by Ray Lewis
Turned out, there were no other offers. Probably, I could have played at any of those top schools who’d come calling earlier in the year, but there are only so many scholarships to go around. All the slots were filled, so these coaches were telling me they couldn’t guarantee any kind of full ride. But we didn’t have money for college. Without a scholarship, I was nowhere but the same place I’d always been.
• • •
Graduation was getting close—and, still, no colleges had come calling.
I kept busy with work—at a Ford dealership down the road a piece, on Memorial Boulevard, detailing cars. Every lunch break, I had about an hour, I’d sprint back home across the railroad tracks, a couple miles. I’d fix myself a cool something to drink and then sprint back. That was my workout—because, hey, I needed that job, man.
Coach Joe was helping me on the football front. Making calls and talking me through some of my options. Coach Poole was helping me on the wrestling front. But I was still nowhere, no idea of my next move—matter of fact, it was starting to look like there wasn’t even a next move to make. Back of my mind, I knew something would work out. I knew I could walk on and play somewhere, probably get a scholarship. I knew I could wrestle, probably on a scholarship. So I wasn’t too worried about things breaking my way. They took a while, breaking, but I was too busy with my classes, with wrestling, to worry too much how things would go.
And right about this time, Miami came calling. They’d given a scholarship to this one dude who blew out his knee before reporting. I never learned the full story—but the upshot, for me, was that a spot had opened up. Comes down to Coach Erickson remembering seeing me in that Fort Myers game and him and Coach Kehoe hearing through the Florida recruiting grapevine that I had yet to sign with another program. So they called Coach Joe. It made no sense to them, me up in the air like that. The season I’d just had, the high school career I’d just had, the interest I’d gotten from coaches. It made no sense. But Coach Joe explained my situation, and out of that call they offered me that open scholarship.
Coach Joe called me up all excited. He said, “Let’s not let this one get away from us, Ray.”
I liked that he said us. That’s how much he had invested in me. We were in on the same deal.
This all happened so late in the game that the college football media guide had already been printed. The freshman recruits had already gotten together, met the rest of the team. It’s like I showed up out of nowhere. Soon as I got the call, I packed my few things and headed down to Miami on my own. My grandmother arranged for me to ride in a four-door white Cadillac, so when I pulled up I would make an impression. I packed light, the way I remember it. I had one trunk, like a footlocker, and it was mostly filled with my football stuff. Also, two packs of paper, two folders (a red one and a green one), a pack of number-two pencils, a four-pack of pens, one pair of jeans, two Fruit of the Loom T-shirts, a few toiletries, one pair of shoes.
Oh, and twenty dollars’ worth of food stamps. My mother pressed those stamps into my hand as I was leaving—said, “Just for you to have, Baby Ray.”
I stepped out of that Caddy and it was the first time I’d set foot on that campus. I didn’t know a soul. A lot of the guys on the team came out to meet me, a lot of the coaches, but nobody had any idea who I was, what to make of me. Freshmen, they already had a hard time, fitting themselves into a top Division I football program. There’s all this hazing-type behavior going on, returning players giving you the once-over, the cold shoulder. But here it was set up like I was the freshman of the freshmen, so even the newbies were putting me through my paces. Folks went out of their way to give me a hard time. I’d hear, I don’t see no Ray Lewis in the media guide. Or, You ain’t even s’posed to be here. But I was okay with that. I understood it—told myself they would know who I was before long. They would have no choice but to treat me right.
It was a tough adjustment, but I didn’t have time for any of that. I wouldn’t allow it, so even though I started out as a kind of outcast, I worked my way in. I was a bit of a comedian, a cutup, so that helped. I was hella good at “yo’ mama” jokes—that was like my go-to move. And slowly, on the back of all those jokes, I began to feel like a part of the team. Funny that it didn’t happen because of football. It happened because I could do a killer “Jerome”—this character Martin Lawrence used to play. It just about took these guys out of their game, seeing this big old dude from all the way up in Lakeland, playing like he was some pimp from Detroit, talking in rhymes. They’d look on and try not to laugh—thinking, Man, he wasn’t even recruited! Thinking, Who the hell is that guy?
