by Ray Lewis
Coach called me to the sideline on the changeover—said, “I’m gonna lean on you, Hoss.”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “You’re gonna touch it every play.”
And I did. I touched that ball seven straight times, carried us across those sixty yards like nothing much at all.
After the game, I went up to Coach Joe to talk about the game. I said, “Coach, I know you like to run me in the fourth quarter, but a lot of times, in the fourth, I’m already run down, kind of tired.”
He said, “What you have in mind?”
I said, “Run me early. Just one time, let me touch it early.”
The very next week, we drew Haines City. They had a linebacker—six foot four, 240 pounds—named Derrick Gibson. He was the number-one linebacker in the county—they said. (In Lakeland, we said different.) First play of the game, Coach called my number on a 21 Trap, straight through the middle. He said, “You said to run you when you’re fresh. This is as fresh as it gets, so let’s see what you can do with it.”
I ran that trap play all the way to the Haines City end zone, eighty yards down the field.
To this day, Coach Joe tells that story—me, asking him to get me the ball early. And every time he tells that story, he ends it the same way. He says, “From that day forward, every time Ray Lewis asked for the ball, I gave him the ball.”
He’s turned it into a kind of joke over the years, but the truth is he trusted me. We trusted each other.
• • •
We made a lot of noise that season. It was shaping up to be a special, special year. Truth was, in 1993, in and around Lakeland, Florida, if you were any kind of football fan, you had to come out to see me play. It was almost like you had no choice in the matter. The stands were filled to overflowing. Every week. People came out of the woodwork. And one of those people, I started to hear, was my father. I can’t remember who told me he was fixin’ to come to my last game of the season. Maybe it was one of my aunts or my cousins, but I got word he would be in the stands.
I didn’t know how to feel about this, quite honestly. I was confused, excited, nervous, pissed. All these emotions were just kind of churning around inside me. I didn’t even know if I wanted to see this man, but I can’t deny that it meant something to me, him coming out to watch me play. It ate at me, a little, that he’d never come to see me play, never come to see me wrestle. I had no room for him in my life, no place for him in my heart, but it lit me up inside, him wanting to check me out after all this time. I had nothing to say to him, couldn’t imagine what he had to say to me, but that didn’t matter. Only thing that mattered was that he would be there, watching. Only thing that mattered was that he could see with his own eyes what I had become without any kind of push from him.
We hadn’t beaten the Lakeland Dreadnaughts, the team that tossed us out of the playoffs the year before, in forever. There were a lot of emotions attached to that game. Wasn’t just me, looking to the stands, not knowing if I would see my father. It was my buddy Black, going up against his old teammates. It was everyone in the stands, hoping to see us finish out the string.
There was so much going on in my head, it was hard for me to concentrate on the game. Wasn’t hard for me to play, mind you, because by this point in the season I was on autopilot, but I was moving on pure instinct out there on the field. Muscle memory. Adrenaline. If I stopped to think about the game, what it would have been like to see my father after all this time, I might have just crumbled.
All game long, I caught myself checking out the crowd, looking for my father. I couldn’t even tell you what the man looked like—but there I was, looking for him. I’d seen pictures, but not since he’d been a young man. I was told I resembled him, a little, but I didn’t know what that could mean, seeing my face in his. A part of me wished I hadn’t known he was coming. A part of me wished he wouldn’t show. A part of me wished he’d see me dominate on the field, see the whole town cheering me on, calling my name, and hang his head in shame.
But he never showed. Or, if he did, he never showed himself. I heard later that someone ran into him later that night at a local hotel, coming out of some room with some woman, so I guess he had someplace else he needed to be. Just like there was always someplace else he needed to be.
We beat the Dreadnaughts that night, and it should have been a glorious moment, an exclamation point to my high school career, but all I remember is feeling disappointed, devastated, again. I ran out to the parking lot soon as I could after the game. I sat there, in the back corner of the lot, for the longest time. I sat and sat, couldn’t bring myself to leave. Don’t know what I was thinking in that moment, if I was thinking much at all, but I wasn’t moving.
