Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Videos we watched in class

In Rituals and Traditions we discussed the notion of traditions as spectacle. We started with the basic definitions, the unusual, the notable, the entertaining, the exciting public event that is visually striking. All of those things that go into making a gameday atmosphere. I love that stuff. I want to know how they all started, and how they came to pass. And some of these we can get to pretty easily.

For instance, when we talked about aural expressions, I showed this video, and part of the origin story is tacked on to the end.

We discussed other chants and cheers. And the silent expressions. I thought about just showing raw footage of Taylor University’s silent night, but this TV package explains the whole thing.

We discussed visual displays, and I showed this video, while I also confessed that dotting the i does nothing for me. But if it was like this every week, it’d be one of my favorite traditions. Dotting the i is 90 years old this year, and it’s thought to be one of the first big marching band arrangements, and certainly one of the longest lasting.

And, since I’d poked fun at the Aggies on Tuesday, I gave them a little video redemption today, sharing part of this package on midnight yell practice. All of which, as I explained, stems from there not being anything else to do at College Station.

And we talked about stadium performances, like this new thing that Clemson is doing. It’s great! I know, in my part of the world Clemson and great don’t often go together, but this is great, which the game announcers conveniently explained for us.

I talked more about Osceola and Renegade than perhaps they wanted to know, but this is a fascinating piece of lore.

Just to change it up, I touched on the La Barra Brava at DC United. No one knew what barra brava meant, but we talked about Bolivian immigrants coming to that region and attaching themselves to the club in the 1990s and now it’s impossible to think about a game there without them, even as what they’re doing isn’t routinely expected at U.S.A. sporting events.

And then I shared an example of one of the few instances of tifo in the U.S.

There are a lot of compelling examples in soccer, mostly from Europe, where these fans have tied the game and the club to their community, where it feels far more intensely wrapped into identity in a way that we don’t often see here, but you can’t everything in in one day.

And now, next week, they all have to share examples of rituals and traditions they’ve found, in brief individual presentations. We should get two dozen new examples out of the exercise. Or at least I hope we do.

During office hours, since no one came to visit, I knocked off some work, and then I started writing a column. I had this idea the other day and it has been bouncing around in my head long enough that I had to start whipping it into shape. I didn’t finish the job, but this evening I’ve made the thing much better. We’ll see, tomorrow, if I can perhaps try to make something of it.

We watched these videos in Criticism today. This was a long-form ESPN package that ESPN wrote, which followed up on a newspaper article we discussed in class on Tuesday. This woman is just incredible.

We also watched this one, and I think I’m retiring the video. I like it better than two consecutive classes. And I don’t think they’re as impressed with what’s going on in this production, or my explanation of it, than perhaps they should. But the man at the end is a hit.

And then there was this video, which two or three of them had seen, but more were interested in. Many excellent questions were raised. They couldn’t answer them all themselves, but right now I’m pleased to see them thinking their way into the questions.

It occurred to me, watching this once again before the class met, that this particular game was perhaps the first time a where-were-you-when moment took place that everyone had phones in their pocket. They didn’t make that specific point in the piece, but they walk you right up to it.

That’s enough for now. I have a meeting in the morning for which I must prepare. And more things to grade. And other items to work on, too. Keeps me out of trouble.

photo / Wednesday — No comments
25
Feb 26

Progressus, progressus

I have printed out a monthly calendar and, today, jotted down every thing required of me. This makes … three printed and two digital calendars from which I work. On this new one, I have created the impression that every moment of the next five weeks is accounted for already. But I only have that feeling because the page that holds April on it is beneath the page that has all of March on it. The first day with nothing on the calendar is March 28th.

It’s all achievable. I wouldn’t do this to myself otherwise. I wouldn’t want to add too much more to the pile, and I don’t have a lot of time to twiddle my thumbs. But it’s all doable. And none of it is too much, especially. It just so happens to be a confluence of many events converging. A concurrence of conflux, if you will.

Usually I can think of today, and tomorrow. Maybe the day after. Now I am staring at certain dates and looming deadlines and reminding myself: progress, progress. And so it was a great afternoon to have a faculty meeting.

I’m going to go back to grading in just a moment. I have a class full of short papers to read, and then 40-some reading assignments to look at. Students were reading something about Mark Zuckerberg and … it’s eye-opening. I have to leave comments and answer questions and try to limit the typos. (Unlike this place.) It’s time consuming, is all, and the number of things to do that take time is piling up.

Before all of that, though, it is time for the weekly check on the kitties. And this week, as every week, no one relaxes as hard as Phoebe relaxes.

It’s not a contest, Poseidon. She’s a big relaxer.

