Class Notes Profiles

The jump-around guy

Rick Smith, Eng ’73, Grad ’82, has a hip-hop act that fires up Marquette fans.

Smith is president and owner of R.A. Smith National, a multidiscipline engineering consulting company with 160 employees and $17 million in sales last year. But Golden Eagles fans know him better by his alter ego personality: the “jump-around guy.”

The fellow in the suit and tie who bounces along with the student section has become something of a celebrity.

Smith and his wife, Joan, Arts ’71, Grad ’77, have been going to Marquette games since they were students, when they sometimes camped out to get good seats. Smith flies a Marquette flag outside his company’s headquarters in Brookfield, Wis., lowering it to half-staff after a loss.

A few years back, Smith was at a game when the public address system played House of Pain’s Jump Around, a ’90s party anthem. Smith saw the student section jumping so he started jumping — unaware that he was live on ESPN. Right away, his wife got a frantic call from their son in Washington, D.C., wondering if that was his father jumping on national television.

The students goaded Smith to jump around at the next game and he hasn’t stopped since. At a recent game, Smith says, the men sitting in front of him turned around and said: “We paid good money to be in these seats. Why aren’t you jumping?” The payoff came when the song played in the second half. — Chris Jenkins

Watch this hip-hop act on Marquette’s YouTube lineup at marquette.edu/jump-around-guy.