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2
Jan 26

Between now and three weeks from now, and also May

Before this all turns into a big block of class prep, and it will, I am just doing a few hours here and there. It helps the focus, or so I tell myself, at least. As I’ve probably said, this semester’s prep will be a bit different — and doesn’t that make for an exciting January blog post?!?!

I only have one new class to prepare. (Compared to last semester’s three new preps.) The difference is time. The general rule of thumb is that you spend about an hour on each class you’ve delivered before, and you spend about two hours on each new class. So, then, I should get somewhere between a third and a half of my free time back from last term. One class will be a breeze prep-wise, another should easily fit in that window many days. And then there’s the new class, which will all the time I can give it, and more, I think.

This class might be singular. Communicating Rituals and Traditions in Sports doesn’t seem to have a direct comparison out there. There’s a fine religion and sports class at Penn, a lot of places have a sport and culture course. Notre Dam has an interesting anthropology of sport class, and reading about that has been delightful, you’ll find a lot of history of sports and a sociology of sport class here and there, but I’ve stumbled into a new niche. It all started because I always wonder what makes a tradition a thing we do, as fans or players. How did they all start? That’s really my question. The class will extend further. Why do they persist? There’s so much fan identity to explore there. And that’s a big part of the class. Last semester I invited the athletic department to take part in this class, and they are on board.

So we will study rituals and traditions, distinguishing between them in the first week or so. We will discuss why we watch sports. We will meet members of the athletic department’s membership team. They are always looking for ways to engage their primary fan base, and I think I can incorporate that into the class. We will develop a campus survey from that meeting, and the class will circulate that accordingly. At the same time we’ll talk about some of the events going on around us. There’s the Winter Olympics, the Super Bowl, and then March Madness and the World Cup is coming and so on. We’ll discuss fan identity, game day rituals for players and fans. We’ll discuss the atmosphere of game day experiences, I’ll have them dig up some interesting-to-them traditions from around college sports, and so on. At the same time, they’ll be in these groups, with those survey responses in hand, they’ll be working through that information, the general student experience and the stuff we’re learning in class and they’ll come up with proposals that they’ll suggest to the athletic department. Maybe one or two or more of the things they come up with help them. Maybe these students will see something they proposed in place next year. Maybe they’ll come back for homecoming one day, and see how it has grown.

There will be some other stuff in the class, too, but this is the general direction we’re going. I just need to pull in a few more readings, figure out an assessment structure, and then make the lectures. Fortunately, I have the next two weeks for that.

He said, the bracing fear of panic beginning to course through him.

Also, two other classes. One I’ve taught twice before, the online version of Digital Media Processes. This class is about the structure of social media. And the other class is the Criticism in Sports Media course which I debuted last term. I’m changing about a quarter of that, and offering up some new material. But I think I’ll have that one under control by early next week. I’ve probably said all this before (Ed. update — More than once!) but that’s just an indication of how these things stick in your head and float around in there. Or, float around in my head, at least. Even when I’m deliberately not working on something, I find myself working on one of these classes. This thing I’m reading, that video I’m watching, I might be able to shoehorn it in somewhere to make a point. As for the time, the online class takes care of itself, except for the hours of feedback I try to offer it. The Criticism class meets for two-and-a-half hours per week, and I’ll spend about two hours per week on that. Then everything else on the Rituals and Traditions class. And the five presentations I have this semester at two different conferences. And my many committee assignments. And then there’s running a search for, and hiring, a new social media manager. Oh, and the 24 pieces I want to write for another project. And, not at all important, the 900 hours I’ll devote to my contract packet this semester. I will have so much free time!

I admire people who can turn it off and live a different life when they aren’t working. To do that, I have to consciously go do something else. It’s a bike ride or an off-topic book (I’m reading about Franklin Roosevelt’s use of the media right now) or puttering about the house. Fortunately, there is plenty of all of that to do. Unfortunately, there will be little time to do it. See above.

I made the mistake of printing out a calendar and writing out the words “Classes begin” on a date just 18 days away. And this silly calendar is sitting right beside my computer. For the next few days I’ll do things in increments. A couple hours here on this, a couple hours the next day on that. At some point next week the 970 words I wrote about it, here, gets theme music. Terrifying, paralyzing, theme music.

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26
Dec 25

A quite end to a quiet week

Weather is coming in, and the whole region is in a tizzy. Snow and then ice. Or maybe it is ice and then snow. Could it be rain and then snow and then ice?

(It turned out to be sleet, and then rain. And that was about it. So it could have been worse. Indeed, in some places it was far more dramatic.)

The in-laws had come down yesterday. They celebrated a quiet Christmas with us and had planned to head back home just after lunch, but that forecast meant they were going to leave mid-morning.

