Ricky Williams

Born in 1977 in San Diego, CA, by his high-school years Ricky had demonstrated vast talents in all kinds of sports, excelling in not only football but also baseball, track, and wrestling. It was in football, however, where he showed the most dominance, running for 4,129 yards and 55 touchdowns during a high-school career that saw him touted in USA Today as an honorable mention for their All American team of the best high school players in America.

Ricky was therefore very heavily recruited by American College football programs. He ended up at one of the premier ones, the University of Texas in Austin. There, Ricky once more blazed a trail into the record books, running for 990 yards in only his freshman year, which broke the record previously held by the legendary Earl Campbell. By his junior year, he'd won the Doak Walker award for the nation's best collegiate running back, and, in 1998 (his senior year), he won the Heisman trophy, which, for those who aren't American football aficianados, is an extremely coveted award given each year to the college football player deemed the best in the land.

This, of course, made Ricky a very desirable commodity for American professional football teams, and he was duly drafted in the first round (5th pick overall) of the NFL draft in 1999, being selected by the New Orleans Saints.

The Saints made considerable sacrifices to get Ricky, trading a number of draft picks to other clubs for the chance to pick him. This was a commitment, or a gamble, on one player that they would therefore be forced to build their entire offense around. Ricky and coach Mike Ditka caused a minor media furor when they posed for a mock "wedding" photograph, with Ricky wearing a bridal gown(!) on the cover of a popular sports magazine. (The headline was to the effect of: "Can this marriage work?").

Ricky also made sports news when, through his agent, he negotiated what was judged to be an unusual contract with the Saints. This featured a relatively tiny amount of up-front money in the form of a signing bonus, but had provisions for large bonuses to be paid based on his performance in games.

Ricky did well enough to earn some of this money, easily averaging 1,000 yards a season for each of 1999, 2000, and 2001. But the win/loss results were disappointing for the Saints, which, most agree, ended up costing coach Ditka his job. In the end Ricky, who was all you could ask for on the field, had demonstrated certain erratic personality traits that caused the Saints to trade him after the 2001 season to the Miami Dolphins.

Running backs in American football tend to come in two varieties: fast and elusive, like O.J. Simpson (you can't tackle them because you can't catch them) or powerful and punshing, like Earl Campbell or Larry Csonka (you can try to tackle them, they won't avoid contact, but they'll just knock the crap out of you instead.) At a height of only 5' 10", and a typical playing weight of 228 pounds, Ricky could play it either way. Usually, he'd just run around you, his trademark dreadlocks waving in the breeze . But if you could get an arm on him, he'd just run over you. His arrival in Miami was widely celebrated in the local media.

As hinted, Ricky was not without his quirks. His shyness with the media extended to his giving interviews while still wearing his helmet, and he was famous in the locker room for being a "different breed of cat". Rumors began to be floated (as they probably would for any player not conforming to the macho stereotype in the lockeroom) of possible homosexuality. He was caught out as a marijuana user by the league's random drug-testing program. It was announced that he had been diagnosed, and was being treated for, an anxiety disorder. None of this, however, stopped him from rushing for 1,853 yards and 16 touchdowns in 2002 and, even after some injuries, adding another 1,372 yards and 9 touchdowns in 2003. The Dolphins had high hopes that, with their draft picks and other trade acquisitions, they could contend for playoff success in the 2004 season.

This was not to be, though. In July of 2004 Ricky confided to a sportswriter for the Miami Herald that, after touring with Lenny Kravitz in the off-season, he'd come to consider a career in football as somehow limiting and superficial. He'd therefore given notice of his retirement to the Dolphins officials, and was going to begin travelling. Basically going on walkabout. Ricky had been scheduled to receive $3.6 million for the 2004 season, with the potential for bonuses to increase that to as much as 6 million.

The precipitous nature of this move caused a media firestorm. Many of his teammates confessed a sense of betrayal by it (it is universally agreed that the Dolphins have been placed in an extremely difficult position with the loss of such a key player so soon before the beginning of the season.) You couldn't turn on a sports program on TV or radio without enduring a psychoanalysis of Ricky Williams. It subsequently emerged, though, that Ricky had been caught in the NFL's urinalysis net again, and not once but twice. According to the league's rules (agreed to as well by the NFL Player's association in their collective bargaining agreement) Ricky therefore faced the forfeiture of game checks and suspension for the first four games of the upcoming season. To many amateur psychologists, it looked as if Ricky would rather smoke dope than live the life of a celebrated NFL star. To others the salient fact was not the quitting, which most agreed he had the right to, but the timing, which smacked of an unseemly degree of selfishness.

All of which analysis is almost certainly wrong, but it remains for Ricky himself to completely explain his motivations.

references:

the Ricky Williams Foundation site:

http://www.rickywilliamsfoundation.org

NFL.com player stats:

http://www.nfl.com/players/playerpage/133448