I'm on the fence. I live outside of Baltimore so I'd like to see the local team win, but I have always been a Redskins fan so it's not like I've got a lot of love for the Ravens. I was also a big Jim Harbaugh fan when he was with the Colts; that was a fun team to watch and they were one uncalled PI against the Steelers from getting to the SB if memory serves. I always liked his competitive nature, so if the 49'ers win I'll be pretty happy for him.
On the other hand I will always appreciate a player going out on top. I hate the Steelers, but I couldn't have been happier for Bettis who was a great player and professional for years. It's one of those feel good things.
And I can understand the dislike for Lewis over what happened in ATL, but the one thing that sticks out in my mind that no one ever talks about is the fact that there were shots fired at them. This wasn't a group of kindergarten teachers that they got into an altercation with. The perception is that since they died that they were innocent victims, but it takes two to tango and once guns and knifes come into play it can only go badly. Plus the idea that an NFL player would carry a knife and not a gun doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm not saying that he didn't play a role in it, because if you ask me his status as an NFL player probably played a huge role in the fact that it started in the first place, but I'm just saying that the guys who died obviously played a significant part in the whole thing and that it gets a lot more complicated and there probably wasn't a clear wrong or right on either side. The other thing is that we as fans only see him on TV, but the players around the league work with him all season long and it's hard to find someone that doesn't speak in glowing terms of him let alone find one person that speaks ill of him. Those people are going to know him better than any of us ever would.
I'm not trying to cause an argument or defend what happened, but my point is that we often times look for absolutes and that isn't the case most of the time. This wasn't some good vs evil thing, it was a fight between some people that got way out of hand and both sides probably share equal blame in causing it and the escalation of it.
The big question I had for a long time was why he fled the scene if he was innocent? I thought about it and to be honest if I was in that exact same situation and was innocent or guilty I would have gotten out of there as quickly as possible. Self preservation, panic, fear; all of that is going to influence your judgment and decision making. He was definitely guilty of that. He served time for that. Freaking out and being scared doesn't prove that you were absolutely guilty of everything that went down around you though.
And the last thing is that after all of these years no one has ever come out and said that he did it. Out of all of those people and even when he testified against those two people they never turned it against him which would have helped their cause. Yet people call him a murderer all the time.
None of us know because none of us were there. That's all I'm trying to say. Only thing we know is that in a court of law he was not found guilty of murder. We can speculate all day long, but no one has been able to prove otherwise.
BUT with all that said, my ideal situation is that Kapernick gets hurt. Not bad, just a pulled hamstring or something and Alex Smith comes in and leads them to victory. That would be the best possible story to come out of this to me. I've bashed that guy a million times over the years and he finally lives up to his potential and gets hurt and loses his job. He's paid his dues in a big way in my opinion and earned my respect and he's been nothing but supportive when we know that it's got to be difficult. He's shown a lot of character and even as impressive as Kapernick is I think that Alex would have gotten them here anyway. He got robbed last season by Kyle Wilson's fumbles and got screwed over a bit this season by the unwritten rule of "you never lose your job because of injury."
It would be justice and a fantastic story if he got to win it for them.