But eventually, I wore them down and won them over.
And on the field? Well, I wore them down there, too. When I came in, I was playing behind a senior named Robert Bass—but I was more worried about James Burgess, our number-one linebacker recruit. He came from the Miami area, played his high school ball at Southridge, and people talked about him like he was the number-one freshman linebacker in the country. Nothing against James—he was good, but he wasn’t that good. He wasn’t the dude you could build your team around, and even in preseason you could start to see that. I could start to see that, so I wasn’t just thinking of Robert Bass, blocking my path in the middle. I was also thinking of James Burgess on the outside.
First day we put on pads, I made my presence known, laid into one of our running backs, James Stewart. James was a big old boy—six foot three, 235 pounds—and I just flattened him. Didn’t feel good about it, didn’t feel bad about it, but there it was. Truth be told, you weren’t supposed to hit like that in practice, not on the first day, but I was the dude with the last scholarship, joined the team at the last possible minute. Those rules didn’t apply, far as I was concerned, so when James came around on a toss, I lit into him, and when he finally got back on his feet after that tackle, I got in his ear—said, “Man, there is a new sheriff in town! Don’t you ever think you gonna run the ball that freely around me.”
Now, let me just be clear: In practice, you hit, but maybe not as hard as I hit James on this toss. There should be no letup, just because it’s your teammate on the other side of the ball. The thinking is, Hey, if you can deal with us, you can deal with anybody. We weren’t out there trying to put a hurt on our own boys, but there was no letup to the way we played. Practice or no, teammate or no—we played hard. We played for real. And here it’s like I was shot out of a cannon, flattened poor James Stewart—left him seeing stars, just like in the cartoons.
After that, all them boys, they came runnin’ round. All them amazing veteran players we had on that team. Rohan Marley, my very good friend to this day—Bob Marley’s son, who went on to play in the Canadian Football League. Warren Sapp, who made it all the way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, after a great career in Tampa Bay and Oakland. Dwayne Johnson—“The Rock”—who also played in the CFL before kicking butt as an actor, professional wrestler, whatever. Patrick Riley, who went on to play for the Chicago Bears.
All my brothers on D, they started jumping on me, clapping me on the helmet, and I heard somebody say, “That joker is for real.”
Yes, sir. Yes I was.
• • •
Second game of the season, that same old theme music kicked back in, the story of my career: Robert Bass blew out his knee in a game against Virginia Tech, and right away there was all this talk on our side of the field about who should go in for him. All this scuffling. First name I heard was James Burgess. Don’t know who said it, but it’s the one name that popped out at me in all that confusion: “Somebody get me Burgess.”
Soon as I heard it, I had to talk myself down from being pissed. Told myself it made sense, Burgess getting the nod ahead of me. He was the top linebacker recruit. He’d gotten all that attention. Me, I stood just a shade taller than a walk-on, wasn’t even in the media guide. Even so, I wasn’t too happy, hearing his name like that. But before I could get too down on myself, before I got to wondering who else wou
ld have to go down before I got the call, I heard the voice of our linebacker coach, Randy Shannon.
Now, Randy Shannon was a big deal. You grew up in Florida, you played football, you knew Randy Shannon. He’d played for the Hurricanes, played for the Cowboys in the NFL. He wasn’t built like a typical linebacker—he was smaller, faster, quicker. I liked the way he played, man. I did. He had a different approach to that position, an athlete’s approach. Me and him, we got along pretty well, those first couple weeks.
