'Blo It Right By 'Em: Blues Make Way to Brown

Providence, R.I.—West Canaan, Texas is not like Providence, R.I.

In West Canaan, there is a charmingly insular community of lifelong neighbors. There are green, well-tended lawns incubated by the steam of scorching Texas summers. There are pick-up trucks, convivial barbeques, and white, rustic houses. Framed by dusty roads, they all evoke the calming pastorale of classic Americana.

But the biggest difference between the cradle of Brown University and the stomping ground of West Canaan High School is not the scenery.

In West Canaan, Texas, football isn’t just a sport. It’s a way of life. It’s something, in particular, that incoming Brown quarterback Jonathon Moxon understands all too well.

“In America, we have laws, laws against killing, against stealing, and it’s just accepted that as a member of American society you will live by these laws,” Moxon told The Crimson in an exclusive interview. “Well, as a boy growing up in West Canaan, you never questioned the sanctity of football. You just listened to what the coaches said and tried as best as you could to win.”

“Win at all costs,” he added.

Moxon—or “Mox,” as he is commonly called—should know. He stood right at the fervor’s epicenter as one of mythic coach Bud Kilmer’s West Canaan High Coyotes. A second-stringer for the first three years of high school, Moxon took over as signal-caller just two games into his final campaign after a freak injury sidelined two-time All-Texas quarterback Lance Harbor.

Harbor, who had already committed to Florida St., suffered a vicious sack and permanently damaged the already tenuous ligaments in his right knee. When Harbor’s football career was permanently ended, all eyes immediately turned to Moxon—who just happened to be reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five behind the covers of his playbook.

“I don’t want your life,” he recalled saying, with a glaze over his eyes, dramatically speaking in the present tense and as if his at-times insensitive father were interviewing him.

But for Moxon, life was just getting started. In a place where Friday night football is the only game in town, Moxon said, the Coyotes are heroes—both celebrities and saviors. Becoming starting quarterback gave him everything, from free beer at local convenience stores to a billboard with his very own face on it, as well as virtual exemption from local and federal law.

Grinning, he recalled how one of his teammates stole a sheriff’s car, drunkenly drove around town late at night with three naked sophomore girls inside and astonishingly received no punishment thereafter. But for the more academically focused members of the team—that is, “me,” Moxon explained—there was a certain downside to such a retrograde intellectual environment.

“West Canaan is a place where your father doesn’t care if you get accepted into an Ivy League college, but rather that night’s game against Gilroy,” Moxon said. “Also, we once spent literally an entire class going over synonyms for the word ‘penis.’’

“My teacher was apparently a stripper,” he added.

So how did he end up on the east coast, as a Brown Bear? Originally, it sure wasn’t due to football. A local radio station has him on record as saying, “Ivy League? Heck, I don’t know,” when questioned about possibly competing against perennial powers Penn and Harvard in the Ancient Eight.Moxon, with no plans of playing football after high school, had applied to Brown on his own and was accepted under regular admission. And even more impressively, he was awarded the Ivy League’s first-ever merit-based academic scholarship, which will cover his full financial need.

Moxon confessed that he was all set on majoring in English in Providence and staying far away from the sport that dominated his childhood. He had a thoughtful, comely girlfriend, loved to read and was leaving all remnants of Texas and Kilmer—with whom he reportedly had a rocky relationship—for good.

But after watching Harvard’s breathtakingly implausible 35-34 comeback over his future alma mater this past September, he promised himself that he would join the team upon matriculation, even going so far as to call up Bears head coach Phil Estes.

Early indications show that Moxon, who displayed a very special proficiency for Ryan Fitzpatrick-like scrambles at West Canaan, will certainly have the opportunity to challenge current Bears quarterback Joe DiGiacomo for rights under center.

But the real question may be whether he’ll bring a little of that storied Texas football fanaticism to the Ivy League.

“As long as the girls have whipped cream there, things will work out,” Moxon said, blatantly winking and elbowing me.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.