Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Don’t get married on a Fall Saturday, anywhere

I tried to get this published elsewhere, but failed. I still like it. I’m sharing it here.

It started, perhaps, as an in-joke. Maybe a brother-in-law joke. Or a t-shirt, one of those hastily designed gaudy numbers you see at fan shops. Maybe the whole thing began as a bit on talk radio. Sometimes the organic nature of jokes, or even traditions, can be lost to us without a very serious investigation.

This is not that.

I remember it all those ways. A guy said it on the air, off the cuff, from the hip, and wherever else one-liners fall from. I saw it on a shirt. And, if you’re there long enough, you live it, unfortunately.

You don’t book weddings on fall Saturdays in the South.

I have been to several Saturday weddings in the fall in the Deep South, an exercise designed to weigh your love of sport and the ol’ alma mater against these two people standing up there. Who are those people, anyway? Strangers, probably. I mean, do you know the bride’s third quarter rushing stats? Have you memorized the tackle for loss numbers the groom has put up this season? What even is the win-loss record of the person performing this ceremony, anyway? Alternatively, it could be a deliberate measure to keep attendance low.

I mention this because, of course, weddings are organized far in advance, but not farther out than the more-than-a-century long tradition of watching dudes hit each other as hard as they can for temporary victory and immortal glory. Long is the memory, short is the ceremony. The same is true for any given football play, but one of these two events lasts longer in the memory of most of us.

Authurine Babineaux and Merrick Bourgeois — two people we don’t know at all, but who prove my point nicely — were married on Saturday, October 31st in 1959 in Cankton, Louisiana, right there at St. John Berchman Catholic Church. The writeup in the paper, as was the custom, describes the bride’s dress and what her attendant was wearing. There’s a photo with the notice, the image has gone fuzzy with digitization, but the new Authurine Bourgeois looks beautiful. The groom is wearing a white jacket. They had a little reception in the cafeteria of the school they both attended. Maybe they met there. Maybe they hit it off there. We don’t know. We do know there was a four-layer cake. We don’t know when the celebration ended, or if they were able to catch Billy Cannon’s immediately legendary punt return.

There are more than 2,000 returns for “married Oct 31” in the 1959 Louisiana newspapers. And some of, most of, or, perish the thought, all of those people who attended missed Billy Cannon’s Halloween Run at Death Valley. But which did they talk about more, as the years passed?

My first fall wedding on a Saturday in the South was in 1993. It was November 20th. It was 11th ranked Alabama at number 6 Auburn. It was the Iron Bowl.

It was a wedding in someone’s home. And they chose to do this event during the football game.

Perhaps there was some other event scheduled in the living room in the next hour.

Oh, the service was lovely, marred only by my running up and down the hall, getting scoring updates from the radio from the bedroom where the groom had previously been getting ready. “Does anyone have a reason these too should not be wed? And what is the score, young man?” Even then, as a young football fan, I wanted to share the news, and that news was the game and newly emerged folk heroes.

Auburn won that game 22-14. The Tigers were on probation that year: no bowls and no TV. Some entrepreneurial outfit sold Radio National Championship bumper stickers. They were everywhere for a time.

That house, where the wedding was, was full of people. I wonder which event is more memorable all these years later.

In October of 2012, my wife and I (who were married in the summer, thank you very much) attended a wedding that was scheduled on the Third Saturday in October. In the South, you capitalize it just like that. The Third Saturday in October. This is the Alabama-Tennessee game, a joyous collision that seriously impacts commerce in two states. Alabama being atop the polls and facing a heated rival probably hampered the wedding’s turnout. There were some other big games with implications that day third-ranked Florida was taking on ninth-ranked South Carolina, number six LSU had Texas A&M, ranked as the 20th best team in the land.

Why, I asked the bride, beforehand, did you choose this time of year? This date? She attended a huge football school. As did her brother and her mother and her father before her. As did everyone up and down her family tree. As did her husband.

She offered that the weather is too unpredictable in the spring. (It is not.) And that there would be TVs at the reception. (There were not.) It was a fine wedding. I remember there was a bar at the reception – but no TVs with games. On the bar were little chalkboards which told you the preferred drinks of the bride and groom, so you could order the same and be just like them. I don’t remember her choice, but the groom’s drink was rum and Coke.

You don’t have to ask yourself where he was on the idea of a Saturday wedding in the fall.

