One of the things I like to share with readers is something of the experience of practicing in the Eastern District of Texas, which more often than not includes references to football, as shared experiences, whether civic, social, educational, or historic. In other words, more football. For the good of the order, then, I can’t let what happened in Waco this past weekend pass. When the Baylor Line was founded back in 1970, it was a spirit organization for first-year men, who formed a human tunnel on the field at Floyd Casey Stadium to welcome the football team, and then sat in the seats behind the visiting football team and shouted, uh, encouraging things, I’m sure. For a firsthand view of what it’s like to run the Line, here’s a video. (It is a really neat tradition). It wasn’t until 1994 that it became a co-ed organization, leaving a generation of alumnae who were never able participate. This weekend, those women finally got that chance when the university invited all alumnae who were freshmen from 1970-94 to participate in a ceremonial running of the Baylor Line. Here’s the point I’m leading up to. My wife Jamie and three of her Baylor dorm friends have had an annual tradition of “spa weekends” where they get together going back to after they graduated from Baylor, which was in 1989. I’m not saying that means they just turned 50 because that would be unwise. They’ve always been very close, even to the point that two of the four married guys named Michael Smith (I am not making that up). They all ran Saturday – along with over 800 other women – in their “MamaSpaBear” Line jerseys, and Baylor ran a nice feature story on them Longtime friends among alums in this Saturday’s ceremonial Baylor Line run, which features priceless photos of my honey in the mid-80’s, with truly Texas-sized hair. Making it extra special this year is that one of those freshmen running with the Line this year is our son Grayson, who’s studying computer and electrical engineering, and volunteering as cannon fodder, i.e. acting as a witness, for Practice Court students at the law school. I’d like to say that Jamie and Grayson made Baylor history by running together Saturday morning, but he slept through both kickoff and his mother’s repeated calls, texts and emails. In fairness, an 11 am kickoff is early for a college student on Saturday. He did show up after halftime for a photo op, though.
