There is no doubt it will be exciting. There are so many variables in play this season. Just going to see how Kolb does at QB and Horton as DC will be worth the price of admission.
My key for 2011. Somebody has to step up and take over as the cornerstone of the football team. The guy or guys that keep the mojo going at practice, on the sidelines and on the field. Especially when circumstances present the opportunity to take the rest of the day off. We need a Ray Lewis.
Why has the football world given him a pass and forgotten what a dirt bag he is???
When the Cobalt emptied around 4 a.m., there were arguments outside. A man named Jeff Gwen got into one with someone named Reginald Oakley, one of nearly a dozen people who'd arrived at the club in a 40-foot limousine hired by Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.
Evidence at the subsequent trial suggested that Baker joined the fray, hitting Oakley with a champagne bottle. Lewis would later say that Oakley, Joseph Sweeting and Kwame King, all members of his party, bought knives at a local sporting goods store the day before the Super Bowl. Somebody was about to use them.
Lollar and Baker were left bleeding on the concrete when Lewis' limo sped off. Baker's blood was found in the limo. One female occupant of the limo said the party stopped to dispose of Lewis' bloody shirt, but at trial, no witness ever placed a knife in Lewis' hand or said he was involved in the fight except Gwen, whose testimony was discounted because he identified Lewis as wearing a mink coat.
Several in Lewis' party wore mink that night.
Sweeting was charged with Lollar's death, Oakley with Baker's. In a three-week trial that ended with a jury deliberating less than five hours before acquitting both of them, Sweeting's lawyer told the judge the killer was King. Lewis, originally charged with two counts each of murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice in exchange for testimony against Sweeting and Oakley.
To this day, Greg Wilson believes Ray Lewis paid for all the defense attorneys.
"If he didn't," Wilson said, "somebody would have told the truth. Where are these guys getting the kind of money that would get them off?"
Lewis was in the middle of a $26 million contract at the time. Less than six months after the stabbings, it was cold legal history. Case closed. No further investigation. Atlanta authorities contend the right men were arrested, just not convicted. At least three others in the Lewis limo were never called to the stand in three weeks of testimony.
Greg Wilson wrote a letter to the newspaper in Atlanta, saying he thought the district attorney put his nephew's case on the back burner.
"I got a letter from him," Wilson said. "He said his office would strive to do better in the next case. That pissed me off. I didn't want to hear about the next case. Nobody here has the kind of money that would keep our case alive. We're just an average family, like anyone else, just trying to make it. If you don't have money, you don't have nothin'."