A few years later, in 2016, we attended a wedding in Tennessee. One of those where the bride and groom had reserved a beautiful chapel and everyone looked terrific, and every single person was in a festive mood. It was a mild October day. I was just getting over a cold and had a terrible coughing fit during the middle of the service. I left so as not to interrupt the beautiful ceremony.

I regained my composure but couldn’t get back to my seat without causing another scene, so I eased up the side of the chapel, and stood along the wall behind these guys.

He was anxious about the event; the game I mean. That installment of the Tennessee-Georgia series turned out to have one of the wildest finishes in the history of the sport. Those border rivalries are always tense, taut, and played close to the rented tuxedo vest.

The young couple got married and we gathered outside for the ceremonial send off. The bride and groom ran through the gathered loved ones and into the waiting car. That’s when the bomb was thrown, and the subsequent Hail Mary.

And that’s when this grown man, the guy above, a pillar of his community, a member of the local education board who was eager to see off a loved one started doing chest slides in the lawn in front of the chapel. The bride was beautiful. The bride was upstaged.

This isn’t about me, but that would become one of my bigger moments on social media. All the right people and outlets amplified the post and eventually it got back to the guy above, a person I did not know. I thought he might be angry that I’d outted him in profile. He thought it was hilarious. I assume that’s because his team won.

And that’s one of the risks you take with a wedding during football season. What happens if the wrong team wins. Now who has a sour taste in their mouth about your wedding day? Your guests? Your partner? Your parents? You?

“But, dear writer,” you may say, “this is not my concern. I am not in the South. I will not be wed in the South. I live here, in the world wide web.”

Fair enough, bride-elect or bridegroom-elect, but consider, that sport is part of culture. We, being social creatures, export the best parts of our culture. This, of course, is made that much easier – and each game made that much more important – because of the dazzling array of streaming and cable packages available to us today. These, then, are cautionary tales for the entire country, certainly a lesson less and less limited to the South.

Put another way, UConn and UMass have been at it since the 19th century, that series is tied, and they have two contests coming up in the next few years. Don’t ask a Huskie or the Minutemen to choose.

If you’ve got love and joyous union on the mind and there are leaves and footballs in the air, consider your audience, and consider the spring or the summer. Green leaves also make for a beautiful photographic backdrop. Baseballs are flying around.

Your guests will likely be paying much more attention to you than a routine pop up to right.

journalism / links / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — No comments
11
Nov 25

I saw no electrically charged particles released by the sun

We had a special visitor in my criticism class today. My lovely bride joined us to take part in our conversation on one of the articles the students selected for us to read. I was glad to have her there. A lot of times you just need more expertise than you have. And my expertise — such as it is — is limited to begin with. The story was actually an opinion column, which allowed us to discuss some of the differences between them.

From MTG to Charles Barkley, ignorance was on display about trans athletes:

Even on positive stories, like Tifanny Abreu ending a playoff hot streak with a Superliga title in hand or Nikki Hiltz on the charge in Grand Slam Track, the level of anti-trans ignorance is toxic.

This year, and especially last week, has been one long real-life comment section if you are trans, and especially if like sports. Politicians put on a show of ignorance at a hearing and then Charles Barkley — purportedly an ally — continued that ignorance with his insulting comments about trans athletes.

A House subcommittee hearing last week was another opportunity to show how ignorant and bigoted the GOP majority can be toward transgender Americans and how they use sports drive it home with pride. The focus was on trans women in fencing. It centered on a match where a cis woman fencer forfeited a match against a trans woman fencer and became a cause celebre to the anti-trans movement.

We talked about some of the specifics in the column, we talked about the outlet, Out Sports, and we talked about the power of the context of the links the author shared, including this really useful primer, Cracking the code of bias against transgender athletes:

The anti-trans crowd relies upon the fact that most readers and/or sports fans will not bother to check the facts for themselves, in part, because the sport is more obscure.

[…]

Fact checking would have perhaps saved Chesworth some embarrassment, but that’s the rub here. A transphobe counts on the general public to not research the claims for themselves.

I’d given that additional read, because it had some key terms to it, but it also allowed me to make a different and larger point. You could change some of the terms and that guide would help readers understand any sort of propaganda.

From time to time, as we discussed the piece, I would steal a little glance to my left to see if this was where the eminent Dr. Lauren Smith would chime in. She is an expert in this field, after all, and I just happen to listen to her talk about it. But she never interrupted me, never felt the need to correct me. So I guess the details are rubbing off.