Finally, I stood to leave. The parking lot had mostly emptied. I was still in my uniform, thinking nobody would notice me, that’s how lost I was inside my own head. But as I started to walk away, a man came up to me with a football in his hand.
He said, “Would you do me a favor, young man?”
I said, “What is that?”
He said, “Would you sign this football?”
He handed me the ball and a marker.
I said, “Why?”
He said, “I want to be the first person to get your autograph, son. Don’t know if anybody told you, but you’re ’bout to be a superstar.”
I said, “Don’t know about that, sir. I’m just trying to figure it out.”
But I signed the man’s football. Just my name—no date, no jersey number, no little saying or inspirational quote. Just my name.
It was the first autograph I ever gave, and if you’re ever in Lakeland, Florida, I can show you the exact spot where we stood, but I didn’t take in the moment for what it was, not at the time. My head was someplace else. We still had a job to do in the playoffs. I still had a job to do on the wrestling mat. I wasn’t done with this place. Not just yet.
FIVE
Welcome to Miami
Senior year of high school, I was a problem. I was a problem on the field. I was a problem on the mat. It was a lot, to have to deal with me. We made a lot of noise that year, me and my boys. Kicked up a lot of dust—nothing terrible, but there were a lot of distractions. Didn’t get into any kind of real trouble, but I got close to trouble, let’s just say that.
Real trouble—that kind of thing just wasn’t allowed in my house. Only trouble I ever made, really, was stepping up in defense of somebody else. My cousins, my friends, whoever. I would sometimes step in and take the heat for them, but it was never a heat of my own making. I respected my mama’s brand too much to embarrass that woman. Plus, she didn’t even give us an opportunity to do anything wrong. We couldn’t have people over at the house, couldn’t stay out once the street lights came on. She had us covered, man.
College, I took it as a given. I wasn’t really feeling it, though. Part of the reason for that was that my mother was in Memphis my last two years of high school. She’d been struggling down in Lakeland, and had taken up with another man, and we all packed up and went with him to Memphis, to try and make a go of it there. This all happened right after my sophomore year in high school, that summer. But I wasn’t really feeling Memphis, either, and I kept pushing my mama to let me go back home, finish out my high school career in Lakeland. I worked it out so I could stay with my grandmother on the McKinney side, and that’s how it worked out.
I said, “Mama, I’m gonna make a way for us.”
She said, “How you gonna do that, Junior?”
I said, “Mama, I’m telling you. I will make a way for us. I’m gonna go to college.”
Best I can remember, that was the first time we ever talked about college—and here I was just using it as a kind of bargaining chip, to convince my mother to send me back to Lakeland so I could be with my friends, my team. So when coaches finally did start talking to me about college, for real, when my friends on the team started talking about college, for real, my mother wasn’t around for me to get her
take. She was still up in Memphis with my brother and sisters, so I was kind of on my own in this.
Football was a way to get to college. That’s all—at least, that’s all it was at the time. College would take me the rest of the way, and back then I wanted to study business law. I had it in my head that this would be my ticket up and out, and I would get my degree, get a job, and find a way to help my family. I wasn’t thinking of making football a career—that came a little later.
Meanwhile, I got a ton of recruiting letters, a ton of coaches calling me, but I still had my wrestling season. Back of my mind, I was still thinking wrestling was the way to go, so I was hearing from some schools wanting me to wrestle, some schools wanting me to play football, some schools wanting me to do both. About the only school that didn’t really have any interest in me was Miami—wasn’t all that far from home, but it could have been a million miles away, far as I was concerned. And me, I might as well have been from Alaska, the way the Hurricanes were scouting me.
