Redlands Connection is a concoction of sports memories emanating from a city that once numbered less than 20,000 people. From the Super Bowl to the World Series, from the World Cup to golf’s U.S. Open, plus NCAA Final Four connections, Tour de France cycling, major tennis, NBA and a little NHL, aquatics and quite a bit more, the sparkling little city that sits between Los Angeles and Palm Springs on Interstate 10. Funny that this coach played football, played at Air Force, returning to Redlands to commence his post-playing career. – Obrey Brown
Brian Billick told the world about his star player, Ray Lewis. It was just about time for Super Bowl XXXV. Lewis, who was the Baltimore Ravens’ middle linebacker, had been linked to the murder of two men in Atlanta months earlier. That crime came just after a Super Bowl that the Ravens hadn’t yet played. It sure came up once that Ravens-New York Giants’ championship was about to be played.
Here was Billick, cast in the role as Lewis’ protector – as if this rugged defender that could knock down anyone in the NFL would need a protector – in a pushback role to NFL media. Media contact, via Billick, reached way beyond football.
I’ll never forget Billick – watching on TV, of course – telling the media they weren’t qualified to cast themselves into the role of cop reporter. The case had been tried. Charges against Lewis, folks, were dropped by prosecution. It was closed. I can still remember, “We’re not going to retry this,” said Billick.
Twenty-nine years earlier, Billick had not only graduated from high school, but his football brilliance (12 interceptions one season) at that prep level concluded.
On Lewis, there just wasn’t enough evidence. If not for the glaring spotlight of that Super Bowl XXXV, all matters would have been ignored.
Don’t ask, Billick was telling the media. He was, in fact, demanding it. It might have been the most memorable part of that year’s Super Bowl, in fact.
It was Super Bowl week. The Ravens, a 85-67 record under Billick over nine seasons, were getting set to take on the New York Giants for the National Football League championship in 2000 – which they did, convincingly. AFC wins over Denver, Tennessee and Oakland got Billick’s team into that championship against the Giants.
A few weeks later, Billick took time to share his thoughts with me.
On Lewis? No, I wasn’t asking him to retry. Or for any insight into the matter. Just how hard was it going through all that? How much of a distraction? Couldn’t have been much. After all, I told him, “you won, 34-7.”
“Boy, was that hard,” he told me in the same command performance manner he’d taken on with the media. “I still can’t believe I had to go through all that. How we, as an organization, had to go through all that. That never happened when I was at Redlands, believe me.”
Billick, of course, was a star player at Redlands High, a 1972 graduate before setting sail to play at Air Force Academy and, eventually, at Brigham Young University. After a possible playing career was negated at Dallas and San Francisco in 1977, his coaching career started in 1978 in Redlands, of all places.
That 1978 season, believe it or not, he helped both that city’s high school and small university in Redlands. It was on to BYU as a graduate assistant, San Diego State, Utah State in smallish Logan and Stanford before heading off to Minnesota Vikings as an assistant under Denny Green.
Two decades following his collegiate playing career, after a myriad of assistant coaching stops along the way, Billick surfaced as Ravens’ head coach – 80-64 record over nine seasons.
Years later, Feb. 2, 2018, to be exact, Billick had another NFL Hall Famer. Lewis was, in fact, being inducted with seven others, including another Billick protégé, wide receiver Randy Moss.
Yes, Billick had worked in Minnesota – under Green – with a number of NFL Hall-bound greats.
Lewis was the focus of the ambulance-chasing media heading into the Tampa Bay showdown with the Giants. Billick admitted he was set for the showdown with the media.
“Yeah,” said Billick, “I had to try and attract all the attention to me. I didn’t have to play. Ray Lewis did have to play. I needed his attention – all his attention – on that game.”
Against that chasing media, it was the old hit-‘em-in-the-mouth-before-they-hit-you routine. It worked, Billick said.
Truth is, Billick has coached numerous Hall of Famers – Rod Woodson, Shannon Sharpe, Jonathan Ogden, and that’s a yes on Deion Sanders in Baltimore after his years playing in Atlanta, San Francisco and Dallas.
During Billick’s Minnesota days, there was, of course, Moon, plus Cris Carter and the great Moss.
No, don’t get him to talk about a missed field in the NFC Championship game against the Atlanta “Dirty Bird” Falcons. Carter, Moss and QB Randall Cunningham should’ve been more than enough firepower for the Vikings to win that game.
Placekicker Gary Anderson, who made every single field goal attempt and extra point throughout the season, missed a game-winner against Atlanta. It capped the Vikings’ season at 15-1 on that game-capper.
Billick, meanwhile, has surrounded himself by Hall of Fame talent. He was in Dallas for a while. Anyone remember Tom Landry?
Also in San Francisco, albeit briefly, where Bill Walsh was running the 49ers.
When Billick’s command performance with the media via Lewis had ended, what did he think?
“I’d knocked them on their ass.”