Then we discussed this other story which I assigned to the class, The predatory web of sextortion increasingly ensnares young athletes:

John DeMay and Jenn Buta say that since they’ve made Jordan’s story public, they have heard from hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who have been victims of sextortion at some level.

“Just this week I had four reach out in a 24-hour period,” Buta said.

The parents’ advice for teens getting targeted is simple: Shut off the computer as soon as a questionable message pops up, walk away and then go tell a trusted adult. The criminals are looking for money, and if they think an avenue has dried up, they’ll likely move on. It’s like a fish wiggling off the hook. But if they believe a fish is still on the hook, there is no amount of appeasement — or payouts — that will stop them from pushing for more.

“If you don’t engage with them, they’re going to stop and move on,” John said.

Meanwhile, NCMEC suggests immediately reporting the account to a social media platform and reaching out to the organization’s hotline: 1-800-843-5678. Laws and policies can help keep the image off the internet.

“We can help,” Coffren said. “We can handle it.”

A slew of new state laws — often pushed into passage by victim families — have made sextortion a felony. Law enforcers say that since most of the international criminals don’t believe anyone will actually take their own life, they won’t actually face criminal consequences for what they believe is just a minor financial crime.

It’s why a message had to be sent.

It’s a horrible story, shocking in its details. Important in every respect. In this class we ask a set of questions about who a story is for and who the disadvantaged people are, and this story had plenty of obvious answers, and some thoughtful and unexpected one from a few students, as well.

For a lighter time, after that class ended and I moved to org comm, we talked about the concepts of conflict. (Later this week and next we move to negotiation.) The class broke up into four groups, each had a different sort of sports-centric conflict they had to resolve. One had two teammates pursuing the same woman. Another had a play-coach disagreement on tactics. There was a third conflict about playing time on a co-ed intramural team. The fourth was a conflict stemming from a captain’s favoritism among teammates. They had to understand the problem, detail the framework of solving it and create reasonable solutions. They were into it, right until the end. I think the windows face the wrong way in that room and when there was nothing in the sky above the gloaming, that was pretty much it.

Maybe they were looking ahead to seeing the Northern Lights. They were probably disappointed. We had good skies for it, for the most part, but nothing out of the ordinary. Still, it’s a delight to go outside, shiver, look up and see all of this.

It is even nicer when you rush back inside nine or 10 minutes later, because it is that time of the year now.

The time of year where I have already decided which jacket I’ll wear to campus for tomorrow’s faculty meeting. The time of year when I wonder when we’ll see the 60s again. The long-range forecast says we’ll get 60 on Sunday. But I think that’s just an automated template from the weather site. It’s also the time of year where you wonder how long I’ll complain about this. That’s a fair question. The answer is: until April, for some silly reason.

cycling / Monday / photo — No comments
10
Nov 25

A rare feeling, indeed

As of this writing, I am dangerously close to being caught up. This is a sentence I haven’t been able to say since late September or early October. Yesterday and today I did a bit of class prep. Today I graded. This evening I built slide decks for tomorrow. I even got one of my inboxes under control.

I dislike the weight of being behind. I thought of putting about 400 words into that, but everyone knows the feeling, and everyone registers it differently. Besides, that’d just slow me down. What I’ll do is enjoy this feeling for a day, maybe 36 hours. And then I’ll be behind again.

Also, I have a document to write about a future class, start building that class, this, and some things to read for tomorrow.

Since I’ve been on a roll, at least some of that gets done tonight.

Let’s look at the last few days in photographs, shall we?

What is it to go up a road? Or are you going down a road? And what distinguishes between the two? For instance, was I going up or down this road on Saturday?

I had timed up my ride to get out and about and back in time for football. From that spot I was about 13 or 14 miles from home. And I almost made it back for kickoff. Didn’t miss much, but there’s something to be said for knowing how slow you are, so you can set up and pace your whole day around a ride. Also, it was beautiful. Just gorgeous. Shorts and short sleeves and it will be much too long before I get another ride like that.

This is a park I ride by pretty regularly. There are a couple of baseball and softball fields back there, a few soccer fields, too. I’ve never seen it this empty, and on what might be the last perfect fall Saturday of the season.

Great job, everyone!

I had a great shadow selfie. I must have been headed east at the time.

