{"id":692463,"date":"2026-06-08T23:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T23:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692463\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T23:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T23:36:10","slug":"uk-football-player-nic-happy-smith-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692463\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Football player Nic \u2018Happy\u2019 Smith dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) &#8211; A member of the Kentucky football team has died.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Nic \u201cHappy\u201d Smith was a redshirt freshman and defensive lineman from Loganville, Georgia. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to a statement from the university, UK Police were called to a report of a student found deceased in a residence hall at 10:03 a.m. The situation is currently under investigation by the campus police, but early indications are that no foul play was involved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"Nic &quot;Happy&quot; Smith\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ZVG2Z5ALQNE6VDRL62RGXI3PLM.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>Nic &#8220;Happy&#8221; Smith(WKYT)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">UK football coach Will Stein has the following to say about Smith\u2019s passing:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cToday our hearts are broken. Our thoughts and prayers are with Nic\u2019s family, friends, teammates and everyone who knew and loved him. This is a tremendous loss for our program and university community. We will continue to support one another and honor his memory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to his profile on the <a href=\"https:\/\/ukathletics.com\/sports\/football\/roster\/player\/nicholas-smith\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/ukathletics.com\/sports\/football\/roster\/player\/nicholas-smith\/\">UK Athletics<\/a> website, Smith was known as \u201cBig Happ\u201d, was a community leadership and development major and was known as a good cook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The university did not release how he died.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"link | text-reset d-block h-100 w-100\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wkyt.com\/page\/wkyt-apps-for-ios-and-android-devices\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_self\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"WKYT Streaming Apps\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780961770_229_MEPHTWNVMREWLEQQWWFJM27ZMA.png\" width=\"980\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WKYT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) &#8211; A member of the Kentucky football team has died. Nic \u201cHappy\u201d Smith was a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[300273,300288,99,300287,227942],"class_list":["post-692463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-nic-smith","tag-nic-smith-dies","tag-sports","tag-uk-football-player-dies","tag-university-of-kentucky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}