So, last night, I’d set my alarm so I could be sociable for a a little while before they left. It seemed like a good idea until the alarm went off. When the alarm went off it woke me up from a dream. In the dream, I was giving — to an unseen audience — the little speech I give to students after Thanksgiving break. “I know you’ve done a lot. I know you’re tired. Rededicate yourself to this for three more weeks so you can finish strong.”

I woke up from a dream giving that speech. And I woke up exhausted.

So I decided that, instead of starting back to work tomorrow, I’ll give myself the day off.

Also, my throat is a little scratchy? And I’m sneezing some.

Anyway, my father-in-law asked me to put a little air in one of his rear tires, which I was happy to do. Plug in the travel compressor, attach it to the tire stem, top him off with about four whole pounds.

I got that travel compressor years and years ago, as a Christmas gift. It lives in the trunk of my car, just a fabulous gift. You can get a modern version similar to it for about $30 and I can tell you whatever it cost back when, it has paid for itself many times over. (If you get the sort that plugs into a cigarette lighter for power, make sure it has a very long power cable, so you can easily reach your back wheel.)

We went back inside, warmed up and sat for a bit, unsure how to talk trash about the music trivia game we’d played last night. He won the first round and I won the second. The four of us are already planning rematches. I clearly need to do some studying.

They made it home without incident, home before the weather. My lovely bride and I had a quiet afternoon and evening, at home, reading. I have to finish a few things so I can get to one of these, which I received for Christmas.

Santa brought me the first of this Rick Atkinson trilogy a few years ago. This second installment was released earlier this year, which was about two years longer than I wanted to wait. The British Are Coming was such a great read, covering a lot of ground, human and real, thoughtful and beautifully detailed. I could say that about everything of Atkinson’s work that I’ve read — the man has won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting, twice, and once for his historical works — and I’m sure The Fate of the Day will be another wonderful read.

That other book, Men at Work could be another good read. My Santa Claus book club never steers me wrong.

And that’s why I need to get some other stuff read. Guess what I’m doing this weekend?

Tonight, I turned on the light in the backyard several times, and just saw rain.

I wonder what I’ll see what I wake up tomorrow.

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12
Dec 25

When you have an artist in your home

The way our kitchen was designed, there’s a countertop to the left of the stove. It is a fine food-prep area which is surrounded by a little wall, about a foot higher than the countertop, which acts as a backsplash of sorts. The top of that is also designed as a countertop, and it occasionally holds a cup, or random junk I’ve put on it, or a cat. Beneath these countertops are seven drawers. Three of the large sizes (the random utensils drawer, tupperware and a place to store extra paper towels and ephemera which we’ll wonder about in 2029) and four of the smaller sized drawers, which hold things like Ziploc bags and kitchen towels and so on. This counter top does not end in a wall. Rather, it just sits there, across from the refrigerator. This is the main walk through of the kitchen. And on the exterior wall of those cabinets, facing the fridge, is a chalkboard.

It’s great for positive affirmations, silly messages, a creative place when someone brings a child over and, of course, our very own art.

My lovely bride made that. I suggested, after counting the reindeer, Rudolph’s nose. She went subtle there. I would have played it far too big.

Taking a cue from that, I filled in one tiny little spot later, just to complete the illusion, but also to say that it was a joint masterpiece.

But, really, there’s only one chalk expert in this house.

Grading the livelong day. I finished, last night, the work for my social media strategies class. I wrote them a nice note yesterday, as well. Nice, for them, meaning shorter than usual. I started in last night on grading the final in my Criticism in Sport Media class. A few last night, quite a few more today. I’ll finish tonight or tomorrow.

The exam involved them watching a particular episode of a sports show and answering a bunch of questions about it. Everyone is doing well so far. I am resisting the temptation to think I need to make it more difficult just because. (I could, but I never said stumping people was an objective for that class.) I do know how I’ll do about a quarter of it differently next term. It came to me in a flash today.

So, really, the last two weeks of that class have been hugely productive in figuring out what I need to evolve out of that course.

Also, earlier this week for that class, I compiled a list of accidental answers I received on their last reflection paper. I say accidental because we’d talked, ever so briefly, about how people who aren’t taking a class like this could benefit. How do you help them? So I posed a little question about that and got these sorts of answers. After I read the first few, I went back and started collecting them. If I had to code and characterize it, I would say students are really craving this. Those answers, across the whole of the class, ran five pages. I look at that document of gathered answers and think: we might be on to something here.

In my criticism in sport media course, I asked students to write about the class' value, what they would tell others about classes like this, and media criticism and news literacy.

I collected FIVE PAGES of excerpts. Students are very much interested in this. A sample …

#medialit #medialiteracy

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"(I)t makes you a stronger, smarter media consumer. It helps you understand the stories you love and it gives you skills that make your own writing clearer and more thoughtful. This course doesn’t just teach you about the media, it also teaches you how to think.”

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"(I)t honestly makes you smarter about the media you consume every single day…It gives you skills that go beyond sports like critical thinking, analysis, and awareness, which are all useful no matter what field you’re in. It’s one of those classes that actually changes the way you see the world.”