End of the day, it came down to Florida State and Auburn. I was sold on either one, could have gone either way, only, the way it worked out, last game of our football season, the game that cost us the state championship, Dennis Erickson, from Miami, was in the stands with his offensive-line coach, Art Kehoe. They weren’t there to see me. They were there to see a wide receiver named Jammi German, probably the number-one recruit in the nation at that time—definitely the number-one wide receiver. He was playing for Fort Myers, on the other side of the field, and Miami was making a push to bring him on board. Coach Erickson, Coach Kehoe, they came looking for Jammi German, but what they saw, corner of their eyes, was me. Turned out, I had some kind of game. I was sizzling—man, it was ridiculous. But the scoreboard didn’t say so. The scoreboard said Fort Myers was sizzling, and we were sent home. I can still remember falling to my knees and crying after that game. We’d all been so hungry for that state championship. All season long, it was close enough to taste—and just like that, the taste was gone.
Now, just getting to this game against Fort Myers, it wasn’t easy. It took a black-and-blue defensive war in the rain against Boca Ciega in the first round of the playoffs—with me scoring the winning touchdown on a ten-yard run off the left side, to make the score 6–0 as time ran out. Oh my goodness, it was one of the sweetest runs—ever, ever, ever. All these years later, I can still close my eyes and picture it—I can still feel the plant of my foot into that muddy field as I made my first cut. And against Tampa Jesuit in the next round, I was blessed to be able to score on an eighty-five-yard punt return—another game-winning touchdown, this one with just thirteen seconds left on the clock.
Off of these two games, they pinned me with the nickname “Mr. Everything,” because I would beat you coming and going, every which way. But I didn’t care about any nicknames. I didn’t care how I beat you, only that I beat you.
So we were riding high, but then we ran into Fort Myers—and this game, it taught me a lesson. It taught me that you can picture a moment in your mind and get to thinking you can will it so, but there are other forces at play. You can will yourself to the door, but getting all the way inside, that’s not just on you. Wrestling, maybe it’s all within your reach. You’re on your own. Football, there are so many moving parts, it’s a different story, and this story didn’t end how I’d pictured it. But this wasn’t the great lesson of that game. No, the great lesson of that Fort Myers game was that we had let this moment get away from us. We’d started to think it was something we were entitled to, instead of something we had to earn. I made a promise to myself that when I got a chance to knock on that door again, I would push myself inside. Not because I’d willed it so. Not because I’d pictured it. But because I would not rest until I powered through.
The job ain’t finished until the job is finished.
Coach Erickson, he must have seen something to file away for later, because Miami came calling eventually—but a whole lot happened before eventually came round. Early on, I set my sights on Florida State. It had been my childhood dream to play for the Seminoles. When you grow up in Lakeland, that’s like climbing to the top of the rainbow. I just wasn’t feeling all those other schools or coaches. One reason or another, there wasn’t a good fit. Even Auburn wasn’t getting it done for me, by the end of this process. But Florida State—I told myself it fit like a glove. Bobby Bowden, he’d spoken with Coach Joe, heard all about my game, my character, my commitment. All of that. And he must have liked what he was hearing, because he kept that conversation going.
There were times in there, my senior year, I could have pinched myself. It was like a dream—another door I was about to step on through, but I was making this journey on my own. My mom had no clue about any of this college stuff. She wanted the best for me, always, but she wasn’t taking me on these recruiting visits. She wasn’t hearing what I was hearing, seeing how some of these schools roll out the red carpet. Girls, parties, gear, boosters. Whatever you want. It all starts to mess with your head—only, it was messing with my head, just. Wasn’t anybody else taking it all in.
More and more, it was looking like I’d be going to Florida State. There was even talk I could keep wrestling—although, who knows, sometimes that kind of talk is just talk. You get there, the coaches tell you they can’t afford to see you hurt. They want you in the gym. They want you working out on their program, so they start talking a different game. But for now, they were telling me what I wanted to hear.
