Huggins, the school and West Virginia and West Virginians on his podcast when the story broke was poisoning the airwarves.

A few examples:

— “Nobody wants to listen to me, no one wants to hear what I want to say, but I have said for years that Bob Huggins is one of the biggest dirt bags in college sports. I told you the story going back to about 1998 when he had $10,000 ready to pay Maine Central Institute as the entry fee for a kid named Keith McCloud, who I had committed and signed at Bowling Green.

“This dirt bag, Bob Huggins, and his dirt bag buddy decided they were going to cheat all across Ohio. I got a kid who was Mr. Basketball in Ohio, ended up being an NBA player and Huggins and I are MFing each other. As I pulled into Wisconsin Dells with my family ... if you stand up to a bully as Huggins is and the bully backs down as Huggins did.”

— “I was the coach at West Virginia for eight days. They were dirty, cheating, dirt bags. The President, David Hardesty, threatened me and my wife. Ha, ha! When anybody threatens me I always laugh and think how fast it is I can kick the crap out of them.

• “I’m sitting there looking at this guy thinking ‘Man, it would take me about 10 seconds to knock your fat ss out and send you home crying to your wife.’ My wife stood up and said ‘What do you mean you’ll destroy us.’ It’s a long, sorted (sic) tale, but Huggy is who Huggy is.

“But he’s a Hall of Famer. Think of all the Hall of Fame coaches and the level of dirt bag. Look, I love Gene Keady, but he did go on probation. I love Jim Boeheim, but he did get suspended. Mike Kryzyzewski always made things go away. John Calipari has been on probation.

“I mean it pays to be a cheat and dirt bag in college basketball. I’ve said it forever, it just pays, 100%.”

And this gave Dakich more to shoot at Huggins for.

“Let’s hear from the idiot that is Bob Huggins turned homophobe. Let’s hear from this clown now,” he said, introducing the tape.

But what of West Virginia and West Virginians?

“I worked there for eight days ... the most backward stupid place you could possibly be. The level of ignorance ...,” he said. “I’ll never forget ol’ Ed Pastilong, the AD. I showed him the list, they were fixing games under Gale Catlett.”

Yes, you read that right. He accused WVU of fixing games under Gale Catlett on his podcast.

Then he changes his way of speaking, puts on a fake rural accent straight out of the Andy Griffith Show to imitate Pastilong.

“Well, we got to talk to old Ginny on the front porch and have a lemonade.”

Now we’ve saved the best, not the worst, for last as he lets his ego run amok.

“So why am I taking a victory lap on this?” he said. “I’m not really sure. Is it bitterness toward West Virginia? Not really. I love poking West Virginia. It’s been 21 years since I left and all I tell them is simply this:

“Look, me leaving only cost you two national championships. Beilein was good. Huggins was fine, although Huggins has never won a conference title in a major conference ever. Yet he’s a Hall of Famer.

• “I’ve got my Top 5 dumb ss coaches — and it includes my former boss (Bobby Knight) — I went at Huggy pretty good and West Virginia folks go ‘How do you have your job? You’re an idiot.’ Well, I got my job because I’m damn good at what I do. I’m entertaining as hell. And I’m great at parties ... unbelievable.

“We closed down Moondrops the other day, me and some people, and there’s no TVs, there’s nothing to watch. I’m a blast. But I don’t condone adultery. I don’t condone racial slurs. I don’t condone homophobic slurs. West Virginia, you do, God bless you.”