I love this job. It combines a lot of my best talents: writing, research, wit, being correct and telling people why they are wrong. One of my favorite things about this job is that, in addition to my own column, I get to do collaborative work with other wonderfully talented writers on a weekly basis as a part of The Daily Campus Editorial Board.
We’ve covered a variety of topics that have a direct impact on the University of Connecticut community: private jets, 10-year plans, why Luke Feeney is by far the best writer in the opinion section and poor institutional planning. This February we wrote — in my opinion — our strongest piece of the semester. It was looking back on the #SaveUConn movement that engulfed Storrs at the beginning of the 2023 spring semester. On that article, this comment was left:
“What unites UConn? Mindless college sports… No one really cares about college sports after the fact.”
This is not a defense of UConn Athletics, as I believe there is plenty that we can and should criticize them for. Despite consistently operating within a budgetary deficit for years, the university continues to fork money over to them without hesitation; while stuck in a $47 million hole in 2021, when they needed $17 million for a new ice hockey rink, the money was approved unanimously by the Board of Trustees.
There’s also the fact that the UConn foundation is adamant on chartering private jets for their coaches for recruiting trips despite the devastating impacts on the environment. Studies show that flying by private jet is up to 14 times more polluting than flying commercial, and it is responsible for producing as much as 480 times the carbon dioxide emissions compared to an average person’s climate footprint by air travel.
I, and anyone who has interacted with me, will tell you that I am a naturally cynical person, but this level of cynicism is a bit much even for me. While the commenter is right that sports — especially basketball — do typically generate the highest level of campus engagement among UConn students, I reject the notion that it is just mindless groupthink.
In the past two years, myself along with thousands of other students got to witness history: the utter domination by the men’s basketball team over the past two years en route to consecutive NCAA titles, making them the third program to pull off the rare feat of repeating as the kings of March.
Getting to watch this team for the past two years has been one of the greatest joys of my life and not something I will soon be forgetting. Watching UConn’s dominance over the course of these past two tournaments brought me closer with the friends I’ve made up here, gave me and my dad an excuse to have an incredible night in Boston watching the Huskies go on an unheard of 30-0 run against Illinois in the Elite Eight and will forever be a trump card over all my former classmates from high school who went to big-time sports schools and didn’t get to watch back-to-back titles.
Sports are beautiful, frustrating, unpredictable and heartbreaking; UConn, and its students, are better for having them. Obviously, there is much that needs to be done regarding the administration’s funding for athletic programs here at UConn and nationwide. However, I can assure you that I will not be forgetting what I’ve seen.
Sports give us the rare opportunity to truly forget about everything else in our lives and be together, engagement that I wish was present for other pressing issues such as sexual assault on-campus, UConn’s climate complacency and ever-increasing cost of living. But, that lack of mobility isn’t the fault of sports.
I will remember the noise, the excitement and above all else, the unfettered rapture of victory. Watching a bunch of students who come from different backgrounds, study different topics, and have different cultural and political issues unite is not mindless… it’s community, which shines a light on the true beauty of sports.