Super Bowl Sunday is just days away now, and for the first time that I can remember, the main attraction is a defender. Ray Lewis, the Baltimore Ravens star linebacker, has the gravitas to command the attention of every camera, the popping of every light-bulb, and the awe of every eye on the biggest stage in American sports, when he runs out of the tunnel at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome for Super Bowl XLVII and does his iconic dance, single-handily taking the blockbuster game to another level. People are divided on who they want to win the big game and who they think will win the big game, but most everyone is pulling for Lewis, a player who has thrown so much energy and inspiration and emotion into his craft since he was drafted by the Ravens back in 1996, he has curtailed a cultish following in the most professional and popular sport in the country - and washed the names Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar from that nation's collective memory.
I'm sickened by the adulation parade around the retiring linebacker. I don't understand, and I won't join in. It takes a unique kind of person to shed the memory of an arrest for murder - and Lewis is nothing if he's not unique. It was almost 13 years ago today in Atlanta in the midst of a Super Bowl party that Lewis and his entourage got into a fight with another group of people, and Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar were stabbed to death. Lewis was questioned by the police in the aftermath of the incident, and 11 days later, the star linebacker and his companions Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting were arrested for murder.
Eventually, Lewis cut a deal with prosecutors for his testimony against Oakley and Sweeting, pleading guilty to a charge of obstruction of justice. Lewis admitted lying to and misleading the police when he was questioned on the morning after the killings, and his testimony against his friends was less than convincing. Oakley and Sweeting were found not guilty. No other person has been arrested for the crime.
