It was a shocker to many when Miami Dolphins running back, Ricky Williams announced his retirement just days ago. Ricky has said he wants to “study, learn, search, travel, question, write, meditate, read, wander, find himself, climb mountains, take pictures of waterfalls and be a father without the interruption of another 8 a.m. mandatory meeting to dissect film of opposing defenses”. Despite his official statement many fans in Miami and his former home of New Orleans speculate that Ricky is retiring for “other reasons” that he is not saying. Rumors range from his “hidden sexuality” to his “weed addiction”.

The truth is Ricky simply doesn’t want to play any more, but hardly any one can believe it. His heart isn't in it anymore, or in other words, his head and/or concentration is not there. Football is a violent brutal sport; if your head isn’t on right you can get paralyzed or killed. Understand this, the body will not go if the “heart” doesn't lead. Fans say he’s too young to retire; he is in his prime. They said the same stuff about Jim Brown (although when Jim walked away he was 2 years older). “Surprise”, Ricky has been hanging with Jim Brown a lot lately. Talking about non-profit work and giving back to the community like Jim does with his Amer-I-Can organization. Another of his friends is Robert Smith, who also quit football early at 28 yrs. old, as a free agent and at the height of his earning power to write books and pursue a medical degree. To many retiring at 27 when you are scheduled to make another 3.5 million this year is insane, to some it is like walking away from Halle Berry while she is on the bed naked, you just don’t do that - unless you’re David Justice or Eric Benet.

''I'm finally free,'' Williams said by cell phone from Hawaii. “I can't remember ever being this happy.'' Heck that’s enough for this fan. To even make 5 years in the limelight was rougher for Ricky than most. Ricky was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder five years ago, also known as social phobia. According to Jerilyn Ross, clinical social worker and President of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, “social anxiety caused by a chemical imbalance is the third-most common psychiatric disorder after depression and alcoholism". It is an intense, paralyzing fear of social or performance situations, where the person has a very morbid fear of any kind of negative reaction or criticism. Ricky occasionally takes medication for this now. In college there was no serious criticism of him, so he never knew he had a problem.

The pressure came when he hit the pros. After the NFL drafted Ricky in the first round he hooked up with Percy Miller aka Master P and his agency called “No Limit”. The contract, negotiated by rapper Master P's agency, contained low base salaries and hard to achieve performance incentives. He had to become Superman to get paid like his peers with this type of contract, especially when you consider the team he would be playing for. In his first two NFL seasons, Williams earned $10 million dollars but $9 million was in the signing bonus. In fact in 1999 Williams' base pay was the NFL minimum of $350,000, - great going Master P, you just turned the pride of New Orleans into the league laughing stock. Meanwhile running backs of lesser prestige and who did not have Heisman Trophy on their resume like Edgerrin James, had received twice the pay of Ricky for 2 years.

Master P had just gotten him to sign the worst contract ever signed by a Heisman Trophy winner. To make it worse he was locked in for 8 years. Sadly enough Ricky only signed it because he wanted to work with a black agent, black lawyer and was a hip-hop fan, etc who loved Master P’s music. Smart move to keep the money in the community and support Black Business but he should have let that No Limit Tank roll on by, simply put “those guys ain’t no what they was doing”. Ricky was the first athlete to sign to their Sports division and he trusted them, that’s big for a man with a social phobia.

Ricky didn’t know any better, young naïve and impressed by rap videos he didn’t have any idea of what to look for in an agent. Ricky heard Master P was personally loaded (at the time), and figured that by rubbing elbows with him something was bound to rub off. Actually Master P although rich, was not somebody who knew money, he knew hustle, but in fact Master P is a poor money manager. He rarely remembers his debt and is paranoid about all his finances. A friend of mines’, brother has been waiting to be paid by Master P for about 3 years for services rendered and to this date I doubt Master P has paid him what he agreed to, and it was a drop in the bucket to him. That’s no surprise, when you consider an 80-year-old woman sued him and won as he was ordered to pay $105,000 in punitive damages; if he would have settled his cost would have been much less.