And here I am riding south, with the sun over my right shoulder.

Sometimes these roadside trees look like sculptures. Also, I didn’t notice it at the time, but there’s a bird flying through the background. Sometimes art is serendipitous.

At all times, my photos are pretending to be artistic.

I went for a run. OK, it was a short run. It was a nice foggy midnight run.

It was 5:50 p.m.

And this evening, we had a lovely sunset. I enjoyed it for about 20 seconds.

Because, of course, there are things to do.

cycling / Friday / photo — Comments Off
07
Nov 25

Photos I forgot to share

Rather than spend this time discussing today’s committee meeting — we looked at some material we’ll distribute on campus next year — or the rest of the day spent staring at words on a screen, I thought I would try to once again impress you with some photographs. These were things I shot earlier this week and, as the title says above, I forgot to share them here.

This was, I believe, from Sunday night. If you hold the phone just right you can tilt the lines whichever way you want them to go, of course, but this was the true representation relative to my position on the ground, no adjustments necessary.

And while that was in the nighttime this is fully in the afternoon, Monday specifically, when I had a little race with my sheep herding friend. He was pretty fast that day.

Here is my shadow selfie, as he is cruising through a little town. I set a PR on that segment, despite sitting up for a few photographs.

I like this one for all of the colors, one season’s palette is giving way to the next. And, also, it looks like some forgotten frozen plain. Except it isn’t forgotten — I’m here. And it isn’t frozen. Yet.

And then just up the road, this spot is only slightly evocative of an African savanna. But it’s only the colors on the ground and those couple of trees poking, and the bright appearance of the moon that bring that to mind.

In fact, the moon was watching over the neighborhood. These trees are much more familiar trees. I see them every time I come in and out.

For appearances sake, I hope they’ll hold on to their leaves just a bit longer. Until the first week of March, let’s say.

Anyway, this is the weekend when I will catch up on some things. I have been behind on some work for a few days too many, and concerted efforts will be made to get back up to level. And then Monday will come and we’ll start this again. And then I will catch up on next week and I will start in on some other projects where I am woefully behind.

But, first, I must go deal with some leaves myself.

adventures / football / Philadelphia / photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
06
Nov 25

It’s a high pitched honking sound, which trills up at the end

A breezy, chilly day. And, later, downright coolish. That’s the season, and that’s a point we must concede. This comes with this season.

In today’s Criticism in Sport Media, we watched “It’s Time.” Here’s a little clip where Billy Brewer talks about how Chucky Mullins got to Ole Miss.

The problem was that I was able to find nine minutes of the doc to skip, but we just couldn’t cut out anything else out and keep the story together. So it ran the whole class. But this will be an interesting experiment. What will the class say when we talk about it on Tuesday?

In my org comm class we talked about different types of conflict, the way behaviorists used to see it, the way we view it today, the structural and contextual factors that create it, and why it is sometimes good.

And then we played a bit of the prisoner’s dilemma. I broke the class into two groups and sent one of them outside. This group played as the Las Vegas Raiders. The other group played as the Los Angeles Chargers. I told them each the circumstance. Last game of the season, if you win, you make it to the NFL playoffs and the other team goes home. If the two teams tie you both make it to the playoffs. What do you do?

I made the groups argue this out separately amongst themselves. I brought them back together to reveal the choices they’d made. This scenario actually happened a few years ago, and some of them actually remembered it, which made the internal conflict a little more interesting. Ultimately, though, both sides decided to play for the win.

This is how it played out in real life.

So one group won, basically. One student rightly noticed that if both groups had been left in the room they could have figured this out. But that’s the prisoner’s dilemma for you.

It’s an applied approach to understanding people and groups, this class, you see.

I took a grad school class with a guy who literally wrote the book on game theory. (There are about 6,000 books on game theory, to be sure.) He talked about it for an entire semester. And so, today, I was laughing to myself about his many ridiculous stories.

After class we went over the river. Had dinner at McGillins the oldest Irish pub in the city. The food was not the best I’ve had at an Irish pub, but the experience was fine. It was just up the street from the venue where we saw.

He does laugh funny.

It’s all one-liners and bawdy dark comedy. He does a lot of good crowd work. And he laughs funny.

Then every now and again he’ll do something very thoughtful, almost philosophical, which gives away the other nonsense. The problem with one-liners, though, is that they’re almost immediately forgotten. But the laughs remain! Even the funny ones.