In fact, it was Randy Shannon who pinned me with my number—52. That number came with a story. You see, when I got to Miami, I had my eye on number 1. Jessie Armstead, another great linebacker, had done that number proud for the Hurricanes, but he was off to play for the New York Giants, and I thought the number was in play, but it went instead to one of our running backs, Danyell Ferguson. He was a year ahead of me, so he had seniority—that’s just how it goes. But then Randy came over to me one day in practice and said, “You look like somebody who’s gonna start his own thing.”
He knew I was fishing around for a number to wear—someone to honor, maybe put it out there that my game would be like this other person’s who wore it before me.
I said, “What you mean?”
He said, “Why don’t you wear a number not tied to anyone else? Make it your own.”
I said, “What number you have in mind?”
He said, “Fifty-two.”
I thought about it, some. And then I smiled.
Randy said, “Why you smiling?”
I said, “Fifty-two. That’s seven. I’m good with that.”
He said, “Seven?”
I said, “Five and two is seven. That’s completion, man.”
He said, “Hold on, Ray Lewis. You’re spiritual? It’s like that?”
I said, “Yes, sir. It’s like that.”
He said, “Boy, you alright. Your mama did a good job.”
Completion. The Lord rested on the seventh day. I thought, I can get with that. But there would be no rest for me until I made that number my own, like Randy said, and here he was, calling James Burgess back before the dude could step from his place on the sideline.
Randy said, “No, no. Not Burgess.” Then he looked at me and said, “Ray Lewis, you up.”
So I grabbed my helmet and ran out onto that field, and right here I’ll tell it the way old folks tell it when they spin a tale.
Here on in, the story has begun.
SIX
Hurricane Seasons
First game freshman year we drew Boston College. I got in late, scoreboard already lit our way, game in hand.
Four plays—that’s all, just four plays. But it felt to me like I’d arrived.
I’ll never forget those four plays—made three tackles and nearly got myself a pick on a pop-up pass. That near-pick, it was something. The quarterback dropped back, and I could see by his eyes where he was looking to throw, got my hands up, jumped, put my fingertips on the ball, tipped it up in the air. Oh my goodness. That tipped ball hung there for the longest time—time enough for me to backpedal, get myself under it, maybe make the grab, but the quarterback followed the play. Wasn’t expecting that, but there he was, jumping up a beat ahead of me, batting the ball down. This was maybe the first time I realized I was playing at another level than I was used to. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but something to adjust to.
Next game, home against Virginia Tech, the game when Robert Bass went down, I went from counting plays to counting games and seasons. That Virginia Tech game was a big deal, and not just for me. The Hurricanes had a big streak going at home—hadn’t lost a game at the Orange Bowl since 1985, when I was ten years old. We were at fifty-one games and counting, and none of these guys wanted to be on the field when that streak came to an end. No way, no how. The older players, they’d had some time with this type of pressure, but for the freshmen, this was our first taste. Pressure like that, it didn’t bother me—but the other guys, it was an extra something to think about, a weight we all had to carry.
You want to keep those distractions to a minimum. That’s why we stayed as a team in a nearby hotel before home games—the way they do it at a lot of big-time programs. For us, this meant Shula’s Hotel in Miami Lakes, where Coach Don Shula was one of the investors. Rohan Marley was assigned as my roommate, and he’d checked in ahead of me. I got to my room, threw my bags down, headed right back out to go hang with some of the other freshmen.
Rohan stopped me—said, “Where you going?”
I said, “Nowhere, man. Thought I’d go hang with the guys, one of the other rooms.”
He said, “Hang here.”
And so I did, and that was the first we got to know each other, me and Ro—Rat, we used to call him. We became close—like, right away. Wasn’t nothing to our friendship at first, just two ballplayers doing our thing, thrown together like that, but we seemed to click. That first night, we got to talking. Football, life, family. Man, we just talked and talked. And as we talked, I went into my routines. I took out my deck of cards and started in on my push-ups and sit-ups. Didn’t even give it a thought—I just went to work.
Rohan looked at me like I was plain crazy. He said, “What you doing?”
I said, “I work out before every game.”
He said, “What?”
