Another year, another Super Bowl in the books as the Baltimore Ravens won one of the more interesting NFL championship games of recent memory. Surviving a near half hour power outage at the Super Dome to hold onto their lead with a 34-31 victory that came down to the final drive of the game as usual with most Super Bowls. Jacoby Jones was electric with a touchdown grab and a record setting 109 yard kick return. Joe Flacco entered the realm of elite quarterbacks with his first Super Bowl ring and will be getting paid come free agency this spring. Colin Kapernick finally looked like a rookie at times as the vaunted Ravens defense ended the era of Ed Reed and Ray Lewis with one last show of dominance, causing multiple momentum turning turnovers throughout the game.
It was a great Super Bowl, one that was not expected at the start of the season or even heading into the conference championship games delivered a handful of storylines for people to run with, yet one night in Atlanta thirteen years ago once again needed to overshadow what was a great conclusion to the NFL season. Throughout twitter on Sunday, the disturbing tweets like the ones Patriots fans made about Torrey Smith's dead brother crept back up as Ray Lewis won his last Super Bowl. Tweets involving the unfortunate incident during the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta in which Ray Lewis and two other people were involved in a stabbing incident outside of a nightclub during Super Bowl week surrounded the social media force that is twitter on Sunday.
It should have been no surprise that one of the most divisive men in the game's history overshadowed everyone else in his final game, but here it was. Everyone was going to have their final take on Ray.
Ray Lewis potentially could have stabbed someone that night in Atlanta, nobody knows. It is a classic "whodunnit" story, a fight erupts outside of an Atlanta nightclub, a scuffle ensues and Ray Lewis and the two people he was with rush off into the city in their limo. Something that could happen leaving a club every Friday or Saturday night in every city in North America happened and due to the unfortunate problem we have in our society with weapons, two people happened to get stabbed. Yes, it is a very unfortunate situation and the pain of the families of the deceased probably still linger even nearly thirteen years to the day, but should being in the wrong place at the wrong time define a man? Especially a man who was never found guilty of murder? A man who has drastically changed his life in a positive direction since his lowest moment arguably deserves to be forgiven of his past. Lewis has became a family man, a popular public speaker, attempting to help others avoid the mistakes he made, does this deserve hatred? Ridicule? No.
Does making light of the death of two people make Ray Lewis the bad person, or does it make you the bad person? If this unfortunate incident is to define an entire human beings life, are you any better for making a joke about it? Yes when we evaluate the career and life of Ray Lewis that night should always be mentioned, just as in this column the mistakes of the likes of Lance Armstrong and others has been evaluated. However, this isn't an on field transgression, this is one of personal matters. If Ray Lewis wasn't the vocal man of faith who played for the Baltimore Ravens, you wouldn't even know of this murder and to be frank Ray Lewis would probably be sitting in jail for life for a murder he did not commit himself. Everyone's life in this situation would have been ruined, and you wouldn't have cared. A group of black men going to jail for a stabbing outside of a nightclub in Atlanta? It would be backpage news the morning after, and it certainly wouldn't warrant a follow up thirteen years later.
Chalk this one up to another case of how celebrity culture turns people into holier than thou when it comes to how people in the public eye are judged.
In 2000 Ray Lewis was still just what many would consider barely an adult, a few years removed from college at the University of Miami and finding his way in the world as a young adult. I would safely assume that 95 per cent of the people judging Ray Lewis wouldn't be comfortable with the lowest moment of their early twenties being viewed under a microscope under the public eye.
May the two men murdered that night rest in peace and the two men in jail right now and Lewis himself live with the fact they ended the lives of two young men, but let's all realize that the Ray Lewis after Super Bowl 47 in New Orleans is not the same Ray Lewis as that fateful Super Bowl Sunday in Atlanta. That's my final word.
