“You play hard; you play until the last second,” said Harris, class of ’86 at the black DC university. “You made all of us Bison proud. You hustled out there. You were smart. You were disciplined. You put everything you had into the game. And you know that, right?”
Harris readily notes the importance of history. “I was at Howard back in the day when we were just happy there was a game, many less go to this place,” she said.
“I know you might not be feeling well right now, OK, but know who you are,” she added. “You excel. You work hard. You are powerful. And you won.”
The vice president, accompanied in Des Moines, Iowa, by the second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, invited team members to tour the White House in case they wanted to “play hooky” for the afternoon.
In a previous show of support for the school’s athletic program, Harris conducted the ceremonial coin toss at Howard’s football game against Hampton University in 2021.