Ray Lewis: 'Football is the Last Thing on My Mind'

When Ray Lewis signed hundreds of autographs at in the  of Bel Air on Thursday night, he may have been the only one not thinking about his profession.

"I promise you, football is the last thing on my mind," Lewis said after signing for about two hours.

The future hall of famer had little to say about the NFL lockout, except that it has given him more time for his own interests.

“People think we’ll just keep talking about it. It’s our livelihood,” he said. “You don’t talk about your livelihood. You’ve got to do something about it. So I’m doing something about it.”

The Super Bowl XXXV Most Valuable Player did not name anything in particular, but spoke ambitiously of his plans.

“You give me a summer to myself, I’m going to create everything I’ve wanted to create that I never had time to create,” Lewis said. “That’s what you do when you get time off. ... You don’t sit around and say, ‘Oh man, if they lock us out, what we going to do?’ What we going to do is, I’m going to keep building empire after empire after empire after empire and that’s what’s going on in my world.”

(According to the Baltimore Sun, Lewis has been working on his clothing line, an iTunes workout app, a pre-training formula and his annual "Ray's Summer Days" event.)

The linebacker said he loves football, but that he will not dwell on the prospect of not playing.

“Don’t get me wrong, that’s our job, I love it to death, but when somebody abuses your heart and what you do like that, you got to move on because if you don’t you’ll find yourself bitter,” Lewis said. “All the guys I’ve talked to, the thing that I try to tell them is, ‘Please do something else. Have many more things going on.' For me this is probably the greatest window of opportunity I’ve ever had in my life because it’s been 25 years of my life and I’ve never had a summer to myself.”

Lewis declined to say who the Ravens should draft later this month, or if he would consider retirement if the season is wiped out.

“Football is the last thing on my mind,” he repeated. “Really.”