I said it’s not a contest. You can’t win this one.

See what I mean? No one relaxes harder than this cat.

The kitties are doing well, as you can see. They’re very helpful with the work I am doing at my desk. One of them is always ready to jump up here and insist I take breaks. Probably for the best. Keeps one fresh and patient. Keeps the feedback useful. Maybe it keeps it on point and succinct.

Probably not the last one, but we can hope. Students hope most of all.

Also, I have to finish two slide decks for lectures tomorrow. And write on some things that need writing for work. Ten pages done last night and today! Also, I need to set up something else I’m writing tomorrow.

Progress, progress.

adventures / cycling / photo / Rowan / sports / Tuesday / video — No comments
24
Feb 26

We can at least agree that the Aggie War Hymn is an ear worm

I had the weirdest dream this morning. But no one cares about your dreams. If you’re writing a blog, or someplace that’s not your own dream journal, or the Journal of Altered Conscious Mental, Emotional, and Sensory Experiences, no one will. This should be a lesson to you. Don’t write it out for others, because no one is reading about your dreams (and Freud isn’t coming along to analyze you in the comments.)

Simply do this instead. Point out you had a dream or dreams. This signals that you have not only slept recently, but done so to the extent that you could enter REM sleep. And then, share that you, too, are dismissive of the dreams, that you know that no one cares. And then, by definition, you are hip.

Not only are you hip, but you, my friend, are a dreamer.

And this is the sort of thing I normally charge $84.95 for down at the airport Ramada, where the lonely, bored, and vaguely motivated will fall all over themselves to see my latest slide decks.

No one cares about your slide decks. All the above? You can apply that to your presentations, too. Oh, sure, you put in a lot of work and they’re interesting, noteworthy, sometimes even compelling. But, and this is the key, they are those things in the moment, not in the re-telling.

Pick your spots.

No one cares about your spots.

Except for infectious disease specialists. Tell them everything. Do not charge them Ramada rates.

Here’s the view from the 6th floor almost-corner office. Not bad out there. Most of the streets on the way in were in great shape. Just one, screen by trees and hills and houses, looked a bit rough. At least for our commute. Quite a few people didn’t make it in today. Not everyone has the same snow experience. You can also see that, below, just by carefully observing which people have shoveled their sidewalks 48-plus hours after the snow stopped and who hasn’t.

In my Rituals and Traditions class today I tried to frame things so that we start thinking of these things more like a team, a league or a school, and not like a fan. I presented them with some research on rituals from a marketing perspective. (Rituals have staying power and create conditions where highly identified fans want to come back, take part, and come back again. Also, most of them spend more money on other stuff at the venue than the ticket price itself.) The lecture got us through about a decade of marketing of fandom research and a few more years on sports fan sociology. Also, I showed them the Aggie War Hymn at weddings, with which I made a point about things in, and out, of context.

And then I explained the song. It’s a song about hating your rivals. I explained the history of the song. J.V. “Pinky” Wilson wrote the song in a trench in France during World War I. He came home to College Station, finished his degree, and sang the song in a quarter. Some of the A&M yell leaders heard it, and convinced him to enter it into a campus song contest. It won, and since 1920 it has been an integral part of Texas A&M fandom. I mean, they sing it at weddings.

At which point I paused, and deadpanned, “White people weddings, man.”

Then I said, there are a lot of these videos on YouTube.

We also considered the shared affiliation of rituals, as in the example of the running of the Gumps. Look at that zeal! And the footspeed!

And then we considered what it means to be a part of 61,000 people singing to your favorite team.

I was also able to cite to them a study that told us some 98 percent of fans engage in sports rituals. Most of them have to do with wearing the team gear and colors, but that study broke out 15 other criteria, and quite a few make the cut for people.

On Thursday, my students’ surveys will be completed. We’re asking questions of our study body. Hopefully some of the information will be help to our class as we try to help find and or develop things our athletic department might work on.

In Criticism, we discussed baseball, beginning with this story about one of the Phillies recent relievers. As a young man he caused a terrible car accident that killed one man, badly injured a teenager and almost derailed his own life. But then one of the truly selfless and remarkable things about humanity happens. It’s a terrific story.

I asked the group what they would like to know at the end of the story. What’s not here that’d you like to see in a followup. Someone said they’d like to see what happened if the pitcher and the family met. Just you wait for Thursday.

We also talked about a museum piece — meaning copy from the Smithsonian — about Jackie Robinson. It didn’t really fit the bill, but we were able to discuss why, and also story curation and, again, what’s not in this piece. What wasn’t there was what Robinson did after he walked away from baseball, and that’s every bit, or more as important, as his time with the Dodgers.

