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EVENTS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
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Surreal scene Media Day mob around Lewis the day's signature moment
Updated: Wednesday January 24, 2001 1:52 PM
By John Giannone, CNNSI.com From the back, the stampede resembled the start of the New York marathon. From the front, it looked like downtown Pamplona, Spain, with the bulls overheated and hungry. The swarm of humanity was headed directly for podium seven. The clock above the end zone at Raymond James Stadium read 1 p.m. -- zero hour for Ray Lewis to face a sea of inquisitors. Lewis spent much of the next hour trying to convince the unconvinced that his story was "irrelevant" and that a "chapter has closed" in his life. Yet a glance at the back of Lewis' interview area told a wholly different story. There, standing on the final row of a temporary, three-tiered elevated bleachers, were Billy Davis and Clarence Love -- two members of the AFC Champion Ravens.
Clearly, this moment was neither irrelevant nor a closed chapter. This was the signature moment of Super Bowl XXXV Media Day. Lewis was asked if he had anything to say to the families of the two stabbing victims from the fateful night in Atlanta. "No," he responded. In fact, Lewis either responded "No" or "Next question" more than a dozen times to the group of at least 150 who crowded his podium. At one point, he appeared exasperated when another inquiry came his way. "Football, football, football," Lewis said, turning his head away from the questioner. At the adjacent riser sat Rod Woodson, Lewis' locker room neighbor in Baltimore, his year-long confidante and the player Lewis has most come to trust. "It's very unfortunate that half the people are over there because it's negative," Woodson said. "But that's our society. Our society is built off negative things and they want to feed off negative things. And that's unfortunate." Despite a few testy exchanges on Tuesday, Lewis still plans to meet the media the next two days at the team's Tampa hotel.
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