During this run (pun intended) he was listed by Forbes, Black Enterprise etc at worth of approximately 420 Million but late last year On December 17, 2003, Master P’s was forced to file for bankruptcy protection. That’s not to say Master P is a clueless businessman, he is not. So dismiss those visions of Silk The Shocker negotiating deals with NFL Owners. P hired some friends, brothers with Harvard MBA’s as the agents to represent the athletes. They had good credentials but were inexperienced and way too desperate to put No Limit on the sports marketing map. In their haste and under the authority of Master P they sacrificed Ricky Williams and sabotaged the trust that upcoming young black athletes would have in black sports management firms. The false notion that the best sports agents were white was re-enforced.

Master P was not finished his botch job, No Limit swindled Ricky into participating in a ridiculous publicity stunt. According to ESPN, Master P’s No Limit athletic company convinced him to dress up in that ridiculous wedding dress and perform a mock marriage to then New Orleans Head Coach Mike Ditka. The notion was that since Ditka did so much to get him by trading so many players to get him, this relationship was forever, the way marriage used to be. The “wedding” was plastered everywhere, the cover of Sports Illustrated, leading off news coverage, etc. This was the genesis of the rumors that Ricky was gay. No Limit was turning the shy kid into Dennis Rodman. After the drag photos, it as if all of a sudden the paparazzi thought they had discovered another outgoing media hungry sports personality. Ricky Williams personality was actually the anti-thesis of Dennis Rodman but the ball was in motion.

The extra attention and criticism over wearing the dress was just the beginning, word got out about how Ricky was shortchanged on his contract and Ricky became the brunt of jokes all over the country. To rectify this No Limit tried to make Ricky think reaching 1,000 yards and scoring 10 Tds in the NFL was easy even though he had a sub - par offensive line blocking for him. They told him that he was Superman and would be able to make money by achieving several hefty performance accolades they had negotiated for him. No Limit people must have been like “don’t worry you a soldier, you a soldier there is no limit to what you can do. You don’t even need any blockers”. Master P and No Limit said that they wanted to make Ricky the example of a ball player who earns his pay on what he does. Ricky was saying the same thing but what else was he going to say? He had to try to garner some respect from fans sympathetic to ideas of yester year. So Master P brought another tank necklace and the tank called Ricky fell into depression. He did not even reach 1,000 yards or 10 Tds that year more importantly the extra income from his performance-based contract was virtually non -existent. The relationship was off to a rough start. This initial rough time took its toll on Ricky after one year; it was hard for him to concentrate. He played hard on Sundays. But the Saints wanted more. “The New Orleans Saints were very concerned with Williams two trouble areas. One was his propensity to fumble, dropping the ball in 20 of the 26 games he played those last two years. He also had problems showing up on time for meetings, which led to many fines by the team. Ricky began to self medicate with “weed” aka Marijuana. He apparently loves weed, it makes him feel free. A lot of people can relate, especially Football players an unscientific estimate is that 65% of NFL players smoke weed. After 3 years Williams had only gained 3,129 yards that’s only an average of 1,043 per season. That, plus the fact he didn't take part in the teams off-season program, didn't endear Ricky to Saints coaches or players. Ricky passed on a $100,000 bonus so he could stay in San Diego and work out on his own for the 2000 off-season. Its obvious the honeymoon was over the Saints wanted to deal Ricky. Ricky was also ready to go, he had a shitty contract thanks to No Limit and his complacent go along even when he didn’t want to personality had him wanting a fresh new start some where else.

Ricky was traded to the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. Upon being traded to the Dolphins; Williams fired Master P and hired Leigh Steinberg as his agent. The Miami Dolphins knew that they had to give him a new contract to make him happy and give him a truly fresh start.

The Dolphins and their new running back agreed to a revised incentive package that made it easier for him to earn bonuses. Even better was the fact that Dolphin senior vice president Rick Spielman changed his contract, so that any bonus Ricky earned was added to his base salary in subsequent seasons.

