If there's no pro football, can the sun come up?

Sunday is Day 75 of the NFL lockout. If you don't care or you forgot about it because you're having fun Down the Shore or you're busy living life, that apparently makes you a terrible person. It might even mean you're anti-American or a terrorist or a thug looking to rob an unsuspecting rube.

You might think that's madness. I think it's madness, too. There are people, however, who evidently believe it, and some of them have even managed to say it on camera with a straight face or write it down without adding, Nah, just kidding, that's madness.

The NFL has always taken itself seriously. It's big business, and that's what big businesses do. But the lockout has somehow overinflated the sport's already bloated sense of self-worth. During the labor dispute, the NFL has morphed from America's favorite league to something - according to the hyperbole - that's the most important anything in the history of everything.

I'm waiting for Harold Camping to predict that if the NFL doesn't return, the rapture will go down in September. Pretty sure that's next.

In the interim, plenty of other ostensibly reasonable people have been more than willing to raise the crazy quotient in the absence of offseason football. Who knew that workouts in shorts and helmets were directly linked to rational thought?

Most recently, Ray Lewis - you may remember him from such public productions as Baltimore Ravens football games and "I didn't stab anyone" court appearances - went on ESPN to implore the NFL and the players to come to an agreement because, he said, the lockout affects "way more" than owners and athletes.

"Do this research," Lewis said. "If we don't have a season - watch how much evil, which we call 'crime,' watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game. . . . There's too many people that live through us - people live through us. Yeah, walk in the streets the way I walk the streets, and I'm not talking about the people you see all the time."

According to FBI reports, crime tends to drop in September. Lewis no doubt believes that's because the evil love to tailgate on Sundays, and if anything can get criminals to come together it has to be fantasy football. Still, the FBI reports point to more crime in the summer because the days are longer, the weather is better, and schools are out. Seems like specious reasoning. They're the country's top cops, but if they knew what they were talking about, wouldn't they be on SportsCenter?