In the evening, as the day is getting later everything felt sunny and cheery, even if it was cold, and it looks like Hoth.

We’re right at the point where 12 hours of the day is in daylight. Right at the point where it seems we might make it once again. Right at the moment that should have happened two weeks ago, but will take place three or four weeks from now: it’ll finally feel like winter is behind us.

Since it isn’t, I rode in the basement this evening. I’ve been suffering through the little riding I’ve done of late. Everything got out of whack around the holidays and my cardio slipped and nothing has helped and it just felt like a big chore — a big painful chore.

But this brief ride, for the first time in a long while, things finally felt good. I don’t know why it seemed to click back into place, physically or mentally, but it was about time. Also, Spain. And I went up a hill prominent enough that it got its own little graphic in the heads up display.

I’m sure that’s useful for climbers, so that they might time their exertion to perfection. But it does something else for the rest of us.

Anyway, 30-some minutes over a lumpy area of Tossa de Mar, with two little Cat 5 climbs according to the profile, way off in the northeast of Spain. I hope I get a few more rides in a row that feel as decent as this one.

There’s a lot of riding to do.

And a lot of work to do. So … back at it.

adventures / Monday / photo / sports / video — No comments
23
Feb 26

Big snow, big winds, big visuals

All of our recycling sits in the garage. It waits there, impatiently, until my own impatience tells me to do something with the leaning tower of cardboard I’m assembling. Fortunately, I don’t have to make the trip too often these days. I think I go about once every three weeks. And Saturday was that time. Get that stuff out of the garage so we can walk around a little easier, and not have it threaten to bury me, a fine coating of paperboard and other, heavier, recyclable products. So I backed out the car, put two bins — one large and one small — of our mixed recyclables, and all of the deconstructed cardboard. Drove it all over to the inconvenience center. It’s a fine place, about seven miles away, and they take all of these things and more. Also, they’re not terrible strict, so long as you arrive before they close and back your vehicle into the unloading area. These are the rules and you must follow them.

If you do not, you will incur his wrath.

That bear has been sitting there for … a while. The gentleman that manages this facility for the county is seldom in his little office here, too much work to do around the site, but that bear never misses a shift. There’s a story with this guy. He was fished out of, or saved from, one of the waste bins and now he has this role. I hope he is well compensated.

Did you notice the sky in that photo? Here’s another Saturday view. It was about 50 degrees that day. I did the recycling in a t-shirt. No way, I thought, is it going to snow as predicted. And they predicted a lot. All evidence before hand to the contrary.

Sunday was not bright and blue, but gray and chilly. I watched the men’s Olympic hockey gold medal game. That was fun. Then, at the end, a few of the guys brought Johnny Gaudreau’s sweater onto the ice.

That’s touching. Gold medalists are skating a sweater with Johnny Gaudreau’s name on it.

Gaudreau, and his brother Matt, were killed by a drunken motorist while riding bikes in August 2024.

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— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) February 22, 2026 at 11:00 AM

We did some research on local cycling attitudes immediately after they were killed. I presented it to the city and at an academic conference. We were able to help create a little something useful from it. I try not to forget that the day before they were killed, I was out on a ride, just one road over, at about the same time of the early evening.

The man that killed them is still in jail, awaiting trial. He has a procedural hearing later this week on one element of his case. He has a wife and two children, and so the impact here is widely felt. Johnny had a wife and two kids. They were expecting their third. Matt and his wife were expecting their first. The brothers were back in town because their sister was supposed to be married the very next day. There’s absolutely nothing but sadness around this story, and it’s a widely known bit of business. There were a lot of dusty eyes at that gesture.

After the players got their medals, they all skated to center ice for a group photo. And then two of them held up a finger, a wait-a-sec finger, and skated away. Soon they came back, two children in tow. Those are two of Johnny Gaudreau’s children.

Meanwhile, as the weather loomed, people stopped to add things to the ghost bikes memorial where they were killed. Someone shimmied up that pole and mounted an American flag. Everyone seems to agree he should have been with the team, winning and celebrating with the boys. But for a guy that had too much to drink, was angry, driving aggressively and did all of this in one horribly impulsive, accidental moment.

I’ve been told the memorial continued to grow throughout the afternoon.

And then, later, the snow came. I went to the basement to turn a few miles over on my bike. There was a bit of dust out on the cooler spots in the yard. When I came up an hour later, we had an event. And then the winds came, gusting up to about 40 mph.

It looked like this around dinner time, and every weather model projected snow through about noon today. That it was 50 degrees Saturday meant nothing at all come Sunday night. Sunday night, it was this.

