Comedian and radio host Rickey Smiley pushed back against his own fraternity after a wave of memes linked him to ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith.
The controversy started last week when Smith slipped and mispronounced the name of Omega Psi Phi while discussing fraternity culture on ESPN. The clip quickly spread online, drawing criticism and jokes. Smith later acknowledged the mistake and issued an apology.
Smiley, a longtime member of Omega Psi Phi, became part of that content as memes began circulating that paired him with Smith and framed the two as the punchline to fraternity-themed jokes.
In an emotional video posted this week, Smiley revealed that the memes surfaced during one of the most difficult times of the year for him: the anniversary of his son Brandon’s death. “Today, this month, it’s a tough month for me,” he shared. “January is a tough month for me and my family… this is the week that I lost my son. And it does not get any easier.”
What hurt most, he said, was not the joke itself, but who was sharing it and when. Smiley noted that many of the memes and online chatter were coming from fellow Omega men.
“They have a meme out about me and matched me with Stephen A. Smith… during this month of grief for me and my family,” he said. “Is what y’all doing friendly? Are you displaying friendship? And friendship is essential to the soul.”
He stressed that the behavior he was calling out does not represent what Omega Psi Phi stands for in his eyes.
“Some Qs had me up on a meme… and they don’t represent Omega Psi Phi,” he said. His frustration, he added, was not about being thin-skinned or ducking criticism. It was about what he views as misplaced priorities and selective outrage.
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“All of this stuff I do low-key, underground, that a lot of people don’t know about,” he said. Then he posed a pointed question to those quick to joke at his expense: “Did you make memes about the Qs that killed Tyre Nichols? Did you make memes about Caleb Wilson?”
Nichols, a 29-year-old black man, was fatally beaten in 2023 by five Black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, and died three days following the incident.
Wilson, a student and band member at Southern University, died after being hazed by other students.
From there, Smiley widened his critique, taking aim at what he described as a performative, ego-driven version of fraternity life—one more concerned with status and nostalgia than accountability and care.
“For some of y’all, that’s all y’all have,” he said. “You don’t have anything else except for that step show you won in ’92 and ’93.”
Even as he challenged his fraternity brothers, Smiley emphasized that his words were not an attack on Omega Psi Phi itself, but a defense of the values he believes it should embody.
“I have real friends in the fraternity,” he said, making clear that his disappointment comes from love for the organization and a desire to see its principles—especially friendship—taken seriously when it matters most.