The others schools, they all fell away. One by one, either they dropped from my board, or I dropped from theirs. Either I didn’t show enough interest at the right time, or they didn’t show enough interest at the right time. But with Coach Bowden and them, I was feeling it. Big-time.
So there I was, up in Tallahassee for my final recruiting visit. Coach Bowden was saying all the right things. I was saying all the right things. Everything was lining up just so. And then I went in to see Chuck Amato, who was the defensive coordinator at the time. That’s how it goes on these visits—the head coach butters you up and does his thing and then he hands you off to the coach who’ll be working with you when you join the program. It’s like a job interview, I guess. You do a little meet and greet with the big boss, but you’re hired by the head of the department. And Chuck Amato started out saying all the right things, too. We really like you, Ray. We think you are an exceptional athlete. All of that. But then he went and said something that set me off—he said, “We’d like you to maybe play behind Derrick Brooks.”
Wasn’t expecting to hear that—and, really, I couldn’t think of a thing to say in response.
Chuck Amato, he must have seen I was stuck, so he kept on—he said, “You do know who Derrick Brooks is, son?” He said it like a question, but it wasn’t a question. Of course I knew Derrick Brooks—the dude could play. He’d go on to be a first-round NFL draft choice, win a Super Bowl with Tampa Bay, play in a bunch of Pro Bowls, bust his way to the Hall of Fame. At the time, he was the Seminoles’ top linebacker. You watched football, played football, lived in the state of Florida—of course you heard of Derrick Brooks. He was all that—and a little bit more besides.
I said, “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Two years behind Derrick, you’ll be ready to go.”
I heard that and thought, Two years? I thought, Is this man for real? So I stood and said, “Mr. Amato, thank you, but no thank you.”
Coach Amato tried to turn the meeting back around. He stood and said, “Now hold on there, Ray. Let’s talk about this.”
I said, “No disrespect, sir, but how you know I’m not better than Derrick Brooks right now?”
I said it like a question but it wasn’t a question. I didn’t give the man a chance to answer. I just walked out. Don’t know that anyone had ever walked out of one of those meetings before at Florida State, but I was gone. I got it in my head that these folks were disrespecting me, so I collected my plane ticket home—and the whole time, I think Coach Amato was back in his
office, wondering where our meeting went wrong.
By the time I got back to Lakeland, Coach Joe had already heard what happened. I went to see him, talked it through, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a grown man cry. He was a good, good man. He wanted the best for me. He said, “Ray, it was all set. You threw it away.”
I said, “Coach, he told me I was gonna play behind Derrick Brooks. Not alongside him, behind him.”
He said, “You’ve got to earn it, Ray. Nothing is handed to you.”
I said, “But they’ve never even seen what I can do. I ain’t even there yet, and already they’ve written me off.”
Years later, Coach Bowden gave an interview and he was asked if there was anything he regretted in his long coaching career. The man had coached at Florida State for over thirty years, won two national titles, twelve ACC Championships—probably one of the most accomplished college coaches of our time. And what did he say? He said his one regret was that he let Ray Lewis slip away from his program.
Wish I could say it was mine, too. It was nice to hear, after all that time, but Bobby Bowden didn’t give me a fair shake. That’s the bottom line of it. They hadn’t even put me in a uniform, and already they were telling me I couldn’t play—so, better believe it, I slipped away from the program. Quick as I could.
Even so, Coach Joe had me feeling like I’d let him down, and I guess I did. All of them other coaches, they’d set their sights on other players, worked their way down their lists, so everything went dry for a while. I was nowhere. Just like that, all these doors were open for me, and now I’d walked through the wrong one, so I turned my focus back to wrestling. I still had that state championship to win. And every now and then I’d see Coach Joe in the locker room and we’d talk things through, see what was what. He went from telling me I’d thrown away my big shot to telling me there were still some schools I could look at—wrestling, football, whatever. He had me thinking I should concentrate on my SAT exams, worry about getting a good score, maybe building off of that.