Monday morning, after the traditional chocolate chip pancakes required of a snow day, it looked like this in the driveway, which takes the both of us about an hour to clean.

We had about 14 inches of snow. Mostly light and fluffy, and easily maneuverable by shovel. Perhaps a bit less so by snow blower. The better news is that was the drier variety, and the sun was out to do its work. A fair amount of it melted down today. Unlike the last snow and ice storm that was historic for its staying power, the evidence of this storm, historic for being a blizzard, should all be gone by next weekend.

Is it the weekend yet?

Friday / links / photo / sports — Comments Off
20
Feb 26

Cats great, snow gone, writing written, forecast … let’s just not

Since we haven’t done so this week, and since they featured in otherwise as a big part of the goings on around here, let’s do a quick check in on the kitties. They had a visit to the vet on Monday, had a little anesthesia and a dental checkup and came home woozy. But as that, and their disappointment at being asked to go somewhere and doing something they clearly were not interested in, wore off, they’re right back to normal. And it’s the delightful usual antics and comfort cuddles from them. Or for them. I am never sure which.

Anyway, so that I might fulfill my feline contractual obligations, and also boost traffic around the ol’ site, here’s Phoebe, pointing out, once again, that she is not on the counter, but sitting in this little cardboard drink cartoon thing, thus maintaining her status as a good girl.

And here’s Poseidon, patiently sitting at one of the island chairs. That’s not a usual spot for him, but this week he’s been there a few times.

I’d really like to know how cats establish their patterns, and what prompts them to create new ones.

They’re both doing well, and I am sure would like to just stay inside where it warm, dry, and there are no vet techs.

Their view outside has changed. The snow and ice have melted away. Thursday and today were a big day on that front. The temperatures warmed up just a bit, all of the dry air has been pushed out and, for the first time in almost four weeks, we could see what was beneath it all.

Honestly, it was a little weird for the first few minutes.

We went outside to do some yard thing that has been neglected this past month while we lived inside the arctic circle. The ground was spongy and wet. I said, “Ya know? I miss the snow.”

Not to worry, guess what’s in the weekend forecast: A lot of snow.

So the greenish=brown grass was nice while it lasted, I guess. But we could use the water in the soil, so there’s that.

While we were out, we discovered a dead squirrel. I guess it had been underneath the snow and ice for a while. Not wanting it to just stay there for Ice Age v 2.0, I went over and picked it up. By hand.

Kidding, of course. I do not have the latest in steampunk squirrel removal machinery, however, so I used the Squirrel Lever 3000, brought to you by the makers of the Bass-O-Matic. I apologized to the little guy, and then carefully removed him from the premises. Nature gives and nature takes, and a hard winter is hard on some of the furry little creatures.

Also, this is why the birders are getting fatter on our bird seed. Less competition.

I wrote something last night. Got it published today. It’s about the Olympics, and fans, and nationalism. You can click this link and read it.

We know more about athletes than ever before. We see them in closeup HD. We see them in carefully crafted publicity and commercial campaigns. We see them in their social media. Around the Olympics, there’s even more. We see them in the vignettes that NBC produces, well-crafted packages designed to humanize the person who runs faster and skis better than anyone you’ve ever met.

It can create some real parasocial interaction. That smiling young face, the ones with something to prove to themselves and their neighbors, and the ones trying to show their kids what heart and determination look like, they come into our homes, and we think we know them. They are from places we’ve heard of; they wear the same colors in the same patterns which we hold dear.

Even though almost none of us will ever climb to the top of a podium, and few of us have any real chance of becoming the best in the world at something, we carry with us, just as they do, aches and pains and worries and injuries and fear and love. Yet, for some reason, we aren’t so willing to let them do that.

This is what it means to be an American athlete on the biggest stage in your sport. You hear the ringing cheers and are embraced by coaches and teammates and family and competitors. Maybe you hear your anthem played for you. You face ridicule and scorn, vitriol and threats from far corners.

It goes on like that for a bit, trying not to sound like a scold, until, at the end, it absolutely becomes one.

I think I have one more piece to write next week, where there will be no scolding. I just have to get it in among all of the other things. There are so many other things that must get done. Four classes to prepare for next week, about 100 things to grade, my review packet (some 40-ish pages, but 15 or so are done) and two studies to work on. I go back and forth: there is no time for this, or, I’m in great shape, take the day off. Really it just depends on when I ask myself about it all.

But I’m not going to ask myself about it anymore tonight. I am going to stare at the forecast, and will it to chance.

Meteorologists are predicting 18 inches of snow this weekend. Give or take.