Miami was a much better atmosphere for him, he felt more at home. He often saw people with “locks”, in fact “dreads” were considered a common hairstyle. There was more team unity as opposed to New Orleans where teammate drama was high and players had been known to sleep with other players significant others and wives. It was going good for a while in Miami, in 2 years Ricky gained more yards in Miami than he had in 3 years in New Orleans, in fact he was better in every category Td’s, long runs, average per run. Williams may have even been too good because the Dolphins started to run him to death as his number of carries picked up also to what we call “workhorse levels”. That’s when they treat you like you are a big bucking slave and expect you to do everything and they have no qualms about announcing it. In fact in 2 years Ricky had a record numbers of carries almost topping 400 each year (383, 392). His coach must have figured, ‘hey he initially entered the NFL with a performance laden contract, let’s see him perform’. That’s why Miami Coach Dave Wannstedt was livid when Ricky announced he was going to retire and said, “If Ricky was his son he would make him continue to play football!”

Ricky was starting to feel trapped after only 2 seasons. He used “weed” to escape but the NFL substance abuse policy said he couldn’t smoke marijuana, one of the many rules of his “confining workplace”. Ricky says he has” gotten around NFL drug tests with a special liquid players all over the league consume by the gallon before tests to avoid detection. He says he simply didn't drink it before getting busted for the second time in 2002, which he appealed, although guilty. Now that he is retired he will smoke all the weed he wants and since he is no longer in the spotlight he is less likely to get caught.

Ricky should still be careful though, since “DWB (Driving While Black)" is a huge problem in Miami and this is before they got Hip-hop police. Ricky has already been arrested for “DWB” and was handcuffed. Fans don’t realize the Dolphins practice in Davie, Florida, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale and home to the Miami Dolphins' training camp. Davie is infamous for its white supremacist reputation. According to one author “It is home to a chapter of the World Church of the Creator, a Neo-Nazi organization, and Fort Lauderdale, in general, ranks high among Florida's cities, for its large number of Aryan/Neo Nazi followers. Several Dolphins, including receiver Oronde Gadsden, spoke up after Ricky’s arrest saying “Fort Lauderdale police have a penchant for stopping black athletes.” Dolphin’s receiver Oronde Gadsden said "I've been harassed, wherever you go: driving around and in the department store. It's one thing to get stopped, if they say you don't have your tags right or the proper identification. But, the handcuffs were a little excessive. I don't think you can really justify putting him in handcuffs. When you see incidents like that, a lot of people are wondering why." One Dolphin who requested anonymity said that many black Miami players get rid of their expensive cars, because they get pulled over so often. Former safety Louis Oliver, for example, sold his Porsche because he was getting pulled over weekly.

These are all social factors that contribute to Williams’ phobia. The Miami Dolphins organization should have met with the Miami mayor, so he could reel in his profiling police, and they would have listened to him. Ricky can’t outrun, Racism and job drug testing, we all deal with it. But the idea of realizing how stifling celebrity can be and how ill-fitting the NFL life was for him, has been on his mind. Evidence that this is not a new problem can be seen from his website Journals at Run Ricky Run.com. 

The handwriting was on the wall. All the pressure was on Ricky again this year, as the focal point in their offense and higher expectations for his team, which finished 10-6 last year and still did not make the playoffs. This was a huge disappointment, especially for fans that relive the perfect 17-0 season each year until an unbeaten team loses. The pressure was on him again just like when he entered the NFL. The city of Miami was turning into an all year long, media feeding frenzy, like N.Y. and L.A. so even more people were counting on Ricky to “Run, Ricky Run”. The down side of this was more criticism, attention and speculation about the goals he did not achieve, that others had set for him. It was a lot of pressure for him

“Ricky thought he might be able to make it through this one last season for his teammates, and only for them, but couldn't convince himself of it even after weeks of trying”. He plans to call each of them individually in the coming weeks to apologize. After talking with Lenny Kravitz about being free and going on a weed binge in Jamaica. Rick noticed people living in these “little tin shacks, they were the happiest people I've ever seen,'' Williams said. ``This is an opportunity to be a real role model. Everyone wants freedom. Human beings aren't supposed to be controlled and told what to do. They're supposed to be given direction and a path. Don't tell me what I can and

can't do.” I agree, so I say “Run, Ricky Run” but when you stop racism, random on the job drug-test will still be realities. Whether or not Ricky Williams can outrun his celebrity remains to be seen, but even with a newly shaven head, Ricky should know they can still see him.

Released: July 28th, 2004

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