By Debbie Schlussel

**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****

I really couldn’t care less who wins tonight’s Super Bowl. I won’t get any bonus money or endorsement deals out of it. Doesn’t help me or make a difference in my life one bit. I once knew Jim Harbaugh, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers in passing. And it was literally in passing as he passed by on his way to the two girls he was “dating” (euphemism) on my hall, my freshman year at the University of Michigan, when he was a senior. I’m rooting for his team, though, for a good reason: I don’t cheer on murderers and baby daddies of six kids with four women they never married. And that’s the thug and Baltimore Ravens star Ray Lewis, in this case. Although it’s halftime as I write this and Lewis’ team is winning, things can change, and I hope they do.

Last week, I noted that the mainstream media was abuzz about former NFL quarterback and current CBS sports guy Dan Marino and the fact that he had an illegitimate kid with someone other than his wife. And, yet, there is no such buzz, ever, about guys like Ray Lewis, who has the six kids with the four baby mama chicks. Why is that? Does race and racism have something to do with it? And, for that matter, Dan Marino has never been charged with a felony, zero murder victims, and zero missing knives and bloody suits. He also never fled the scene of a murder in his limo. You can’t say any of that for Ray Lewis. Earlier today, I tweeted what I call “Ray Lewis In Numbers” (follow me on Twitter). I got the part about one felony wrong, as he was charged with two felony murder counts and then made a deal to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstructing justice. But you get the point.

It sickens me that this guy is a big star and almost all of Baltimore and the mainstream media are gushing over him when this guy is a murderer. He took two members of his posse to a store, where they bought three knives, meaning they were planning to use them in what ended up being the murder of two innocent men outside an Atlanta night club. In the early morning hours of January 31, 2000, Ray Lewis and his two companions beat and stabbed to death Richard Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, leaving Lollar’s daughter India Lollar, then four years old, without a father.

Ray Lewis and his friends fled the crime scene in his limo, and his knife and the bloody suit he was wearing that night “mysteriously disappeared” and were never found. Lewis was originally charged with two counts of murder, but he worked a deal with prosecutors, in which he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to testify against his two friends in their murder trial. But, Lewis, the son of a baby mama who has perpetuated the cycle, knows the rules of the hood: don’t snitch. So, his “testimony” against his co-murderers consisted of such probative statements as, “I be trippin’, I be trippin’.” And his friends walked. No one ever paid the price for those murders and the relatives of Lewis’ murder victims are understandably outraged at all the adulation visited upon Ray Lewis in his last game tonight.

I’ve heard from a friend of mine who told me he became a close adviser to Ray Lewis at the time that the men who were murdered were solicited by Ray Lewis’ friends for gay sex acts for an agreed upon price. And, the story goes, after the men performed, Ray Lewis’ friends didn’t want to pay and Ray Lewis didn’t want to front them the money for that, which is why they bought the knives. They were prepared to give stabs instead of payment at the meeting point that night in Atlanta.

When O.J. Simpson’s clothes mysteriously disappeared, we knew why: he murdered his wife and Ron Goldman. When he fled in a White Ford Bronco, we knew why he was running. It’s the same reason Ray Lewis fled in his limo that night.

In 2001, Ray Lewis was the MVP of the Super Bowl, but Disney did not allow him to appear in its usual post-Super Bowl “I’m Going to Disney World” ad. Will Disney make the same decision if the same thing happens tonight? Hard to say because that’s the world we live in now. NFL players literally get away with murder. Michael Vick went to prison for killing dogs. But Ray Lewis never paid a penalty for killing two men in their early 20s.

Today, Ray Lewis claims he’s changed, though it defies credulity to claim any such thing when the murderer hasn’t admitted his crime and hasn’t received the forgiveness of his dead victims and their families. Ray Lewis paid a large settlement–reportedly multi-millions–to India Lollar, the daughter of one of his victims. That’s not the act of an innocent, but it is the behavior of a murderer who got away with it in criminal court and doesn’t want to be deposed or take the stand in a civil case. Lewis also says he’s a religious Christian, and I’m scratching my head to find an example of a religious Christian who repeatedly sleeps around with different women, fathering children with them, and then abandons them. I may not be a Christian, but I know that’s not how a Christian is supposed to live. But what do I know? After all, Sports Illustrated calls Lewis “G-d’s Linebacker.” Sickening.

Lewis also claims that he should be absolved because he gives money to kids through his foundation. But I looked up his foundation’s tax returns, and the Ray Lewis Foundation gives and spends very little on the kids from his impoverished Florida hometown. It’s a tiny fraction of a fraction of the multi-milion dollars he’s made each of 17 years in the NFL.

So, if you are one of the fools-without-a-conscience from Baltimore who is cheering on this murderer and thug, you have no moral compass and no decency. You are tone deaf to the cries of his murder victims. And you are lucky that he took away the lives of someone else’s relatives instead of yours.

No matter who wins tonight’s big game and no matter who is the MVP, Ray Lewis will always be a murderer and a serial baby daddy who thrust more than his fair share of illegitimate kids on America.

And if he doesn’t pay in this life, he’ll get his eventually.

**** UPDATE: More on “class act” and so-called “devout Christian” Ray Lewis (and, for the record, I don’t identify this thug as a Christian) from Sports Illustrated:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune in ’00: “Ray Lewis, charged with murder in the stabbing deaths of two men after the Super Bowl, appears with a co-defendant in a sexually explicit mail-order video. The video shows Lewis and [strip-club promoter] Joseph Sweeting watching party guests perform sex acts.”

On second thought, he and his foundation should stay far away from inner city (and any other) kids.