Howard vs Richmond: When a College Lacrosse Game Became the World’s Accidental Metaphor
From the banks of the Potomac to the back-alleys of Bangkok, the words “Howard vs Richmond” are being whispered in the sort of hushed tones normally reserved for tax audits or out-of-season karaoke. One might assume the planet has bigger headaches—nuclear sabre-rattling, inflation that behaves like a sugar-addled toddler, or that peculiar modern ritual where billionaires rocket themselves into low orbit to feel something—yet here we are, fixated on a college lacrosse game as though the fate of NATO hinges on face-off percentage.
Let us be perfectly honest: most of the world still thinks “lacrosse” is either a Swiss skincare brand or a Bond villain’s yacht. Still, Howard University versus the University of Richmond has become, in the great tradition of American cultural imperialism, an unlikely export. A bar in Lagos live-streams the match because the satellite package was cheaper than Champions League. A betting syndicate in Macau has installed a chalkboard titled “Bison vs Spiders—Over/Under on Existential Dread.” Somewhere in Berlin, a DJ samples the referee’s whistle for an EDM track called “Illegal Procedure (Mid-Tempo Existentialism Remix).” The absurdity is the point; we crave the absurd when reality refuses to blink.
On paper it’s merely the MEAC champion versus the SoCon runner-up, but paper burns easily. Howard, the historically Black university whose lacrosse program was resurrected from bureaucratic ashes only three seasons ago, travels with the kinetic energy of a nation still arguing with itself about whose history gets taught. Richmond, meanwhile, arrives in the immaculate whites of a school that once literally rented enslaved people, which the admissions brochure tastefully re-labels “complicated heritage.” If sport is the opiate of the masses, this particular fixture is a micro-dose of truth serum: uncomfortable, clarifying, impossible to schedule between classes.
The international implications, for those who enjoy torturing spreadsheets, are surprisingly concrete. Qatar’s beIN Sports paid a modest sum for North African rights after discovering that Tunisian viewers will watch literally anything if the announcer shouts in Darija. The French sports daily L’Équipe dispatched a correspondent who filed 800 breathless words about “the new American rugby avec filets,” prompting Parisian hipsters to start throwing lacrosse sticks into the Seine ironically. Even the World Anti-Doping Agency perked up, wondering if sheer narrative arc counts as a performance enhancer. (Spoiler: it does.)
And then there is the money. Soft power, like cheap whiskey, flows downhill. Howard’s sudden relevance has attracted a Dubai-based NIL fund whose marketing deck promises “authentic cultural synergy with halal compliance.” Richmond’s boosters counter with a Singapore sovereign-wealth gesture so discreet it could teach Swiss bankers about shame. Somewhere in Davos, a panel titled “Lacrosse as Geopolitical Arbitrage” is scheduled between breakfast and the ritual self-congratulation. Tickets are, naturally, non-transferable.
Yet beneath the mercantile choreography beats something embarrassingly human: kids who still believe the next whistle could rearrange the molecular structure of their lives. Watch the slow-motion replay of Howard’s sophomore midfielder—call-sign “Harlem Globetrotter of Pain”—levitating past two defenders and you will see the same reckless hope visible in Ukrainian bomb shelters and Chilean street protests. The stick is incidental; the refusal to concede the moment is universal. Richmond’s goalie, a philosophy major who quotes Camus between quarters, makes a save and screams “The plague is us!” The announcers pretend not to hear. Viewers in Seoul rewind twice, just to feel something.
Final score: Richmond 12, Howard 11, decided in overtime when the universe, ever the dramatist, allows a single bounce off the titanium of someone’s generational trauma. Handshakes are brisk, almost embarrassed, as if both teams recognize they have accidentally staged a morality play. Fireworks bloom above the stadium anyway; Americans dislike moral ambiguity without pyrotechnics.
So what does it all mean on the grand geopolitical chessboard? Probably nothing, which is precisely why it means everything. In a world busy monetizing despair, Howard vs Richmond is a fleeting reminder that even rigged games can still surprise the riggers. And if that isn’t worth a two-minute highlight package before the next climate catastrophe, then our attention spans deserve everything coming to them.
