Clemson's Chris Chancellor wears the number 6 in honor of his fallen friend UConn's Jasper Howard during the Tigers win over the Miami Hurricanes. Photo by Rex Brown.
By Will Vandervort
MIAMI GARDENS, FL — When he went to bed last Saturday night, Clemson cornerback Chris Chancellor was feeling as good as he can be.
Earlier in the day, he and his Clemson teammates dismantled Wake Forest 38-3 at Death Valley. It was a win the program desperately needed and a win Chancellor needed to make the most of his senior season.
But when the 5-10 defensive back woke up Sunday morning, everything that happened on Saturday quickly became a distant memory. With his cell phone off while he slept, Chancellor received several calls and texts with people trying to get in touch with him from his hometown of Miami.
When he returned those calls and texts early Sunday morning, he learned about the unfortunate death of Connecticut defensive back Jasper Howard, who was stabbed following a campus dance last Saturday night.
“I was in shock when they started to explain to me what had happened,” Chancellor said. “Jas was a great guy.”
Chancellor knew Howard from their days together as teammates at Miami Edison High School.
“We played on the same teams and ran track together and everything,” the Clemson senior said. “I’m just in shock because he was the type of guy that didn’t mess with anybody. He was outgoing, fun and a lot of people liked him.”
And it was for that reason Chancellor honored his friend by wearing the No. 6 as opposed to his regular No. 38 jersey in the Tigers’ 40-37 win over No. 8 Miami Saturday at Land Shark Stadium in Miami. Chancellor, who returned home and played in front of friends and family for the first time since coming to Clemson, recorded five tackles, four solo and one pass broken up in what was an emotional day for the Miami native.
“It was a pretty tough week,” Chancellor said after the game. “Jas was a great player and I just want to say that we love him. Wearing No. 6 and honoring Jas was something special to me. Coming back home and playing in Miami and knowing the last game I played in Miami was with Jas, this was kind of special to me.”
Chancellor wasted little time last week in approaching Clemson coach Dabo Swinney with his request to wear No. 6.
Now more than a week after Howard’s death, Chancellor still is having troubles coming to grips with what happened. How does a guy who doesn’t cause trouble and avoided the dangers of where he grew up in Miami’s roughest neighborhoods die tragically at college and thousands of miles away from it all?
“Jas used to walk to practice through the projects and nothing ever happened to him. You send your son off to college thinking he is going to be safe, but you can’t stop violence,” Chancellor said. “To get a phone call that your son has been killed, it has to be rough. You send him away to college to get a good degree and to make something of himself, and to get a phone call like that, it has to be pretty rough.”
And though he is trying to understand why his friend left this world so tragically, Chancellor is trying to move on by remembering the good times he had with his old teammate. Like the time as a high school senior, when Chancellor, a long jumper at the time, told the younger Howard, who was two years behind him in school, that he would never be able to break his long jump records.
“We always had fun together,” said Chancellor, who stayed back in Miami and will attend Howard’s funeral today. “We never got into any trouble together. We always were in competition with each other and actually the years I was a senior, and we were long jumping together, I used to always out jump him all the time.
“I used to tell him he could never out jump me. But he was a very determined guy and when I came back to visit, I was told he was jumping 24s and 25s and I was like ‘Wow, Jas is jumping that far?’ He made it to state jumping 25s so I was real proud of him for that.”
And though it wasn’t Chancellor who scored the winning touchdown for Clemson Saturday, Jacoby Ford, who also wears No. 6, did.
“I want to give God the honor because without God none of this is possible,” Chancellor said. “I know Jas is looking down at us right now and I know he gave us the strength to help us win. He wears No. 6, what a coincidence.”
