UConn-West Virginia Is Why We Watch Sports

(Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Somewhere deep inside the heart of Morgantown, W.Va., amidst the ribbons and the pins and the armbands and the commemorative signs, there was a football game Saturday afternoon.

And it was a good one, too. The 4-2 Connecticut Huskies visited the 5-1 West Virginia Mountaineers in a Big East game that would have been hyped for all the right reasons only a week ago. Except that come this Saturday, it wasn’t. It grabbed the headlines because of the unfortunate and tragic loss of UConn cornerback Jasper Howard.

Howard was stabbed to death on campus early last Sunday, leaving investigators to piece together the homicide, his teammates to piece together their  battered and trembling hearts, and Huskies head coach Randy Edsall to piece together the remnants of what began as a season with promise.

Police arrested a man and placed him on $100,000 bail after lying to authorities and using a fake name while being questioned about the events that took place the evening Howard died. What we know is that an altercation took place and Howard was stabbed in the stomach. What we don’t know is who did it and what caused it.

Not that it really matters. Justice will be served, but pick any young man wearing a Huskies jersey today and he will tell you the only absolute in any of this is that Howard isn’t coming back.

Nobody would have blamed the university or the UConn football team if they told West Virginia thanks, but no thanks; we don’t need to be playing football this weekend. We would have understood, and we would have prayed and grieved with our boys in UConn blue.

But the Huskies did show up, and the people of Morgantown turned into one collective host family. What transpired is the unequivocal reason why we watch sports.

Hundreds of pins and armbands with Howard’s ‘6’ on them were handed out at the entrances to Mountaineer Field. Must have been a determined UConn mother who put all of those together to remember Howard, right? Wrong. Try Kacy Korczyk, a student at West Virginia.

“It means so much,” Korczyk told the Associated Press. “Just by [Howard] being a college student, I know he relates to a lot of us. This being their first game [since Howard’s death], we needed to do something for it.”

A big banner hung in the UConn tunnel entrance to the field and read, “Today we are all Huskies.” The banner donned the signatures of West Virginia fans.

Everyone in attendance honored Howard with a pre-game moment of silence, and the Mountaineer faithful gave the Huskies a long, warm standing ovation as they took the field. Players and coaches from both teams exchanged handshakes and hugs on the field prior to the game.

The UConn players brought Howard’s jersey and helmet with them on the road, and his locker will be kept intact for the next two years, or the time when Howard would have been expected to graduate from the university.

But Howard would be happy to know that not everything was sentimental. The Huskies battled the Mountaineers for four quarters, gaining almost 120 more yards on offense then West Virginia (who is ranked No. 23 in the BCS and No. 22 in the AP poll).

Down 21-17 late in the fourth quarter, UConn quarterback Cody Endres found Marcus Easley for an 88-yard touchdown pass, giving the Huskies a three-point lead with 3:50 remaining in the game. It had the full look of a storybook ending. It was scripted to perfection, a team rallying around the tears to trump the type of devastation that young lives aren’t supposed to know. It also wasn’t meant to be.

Noel Devine tiptoed down the sideline for a 56-yard touchdown only minutes after Easley’s score to give West Virginia a 28-24 victory. It was the last hurrah of Devine’s 178-yard day, an effort that will keep the Mountaineers atop the Big East and climbing up the BCS poll. But in no way did it diminish what UConn did on a day when their minds were probably focused on Howard’s Monday funeral in Miami.

“I just feel empty,” said Edsall. “The kids played their hearts out and did what we asked them to do. This is a special group of kids.”

There were meatier matchups on Saturday’s slate, games that involved big horses such as Florida, Alabama, Penn State and USC. But good luck finding a game that embodies the true spirit of sportsmanship, competition, unity, brotherhood, compassion, triumph and honor more than this one did. In fact you can’t. It’s impossible.

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