There are two clear story lines when the name Ray Lewis is uttered. To explore one means you have to ignore the
other -- they are incongruent, incompatible and until now to have both be
"true" about a single person, impossible. Ray Lewis has done the impossible. I am not
talking about a 17 year career as a hard hitting line backer -- 17 years for
most in the NFL is truly impossible. I
am referring to the absolute reinvention of himself. What's undeniable is that
as well as Ray Lewis played the game of football, he played the game of
redemption even better.
"He's a remarkable case study of worst-to-first,"
says Vada Manager, a corporate strategist and a former Nike executive who
helped guide the company's strategy during Kobe Bryant's rape accusations.
"There aren't many athletes who have done what he's done in rebuilding his
image from where it was to where it is today."
Here is what we do know. Ray Lewis was in the Buckhead
District of Atlanta partying with friends following a Rams win over the Titans
in Super Bowl XXXIV. It was well into
the dark morning hours. At that time in his career Lewis had been recognized as
a Pro Bowler but was not in any way the icon he is today. He and his buddies got into a heated argument
with another group in an trendy bar; it turned into a brawl. Lewis and his buddies left the scene in a limo
as Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, both in their early 20s, lay in their own
blood, dying of stab wounds. Lewis and company were not seriously injured and
suffered no stab wounds.
Thes are indisputable facts but there is still much we don't
know – the cause of the fight, the person (or persons) holding the knives,
Lewis' knowledge of and involvement in the events. Lewis and his two companions
were charged with murder. To avoid being prosecuted Lewis was allowed to make a
deal. The murder charges against him
would be dismissed, he would not be tried if he tesitfied against his to
cohorts, Reginald Oakley and Joseph Sweeting. What Lewis would agree to admit
to was a simple misdemeanor of obstructing justice.
Lewis's testimony proved to be worth little as both Oakley
and Sweeting were acquitted of the murder charges. Civil suits against Lewis,
filed by both victims' families were settled out of court for a still
undisclosed sum of money and a $250K fine was levied against him by the NFL. He
was also handed a one-year suspension from play by the NFL -- that turned out
to be toothless as he was allowed to suit up and play in the very next season
and go on to play in that year's Super Bowl and be named the game's MVP. His
career as an icon had just begun. He
would go on to be invited to 13 Pro Bowls and now is being allowed to retire as
one of the greatest defensive players to ever line up.
The public figure we now know as "Ray Lewis" was
just getting started. He went on to
become a leader of his defense with Biblical fervor. He has created an image of the "chosen
one" to carry the message to his teammates of God's glory, his power and his
grace. While some may doubt Lewis'
authenticity -- he believes what he says and his followers flock to his side.
He is force. What has been and is still
missing in the equation of redemption is one fundamentally required element: Confession. Without confession one cannot be saved. In this case a safe, private confession is
meaningless. While he and his God may
see it as his key to the Kingdom I would doubt Oakley and Sweeting's families
see it that way. I don't see it that
way.
I was caught up in the Ray Lewis phenomenon. I watched the
NFL Network's "A Football Life" focusing on Lewis that ran last fall
and thought to myself "what a guy!" I had no knowledge of the events
that transpired that tragic night in Atlanta over a decade earlier. I was moved by him. "We've got to savor
these moments!" "I couldn't see that when I was 24, 25! That's why
God had to incarcerate me, so I could see how great his blessing was for me! So
I had to come from a jail cell to the Super Bowl!" His bragging about time in a jail cell is
about as trite as Johnny Cash singing about Folsom prison. Johnny Cash never went to prison or shot
anyone like his songs lead us to believe and Lewis never really did time. Lewis
did have a wakeup call following that night in Atlanta. He did change. He is
great at what he does. But he fell short of redemption by keeping his secret.
A well known publicist notes that there are three consistent
factors necessary for any public figure to change public perception, and Lewis choreographed
all three perfectly:
1. Winning is redemptive. The public is forgiving, the
public will give you second chances, the public has a short memory if you WIN!
Lewis won immediately after the Atlanta incident, and while he hasn't been back
to the Super Bowl since, he's continued to play at the height of his profession
for more than a decade. Had Lewis been
stuck on a losing franchise we might not even be talking about him.
2. Rehabilitation begins at home. Lewis has been the
consummate teammate; he has been a family man and as we saw in "A Football
Life" has rekindled a relationship with his astranged father -- the first
male in his family to do so thus ending the string of father's abandoning their
sons. He is authentic. Lewis is
believable. He hasn't been involved with any problems since then.
3. Charity and image are essential. Lewis has been a vocal
force for charity, and he's also shown a more deft touch to his public image,
as with his humorous NFL ad with Tom Brady this season. He has walked the talk. He has done a lot of good -- regardless of
how you or I feel about him his contributions have mattered.
