The only thing I felt was numb when Connecticut running back Andre Dixon rushed into the endzone to secure a 33-30 triple overtime victory. The fact Connecticut had only been a Division I football program for less than a decade made the deafening “U-C-O-N-N” chant I was hearing from the Huskies fan base inside a deathly silent Notre Dame Stadium much, much harder to take.
“Are you okay?” my then-girlfriend kindly asked, squeezing my hand on that dark day in 2009 while we watched the Connecticut sideline celebrate, and all I could muster was a quiet, “No.