Aug 4, 2018 5 min read

Ray Lewis is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker are still dead.

Ray Lewis knows who killed them and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in their murder. Both were killed after a Super Bowl party in Atlanta in 2000. Lewis was initially charged with their murder but plea bargained to the obstruction of justice charge and received a year’s probation. Lewis’ friends beat the rap. It was a fair trial and that’s that.

You can understand why it was a tough weekend for the Lollar family. Richard is buried just up the road from the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

I didn’t see Lewis’ induction speech. I made sure that I didn’t fail to miss it. I did see a video on YouTube of Lewis’ appearance on the Steve Harvey show a few years ago.

Harvey asked Lewis how he was able to put what happened in Atlanta behind him. “I realize now that some things you have to go through. You can’t go around. You can’t take a detour. You got to go through it. If I had to go through that in order to be sitting here today, then so be it. I took Atlanta and I told everybody who told me what I couldn’t do – you still have to watch me.”

Then he thanked the audience for their applause.

Lewis has come to believe that what happened in Atlanta was really tough for him.

Did I mention that Richard Lollar and Jacinth Baker are still dead?

So, Atlanta is behind Lewis and his friends. They got off easy and the sports media continue to slobber over him every time he opens his mouth. Do you think anybody asked him about Atlanta this weekend?

Robert Klemko of Sports Illustrated found out what happens when a reporter is impolite enough to ask Lewis about Atlanta. He wrote about it at SI.com Friday. Klemko was in his first year on the NFL beat in 2013, Lewis’ last year in the league. As the Ravens were making what would be a run to a Super Bowl win, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell couldn’t say enough good things about Lewis. He said he’d like to get Lewis a job in the NFL front office.

Klemko was writing for USA Today and his editor had sent a reporter to talk to the families of the murder victims to see how they felt about all the slobbering over Lewis. Klemko was told to ask Lewis for his reaction to what the family had said.

He waited until the media scrum had left and told Lewis he had a sensitive questions to ask him. When he asked about Atlanta, Lewis told him that he couldn’t believe he was being asked about something that happened 13 years ago and told Klemko to get out of his space.

Lewis’ response was one thing. The Ravens’ response was another. Klemko was told by a Ravens official that if he, “Ever pull(ed) some (expletive) like that again, you’ll never come in this locker room again.”

The media relations staffer also said, “Why are you asking questions about murders that happened 13 years ago.”

The headline of Klemko’s piece reads, “Ray Lewis and the Bubble That Has Sheltered Him.”

His editors went to the Ravens and the NFL for an apology.

Nothing.

When he went into the Ravens’ locker room after a playoff win in Denver and tried to interview a player, the PR guy came over and dragged the player away and Klemko was all but pushed out of the room by other players.

Yep, the NFL bubble, with the help of the all too willing media, turned Ray Lewis into an inspirational figure. There is a statue of him outside the stadium where the Ravens play.

As you read this, Ray Lewis is a Hall of Famer.

Robert Lollar and Jacinth Baker are still dead.

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• Tom Brady turned 41 last week. Nutrition and staying fit have had a lot to do with his longevity but not as much as not having to play in the 1970s.
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That’s a video game.

Don’t laugh. More and more colleges are offering scholarships to e-sport players.

OK, go ahead and laugh.

John Steigerwald writes a weekly sports column for the Observer-Reporter. He hosts The John Steigerwald Show weekdays on AM 1250.