All the Ravens conspiracy-theorists out there should love this: news about the two Ravens who arguably are the biggest names on the team has flown under the national radar, for reasons that aren't really clear. Actually, this may be more for the people with the inferiority complex about our city. Either way, the news Mike Preston broke on Saturday about Ray Lewis wanting out got no national attention until yesterday, when all of a sudden everybody was talking about it. Phones were ringing all over the place from reporters trying to figure out what was happening, and the ESPN networks were running scrawls on the bottom of their screens and inserting reports about what might or might not happen. (ESPN.com says it won't, but you have to pay to read it for yourself.)

Maybe everyone was preoccupied with the Pro Bowl (?), or the Olympics. Then again, Lewis was on-air for about 12 hours a day from Hawaii on the NFL Network; if he was asked about his future as a Raven, or had any thoughts about it, none of that has trickled out.

Speaking of trickling out, Deion Sanders chose James Brown's radio show on Monday to announce that he has, in fact, retired. That, again, floated under the radar, but that's attributable more to the fact that it's been a foregone conclusion since the final weeks of the season. His name has been flung around for weeks as Brown's replacement on Fox's pregame show; note the report from the league's official website, which refers to him, as pretty much everybody does, as "former Raven Deion Sanders.''

Of course, everyone was led to believe that he was going to make the official announcement immediately after the season finale Jan. 1. A locker-room full of reporters showed up at the Castle in Owings Mills on Jan. 2 to see the players pack up for the offseason, but mainly to hear Deion call it a career. He never showed up and hasn't been seen around here since (kind of like Ray Lewis). That led to a funny bit on Comcast that night where Sage Steele (no relation) sat in his empty locker all day waiting. A month and a half later, Sanders gave it up on a national radio show that isn't even carried here. Not that he absolutely owes anything to Baltimore on that front, but this was his NFL home for his much-ballyhooed comeback and for the final act of his Hall of Fame career. If Jerry Rice could retire as a member of a Broncos team for which he never suited up in a regular-season game, then Sanders could have thrown this city a bone on his farewell.

But that might all be an overreaction. Or it could be a blogger being anxious about a team whose offseason news flow has slowed since owner Steve Bisciotti made his big splash two days after the season ended. On that front, Bisciotti has kept quiet publicly while keeping a fairly high profile at courtside at Maryland basketball games. After that Clemson game last night, maybe he needs to give Gary Williams a taste of what he gave Brian Billick. Not to pin this latest debacle and recent downward spiral on Williams, but does anyone have a better idea?