Bob Lutz: The story behind KU safety Fish Smithson’s nickname stays hidden

This is a fish tale.

Or a Fish tale, to be accurate.

Fish Smithson is a junior safety at Kansas and in the Jayhawks’ last game, against Memphis, he led the team with 12 tackles, nine of them solo.

He comes from Baltimore but finished high school in Salt Lake City, where he attended junior college and helped lead Hartnell College to a 9-2 record and a bowl win.

As a quarterback in high school, Smithson passed for 528 yards and rushed for 492.

Which is all nice and newsworthy – but can we cut to the chase?

Fish?

He has been asked a million times.

But there’s something fishy here. Fish won’t give up the story and insists that he didn’t even know how he came to be called Fish until a few years ago, when his mother finally spilled the beans.

All he’ll really say is that his late grandmother, Ann, is the one who came up with the nickname. She died in 2000, when Fish was 6, but he remembers their bond.

“She was the glue to our entire family,” Smithson said. “She took me to church every Sunday and we hunted Easter eggs at her house. I was always the smallest one and my cousins were bigger, but my grandmother would always tell me ahead of time which of the eggs had the money and the gifts so that I could get some stuff.”

It’s a nice story, Fish. But why are you Fish?

“A family secret,” is all he’ll say. “And only immediate family. My mom, sisters – I think my brother just found out.”

Fish says he grew up not knowing why his name was Fish. And that he never really thought to ask because he just wasn’t that curious. He was called Fish from the time he remembers and probably thought a lot of people named Fish were running around the planet.

On a scale of unusual nicknames, I’m not sure where Fish would land. Get it? Scale and fish?

But I’ve never known anyone nicknamed Fish. Have you?

Fish’s brother is Shaky Smithson, who spent some time in camp with the Green Bay Packers in 2011 and took his younger brother under his wing. Shaky was a wide receiver at Utah, so his nickname is easy to decipher.

Fish? Not so much. And neither he nor his mother, Lori Smith, provides a clue.

“You got to ask him that,” Lori said.

“Well, I did.”

“Family secret,” she said.

And that was it.

“We’re a very close-knit family and he was very close to his grandmother,” Lori Smith said. “We were always together as a family.”

Fish said he thinks it’s funny that others are so curious about his nickname.

“I never even asked about it,” he said.

OK, so we’re probably never going to know the story behind how Fish came to be Fish.

But his coming to be as a KU defensive standout is no secret. He was the Jayhawks’ fifth-leading tackler as a junior in 2014, when he had nine tackles against Baylor. He also made the Big 12 commissioner’s honor roll and athletic director’s honor roll during the spring semester.

Smithson said he landed at KU because of a leap of faith.

“I actually committed when I took my visit,” he said. “It was the Big 12 and this is a pass-happy league. I’m a defensive back so I love the challenge and the opportunity that you get in this conference.”

Only one thing is amiss. KU is struggling to win games. At 0-2 going into Saturday’s game at Rutgers, the Jayhawks have lost five in a row dating back to last season and 10 of 11.

“We had really good success in junior college, so it’s very challenging for me personally to go through all of this losing games,” Smithson said. “My high school team played for a championship, so things are a little different. But we’re looking at it here like we’re one or two plays away and that we’re continuing to get better week by week.”

Smithson believes in new KU coach David Beaty.

“He makes us aware of how to get to where we need to get to as players,” Smithson said. “There’s high energy here with no disrespect for Coach (Charlie) Weis or how we did things before. But you come to practices now and you see a difference. We’re sprinting out of meetings to get to weights and sprinting from weights to get to practice. Coach Beaty teaches urgency.”

But the Jayhawks have a thin roster. Beaty has said it’ll take a couple of recruiting classes to start to see a change in the W-L column.

There is no column for effort and determination, though. And that’s where the Jayhawks, Smithson said, are better.

“I remember his first meeting, when he was telling us about how he was going to try and rebuild this program,” Smithson said. “He wants to get started on a good note.”

Smithson is a Beaty believer. But he says he won’t even tell him the origin of his nickname. This Fish tale provides no answers.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 6:11 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: The story behind KU safety Fish Smithson’s nickname stays hidden."