Amid 'storybook' ending, Ray Lewis is still controversial

It's not hard to find Ray Lewis in prayer. You might catch a glimpse of it on the sidelines before a game. In the locker room. Even on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- the muscular Baltimore Ravens linebacker standing bare-chested in a swimming pool, his palms pressed together.

To some, Lewis' frequent expressions of faith are the marks of a life redeemed, a long 13-year journey from murder accusations -- later dropped by prosecutors -- in the death of two men hours after the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta.

But for others, the show of faith is little more than an act.

"Stop acting like you are one of the people that come out of the Bible," said Greg Wilson, whose nephew Jacinth Baker died along with a friend in the infamous melee 13 years ago that almost derailed Lewis' career.

"If you're redeemed -- and he's always quoting Scriptures -- then you would have stood up like a man and said what happened," Wilson said.It's not hard to find Ray Lewis in prayer. You might catch a glimpse of it on the sidelines before a game. In the locker room. Even on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- the muscular Baltimore Ravens linebacker standing bare-chested in a swimming pool, his palms pressed together.

To some, Lewis' frequent expressions of faith are the marks of a life redeemed, a long 13-year journey from murder accusations -- later dropped by prosecutors -- in the death of two men hours after the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta.

But for others, the show of faith is little more than an act.

"Stop acting like you are one of the people that come out of the Bible," said Greg Wilson, whose nephew Jacinth Baker died along with a friend in the infamous melee 13 years ago that almost derailed Lewis' career.

"If you're redeemed -- and he's always quoting Scriptures -- then you would have stood up like a man and said what happened," Wilson said.It's not hard to find Ray Lewis in prayer. You might catch a glimpse of it on the sidelines before a game. In the locker room. Even on the cover of Sports Illustrated -- the muscular Baltimore Ravens linebacker standing bare-chested in a swimming pool, his palms pressed together.

To some, Lewis' frequent expressions of faith are the marks of a life redeemed, a long 13-year journey from murder accusations -- later dropped by prosecutors -- in the death of two men hours after the 2000 Super Bowl in Atlanta.

But for others, the show of faith is little more than an act.

"Stop acting like you are one of the people that come out of the Bible," said Greg Wilson, whose nephew Jacinth Baker died along with a friend in the infamous melee 13 years ago that almost derailed Lewis' career.

"If you're redeemed -- and he's always quoting Scriptures -- then you would have stood up like a man and said what happened," Wilson said.Revisiting the scene

For 13 years, Reginald Oakley has also remained silent about what happened in Atlanta.

But this week, he agreed to walk through the Atlanta neighborhood where the killings happened and talk about that night.

It's the first time, he said, he's returned to the scene. The neighborhood has changed drastically, but the memories are still fresh.It was self-defense for me because someone attacked me," Oakley told CNN.

He still maintains he did not stab anyone.

But for the first time, Oakley cast doubt on Lewis' version of what happened that night. Lewis wasn't a peacemaker, he says, but a participant in the fight.

"I don't know if he was wrestling or fighting, but I know he was right in the mix with everybody else," Oakley said. "I think he was just standing up for himself. It's just too bad that when the police asked him what happened he wouldn't come clean."

But Garland, the defense lawyer, remains unrelenting in his defense of the football star.

"He was not involved in the fight; he didn't cause it," Garland said. "He didn't take an act or step or statement to make this happen. He was no more guilty than the other 100 people on the street."

Storybook ending?

The convoluted accounts of what happened that night still anger the families of the victims.

"All of them were involved in it and nobody wants to tell the truth with exactly what happened," Wilson said.

And he just doesn't understand how football fans can get swept up by the story of Lewis' redemption.

To him, Lewis is a criminal ringleader "hiding behind the Bible."

"This will never fade," Wilson said. "I hope it haunts them for the rest of their life until the day they die and then they burn in hell."

But if Lewis is thinking back on what happened in Atlanta, he's not letting on. He was all smiles during Super Bowl media appearances this week, even while batting down fresh accusations claiming he used a banned performance-enhancing substance.

He hasn't gone out this week, he says. He doesn't want to. All he's thinking about is football.

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"You draw up a lot of storybook endings, but for me, how else would I rather go out than be on the biggest stage ever," Lewis said, "giving everything I've got for my teammates to be able to touch that Lombardi trophy."

Of course, the true end to Lewis' playing career will come in a few years when he is enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

It's just a few miles down the road from where Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar, childhood friends from Akron, Ohio, were buried 13 years ago.

Disabled students must be given sports, says Education Dept.

The feds are ordering schools across the country to make "reasonable" changes to sports programs so that disabled students can play — or else create separate teams for them.

The new guidance from the Education Department issued Friday was hailed by advocates for the disabled but denounced by a conservative think-tank that said it could cost big bucks for cash-strapped schools.

"We think it’s huge and historic. In my opinion it could have the same effect, if properly implemented, as Title IX did for women," said Kirk Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports USA.

Title IX required schools to offer girls and boys the same athletic opportunities and resulted in a huge uptick in female participation in school sports after it took effect 40 years ago.The new order from the Education Department says athletics is also a civil right for the disabled and schools that don’t protect it could lose federal funding.

Under the latest rules, schools must tweak traditional programs to give qualified disabled students a shot at playing as long as they can do it without fundamentally changing the sport or giving anyone an advantage.

For instance, a visual aid instead of a starter pistol for the deaf runner would be easy to implement, while adding a fifth base to a baseball field to shorten running distances would be considered too big a change.

If alterations to a traditional team aren't feasible, schools must create a sports program that is open to disabled students, the order says. If there aren't enough students, schools should seek to create district-wide, regional or mixed-gender programs.

That part of the directive could be a huge financial burden, said Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning educational research nonprofit.

“I’m sympathetic to the idea that kids with disabilities should be able to play sports, but this is an incredible example of executive overreach and a huge unfunded mandate,” Petrilli said.

“It’s not clear how far schools have to go. Is wheelchair basketball enough or do they need to have wheelchair tennis and other sports, too?”

Bauer said such concerns are off-base,  that schools will not be asked to have a disabled counterpart for every sport.

“It’s not going to be across the board,” he said. “Maybe football is not the sport that is going to be integrated.”

The letter from the feds gives some examples of ways schools can be creative but it does not spell out everything.

Casey Followay, 15, of Wooster, Ohio, who races in a wheelchair alone on his track team, hopes the policy will allow him to go up against runners. “It’s going to give me the chance to compete against kids at my level,” he told the Associated Press.

Lindsay Jones of the Council for Exceptional Children said that since disabilities are so individualized, the response to them needs to be, as well.

“I do thing you’re going to see some case-by-case lawsuits,” she said.

Ron Ingram, a spokesman for the Alabama High School Athletic Association, said he did not expect enormous changes at the school level in his state.

“We already have gone to great lengths to include students with disabilities in a way that it is not detrimental to the fundamental concept of the contest,” he said, pointing to a wrestler with no legs who racked up a 36-14 record in his senior year competing on a traditional team.

He said a wheelchair division at the state track-and-field championships has been a “disappointment,” with not much interest. “A majority of our special-needs students would prefer to compete in the Special Olympics,” he said.

“I think, based on what I’ve read so far, the biggest impact will just remind us all that we do need to go to great lengths to make sure all our students athletes are not discriminated against,” Ingram said.