Super Bowl XLVII: Ray Lewis Tells Teammates Not To Pose with Lombardi Trophy Before Super Bowl

What do Stevie Wonder and sports have in common? Well as Bud Light tells me: Superstition. It’s a well known superstition in hockey that you shouldn’t touch the Stanley Cup before you actually win it, and Ray Lewis is approaching Super Bowl XLVII the same exact way. Lewis gave his teammates very strict instructions not to touch or even pose with the Lombardi trophy unless the date is February 3rd and the Ravens are the last team standing in the NFL.

BaltimoreRavens.com staff writer Ryan Mink was on-hand to witness Lewis’ order to his teammates:

"CBS Associate Director Cory Fishman said Ray Lewis laid down an order that nobody was going to be shot with the trophy. Not touching it, not around it, NOTHING.Lewis later told the network (not these exact words … and believe me, they’re powerful words that you’ll want to tune in to hear) that they hadn’t earned the Lombardi yet. So they didn’t deserve it."

Lewis could have been half-joking when he said it, but once he told his team not to even think about the trophy, they stopped thinking about it. Thus us the power of Ray Lewis. This little ride he’s on with the Ravens is starting to get a weird vibe about it. I can’t really place my finger on it at the moment, but from the endless tears, to the butt-crack shot after the AFC Championship game to Lewis get a little bit nerdy about superstitions, this whole journey is starting to get stale.

Not in the sense that no one is interested anymore, but how much can one person take of Ray Lewis being weird. I suppose this is a precursor to what we’ll have to deal with once he joins ESPN.

Then again, Lewis is coming from the right place with this. He wants his team to stay hungry for the trophy, not get duped into thinking they’ve already won it. Lewis’ philosophy is basically this: if you want to pose in a picture with the trophy, go to Canton over the summer, but if you want to touch it and make it a part of your legacy, then you’d better win it.