Of course, even if every athlete involved in scandal knows
(or is taught) the three steps to redemption, not every athlete has the
opportunity, the drive or the personality to be able to pull it off. We can consider Pete
Rose, whose achievements are forever tarnished by the scandle of his gambling while playing. Then we look to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both stained by allegations of steriod use.
None of these players has the opportunity to "win" again at their
chosen profession -- thier careers were over. All three have chosen, or have been forced to choose, an
adversarial or indifferent stance. They did not have the three essential elements available to them.
Michael Vick was given a serious second chance but could not
pull the "winning" rabbit out of his hat. He tried. We tried but the ingredients were
just not there. Lance Armstrong has now
been stripped of titles and banned from his sport. Armstrong does have the huge success of
raising awareness and money for cancer research to support him but even in his
confession, which a step further than Lewis has gone, he was not believable nor
did it feel like there was regret in his words.
His was a calculated image rebuilding strategy which may or may not have
worked. Time will tell.
Lewis is doing everything he can to make the Atlanta
incident a footnote to his story, not the first line, and he's well on the way. How can a double murder be a footnote? How
have we let him do that? He understands how redemption works in America and we
have been willing lemmings. It has been a tireless PR campaign for Lewis and he
has done a smashing job.
Lewis has publicly put Atlanta behind him. When a USA Today
reporter asked him about the murders this week, Lewis replied, "You want
to talk to me about something that happened 13 years ago right now?" My response to Lewis would have been --
"Yeah it's about time."
In March of 2012, he spoke to students at Harvard
University, a speech that forms the backbone of his NFL Network documentary. "The
first night I was in jail, a whisper came to me, and it said, 'Can you hear me
now?' " Lewis said. "That's when I knew that no matter where I was,
by any means necessary, I had to prove to myself, to my family, to my fans. … I
gotta get something done. If y'all [that accused him of murder] are that bold
to put my reputation on the line, I'm that bold to fight for it." But all his fighting was really for
himself. It was HE who reaped the
greatest benefit. It is confusing that
the public is so willing to forgive him when he is the largest beneficiary of
his makeover.
"I'm always disturbed in my spirit about how people
look at me from that incident," Lewis continued in another interview.
"Those families that were affected will never know the truth. And that's
sad."
But why will they never know the truth? Isn't it within his
power to tell them? Of course it is; he was there. So Ray, step up and change
that. "I would like for him to tell one day exactly what happened,"
Lollar's aunt, Cindy Lollar-Owens, told USA Today. But for Lewis that day will
not come until he has lived his dream first.
Telling too soon might have derailed his career and forced him to pay a
price he was unwilling to pay.
There is the flip side of this with its own set of facts: Lewis was never convicted of any crime. No existing
evidence suggests that he was materially involved in the deaths of Baker and
Lollar. The evidence that might have connected him is mysteriously absent -- no
blood soaked clothing. It did exist at some point in time -- but it was never
recovered. He was allowed to make a plea deal and that is a regular and normal
part of our legal system. It happens all
the time.
While I am a Believer and Lewis promotes himself as a
follower of Christ, when the Bible discusses confession in Romans 10:9 and
10:10 the perpetrator of a sin gets off pretty easily. Romans 10:9 states: That
if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. That's it. It does not say you must hold a
press conference nor does it even say you must confess your sins -- only your
faith in Jesus Christ! In Romans 10:10 it says, "For it is with your heart that
you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and
are saved." I find this severely
lacking and it just isn't good enough.
So Lewis has lived by the "book" both the book of man's law
and the book of God's law. It has worked
perfectly for him.
In conclusion, I cannot convict Ray Lewis of any crime. I don't know to what level he was involved. I don't know if he held a knife or if he just
held his tongue. I do believe that he
believes what he preaches; he walks the talk.
I do believe he is a changed man and that he would never, not ever, put
himself in that sort of situation again, but he did put himself there that
fateful night and that he was involved in some part of it by simply being there
and not telling about it. He is
undeniably one of the greatest if not THE greatest man to ever play his
position. But the fact remains that he
has been able to live a dream while two young men never got the chance to live
at all. The dream was carefully crafted
and was only made possible because Ray Lewis was never required to make a
confession. The letter of man's laws and
God's law, according to the Bible, say that Lewis is "redeemed". Why do I feel duped? Do I want bad things for Ray Lewis? No. That said, today, Super Bowl Sunday, Super
Bowl XLVII -- the Niners versus Ravens -- I want Colin Kaepernick to render
Lewis ineffective and I do not want Ray Lewis to put the ultimate feather in
his cap by ending his career with a ring on his finger. The time has come for this storybook to reflect
some reality. Go Niners!
No comments:
Post a Comment