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"I discovered that media should not be viewed as neutral, but rather as a developed creation. This change made it easier for me to understand that media critique is a way of thinking that allows us to deal with an informative environment much more thoughtfully and responsibly."

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"I would recommend this class as one of the more important courses I have taken. While this course is centered around sports media, the content discussed in this course is relevant to anyone who consumes any form of media … This has been one of the most practical courses I have taken."

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"My appreciation for the craft and practice of media criticism has definitely evolved over the course. Learning different ways to break down readings and to think more critically while reading media has evolved my learning and understanding of media criticism."

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

"You should take a class like this because it doesn’t just change the way you look at sports media, it changes the way you look at society … Sports may be fun, but they also reflect big issues—power, race, gender, politics—and this class makes you recognize how important that really is."

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 3:06 PM

This, and the improvements I have planned for next term, make me excited to get back to this class again. Now, to convince people it should be a regular and permanent offering …

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5
Dec 25

It’s all fun and games, until the geese answer back

We were standing outside, doing some outdoors chore, or talking about it. We were in the backyard, near the kitchen corner of the house. I’m sure we were pointing or looking or otherwise considering a plan of action. This is what I do. I work in the home office for a few hours, and then I go find something else productive to do for a while. Then it is back to work. Study breaks and work breaks are both useful. And this particular one involved being outside in the cold for a few minutes. That’s when I heard it.

honk.

Honk.

HONK HONK.

HONKHONKHONKHONKHONK!!!

I looked up, putting my eyes where my ears told me to go, toward the east. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and trained it on the sky, waiting for the geese to fly through the frame.

“QUITTERS!” I yelled, so as to be heard over their honking.

OK, I muttered it to myself. We have neighbors, after all.

Somehow the geese heard me anyway.

“We’re not quiting,” they said between honks. “We’re just going over to a field a few miles west of here. You know that. We’ve seen you over that way.”

Of course geese have recall and distinguish between humans.

Also, please note the skies.

It was 3:16 p.m.

Friday / history / journalism / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
21
Nov 25

There are many questions

We had a faculty meeting today. Many speeches and introductions. It is part of moving into, and creating, a new college. There are many questions, we don’t yet have all of the answers, but good and talented people are working on it. Answers will be found. These things don’t happen overnight.

Here’s how overnight they don’t happen. We’re in a one-year status quo pattern. As that happens many new procedures are implemented. It’s the first year of a three-year fact-finding and solution-creating process. Sometimes it seems like three years might not be a long enough for that. Sometimes you’re made aware of all that goes into it. And then you’re made aware of all of these other things too. And then there are concerns you aren’t familiar with. There’s a lot that goes into it. You can see that even if, like me, you’re only familiar with just the trees in your section of the giant forest. And people get highly specialized, of course. Also, this is not a thing that happens all of the time, these big department-college merger things. No one specializes in that. But campus communities do love making committees, and sometimes you get some great work out of them. I’m sure that’ll be the case in this instance.

This meeting was held in a building with a big auditorium, because this new college is a huge college and it needs the space for meetings such as these. Down the hall from this auditorium are the offices of the RTF department, and parts of the journalism department, which is moving in there. And on the walls are a lot of old newspaper front pages. These are always such great displays. Maybe I’m one of the only people that stops to look at them, but that’s why they’re there.

Those walls have framed prints of local and campus papers, as all journalism departments seemingly have. The farther you get from this January 1991 issue, above, the less frequently new pages appear. It occurs to me that one of the less important, but nonetheless sad, side effects of ending newsprint is that one day we’ll have no more displays such as these. The last yellowing page on the wall there is a 2018 installment of a local paper (then in the process of being assimilated by a larger entity) running their Super Bowl edition. I wonder who was in charge of deciding which ones to keep. Some are obvious, some may take a little more contextual appreciation.

You could study the look of this paper, and I have considered it. For its day, that’s a strong small paper design. The layout only feels long in the tooth to my 2025 eyes. You’re nine years into the influence of USA Today and all of the influences that emanate from there. I can’t speak to the history of that particular publication, but a quick glance at their digitized archives on newspapers.com suggests they were pretty responsive to industry and consumption trends in that era. Most importantly, it is sharing the information you need, and you know there’s more inside.

Also, there are no ridiculous SEO headlines. It was also all done locally. In 1991, the layout was made with some relatively basic software. If they were using QuarkXPress, this paper was very much an innovator. It would be five more years before a version worth talking about was released. It’s also possible that they did a lot of that with razors and glue. Old school.

Not that you came here for a lot of thoughts on old software. Not that you knew what you were getting here to end the week. I didn’t know either, to be honest. I also don’t know what we’ll have here next week. There will be something, though. We’ll need to check in on the kitties, for instance. There will be some other stuff, too. What will it be? It’s a good question. There are many questions. We’ll find out together.