So I told him, showed him. I went through that whole deck of cards, shuffled ’em up, went through the deck again. I had my feet up under the bed for support to do my sit-ups, and Rohan kept looking at me.
Finally he said, “You know what, youngster?”
I liked that he called me “youngster.” He was a big old sophomore, but that one year made him a wise veteran, compared to me. Before I flipped the next card I said, “What’s that?”
He said, “You take the body, I’ll take the mind.”
Then he waited until I’d gone all the way through that deck a second time, handed me his headphones—said, “Listen to this.”
It was one of his father’s songs—Papa Bob, we all called him. I listened to the first couple beats and pulled one of the buds from my ear—said, “No disrespect, but I don’t really listen to this type of music.” I felt bad about it, since it was his father and all, but it just wasn’t my thing.
He said, “No, no, no. It’s not what you think. Listen.”
I laid back down on the bed and gave the music another try, really started to listen to what Papa Bob was saying—all about peace and love and standing up to be counted. All of that. It was the difference between hearing and listening. Those words, they took me away, outside myself for a little bit. Where I grew up, the way things were back home, this type of music didn’t find us. Who had time for music, anyway? I knew who Bob Marley was, of course, but I never paid him no mind—only, here in this hotel room, lying down on that big old bed, the words just lifted me up and carried me away. Next thing I knew, I’d drifted off to sleep. That’s how at ease I was with myself at just that moment. Whatever distractions I’d had piling up for my attention, the weight of the young season—it all fell away.
Out of that, we found our Friday-night routine. Me and Rat, we’d hole up in our hotel room and start flipping through my deck of cards. Push-ups, sit-ups. We’d listen to Papa Bob. We’d get our heads around the game. We’d talk and talk—not just about football, but there was a lot of that, too. For Rohan, it was just a once-a-week type deal. That’s as far as he went with those workouts. He couldn’t understand at first that I was cut a little differently. He said, “You do this every day?”
I said, “Every day of my life.”
He said, “For real?” He couldn’t believe it.
I said, “Rat, I’m not like you. I’m broke, man. All I do is school and football. All I got time for.”
Funny thing is, we didn’t talk about it after that. Rohan just dropped to the floor and joined in, so this became our thing—Friday nights before games, flipping through that deck of cards, pushing each other like nothing else mattered.
<
br /> • • •
Monday after we won that Virginia Tech game, I was feeling pretty good. We had our Sundays off, so this was the first time we were all together as a team, first time I went in to look at film with a real role to play. It wasn’t a full-time role just yet, but it was better than being on the second string—maybe even on the third string, depending on who was calling the shots. James Burgess, some folks might have put him ahead of me on the depth chart, but I couldn’t worry about that.
Anyway, it was a while before I started talking in these meetings, but I was taking it all in—believe me, I was taking it all in.
Another funny thing: the language was different than what I was used to at Kathleen. Everything had a different name, a different term, so I was trying to keep everything straight. The coaches, they had their own little shorthand. The players, we had our own way of talking to each other, too. And me, I was still figuring it all out.
That Monday was when we all heard that Robert Bass would be out for a while with a blown knee. We knew he was hurt, but we didn’t know how bad. Coach Erickson, he took the opportunity to announce that I would be his starting middle linebacker, here on in. I heard that and thought, It’s my time now.
That week, we played at Colorado, on national television. It felt to me like all eyes were on us and on me. And that Colorado team was loaded. Kordell Stewart at quarterback. Lamont Warren and Rashaan Salam in the backfield. Charles Johnson and Michael Westbrook at wide receiver. Christian Fauria at tight end. Offensively, they had a lot of weapons, a bunch of guys who’d go on to play in the league, but we came into town with some straight swagger. Our confidence—that was our weapon. It was through the roof. We didn’t give a damn how many players they had. Our attitude was, Hey, we’re not only gonna punch you in the mouth during the game, but we’ll meet you in the parking lot afterward and finish you off.
