Like many words that we often overuse and mislabel -- epic, hilarious, insane -- intense is another we usually assign recklessly ("Yo,Bro, I just took an intense shit...corn everywhere."). However, the word is more than appropriate when used to describe Ray Lewis, even people that hate the Ravens (me) or Lewis (not me) can't contest that. In fact, it's one of the first things that comes to the mind when Lewis is mentioned. Other things include: his epic, hilarious, and insane locker room speeches and that little murder misunderstanding. But Lewis didn't just wake up one day and decide he was going to be a fucking animal on the gridiron, his 'E:60' segment shows a different side of him; a vulnerable man that found his trademark intensity through a childhood fraught with abandonment and letdown from an unreliable, drug addict father. 

[H/T Bob's Blitz]