And as much as the media predicted that Billick’s tirade was to take attention and heat away from Ray Lewis, it didn’t.
On the following day, the official “Super Bowl Media Day,” virtually every stall on the field at Raymond James Stadium featuring other Ravens players was empty while the entire throng of more than 2,000 credentialed media members waited by Lewis’ podium for him to break under the questioning.
He never did.
Even Lewis’ teammates were interested in his comments, wrestling for space near the dais so they could get their home video cameras in on the action.
(Just as an aside, every player and every single member of the organization in Tampa found gifts in their hotel room every day of Super Bowl week. They were “Festivus” gifts from Art and David Modell. More than 210 people – front office staff, scouts, players, cheerleaders, literally everyone – received a video camera, digital camera, several duffel bags full of clothing, jerseys, paraphernalia and a mini-CD player. So everyone was recording the week for posterity.)
As much as the media was “anti-Raven” heading into the playoffs and leading up the Super Bowl, they really were a dream for anyone with a pen and a notebook or a microphone and a camera.
Smiling, chatty, off the wall and talking shit the whole way, the Baltimore Ravens were the anti-Super Bowl team. Every year the media descends upon the site of the big game only to receive boring, milquetoast, vanilla responses to all of their questions.
“We respect Team X.”
“We’re just happy to be here.”
“With God’s blessing, we’re going to go out on Sunday and hopefully play the game of our lives.”
Blah, blah, blah.
When the media arrived at the Ravens’ big top on the parking grounds of the Hyatt Westshore on Wednesday and Thursday, they got the full monty.
Being a five-time Super Bowl media veteran – seeing the Broncos, Patriots, Packers, Falcons, Titans and Rams in previous years – I had always wondered what it would be like for me, one of these days, when I would walk into one of those big tents and see my guys at every table.
The trash-talking, disrespected and disrespectful bad boys did not disappoint.
The Ravens were on their game.
“Our guys just handled it,” Billick now says like a proud papa. “I think they actually looked forward to (the media attention). It was more like they embraced it.”
Ray Lewis was in one corner being his evasive self. At one point, Shannon Sharpe, whose lips never stopped moving all week, came over to put his hands on Lewis’ shoulders and talk about the abuse his friend had taken over the past six months.
Rob Burnett paraded through the throng with a floppy hat pulled down across the top of his sunglasses, complete with a “GET NASTY” T-shirt across his chest that landed him (and me!) on the front page of dozens of newspapers across the country.
Edwin Mulitalo was showing off his own outerwear, the “Festivus Maximus” T-shirt.
Chris McAlister was laying down his usual garbage about his and the team’s greatness, as silent partner Duane Starks nodded in agreement.
Linebackers Brad Jackson and Cornell Brown came to the second day of media fanfare replete with “Billy Bob teeth,” mock newspapers proclaiming themselves Super Bowl heroes and sticking their heads into giant holes cut out in the newspapers to make themselves the center of attention.
But the total package was none other than The Goose himself, defensive tackle Tony Siragusa, who was a larger-than-life, one-man, multimedia extravaganza.
My history with Siragusa is probably not much different from anyone else’s. He can be the nicest, most genuine guy in the world or he can be an extraordinary pain in the ass. And, perhaps his most endearing trait, unlike anyone else I’ve ever met, is how he can be both at the exact same instant.
The night I met The Goose, at The Barn at a party in May 1997, he held a butcher’s knife up to my throat for a publicity shot as thanks for bringing him a “Welcome to Baltimore” cake.
Later that spring, before he’d even played a down of football in Baltimore, I drove Goose from the Owings Mills complex to a local automobile repair shop to pick up his vehicle after a mini-camp practice. That was one of our more interesting conversations, because we discussed our mutual love of marketing and public affection as we strolled down Reisterstown Road in the Nasty Van.
