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Ricky Williams: From NFL to Ayurveda
Tom FitzGerald, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Grass Valley , Nevada County -- He's no longer Ricky Williams the football player. He plans to become Ricky Williams the holistic healer.
It's been more than 10 months since Williams, one of the premier running backs in the National Football League, last ran off tackle for the Miami Dolphins and four months since he suddenly announced his retirement at age 27.
Then he dropped from sight. But now Williams has turned up about as far away from professional football as you can get, as a student of the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. In the Sierra foothills, no less.
"I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate,'' he said, "and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.''
Williams gave up the $5 million he would have earned this season, which would have been his sixth in the NFL, amid reports that he faced a league suspension this year for substance abuse. He is on a short list of topflight players, including Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, who have quit in their prime.
Williams is now a month into a 17-month course at the California College of Ayurveda (pronounced I-yur-vay-da) in Grass Valley, a city of 12,000 in the Gold Country, about 45 miles northeast of Sacramento.
Since he called then-Dolphins head coach Dave Wannstedt on July 23 to give him the shocking news that he was quitting football, Williams has been to Australia, Europe, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Japan, Southern California, Fiji, then back to a campground in Australia, where he lived in a tent for $7 a day.
"I don't think I'll ever be able to stay in one place for more than a year or two. It's not in my nature,'' he said in a rambling interview with The Chronicle, one of the few interviews he has given since he left the Dolphins. Reluctant at first to talk to a reporter, he soon started describing his old life in football and his new life in holistic healing.
Harmonious pursuits
"Ayurveda deals with using your environment to put yourself in balance,'' he said. "I've realized, both on a psychological and physical level, that the things we do in football don't bring more harmony to your life. They just bring more disharmony."
Williams' agent, Leigh Steinberg, and his attorney, David Cornwell, both think it's likely that he'll return to football next year. Steinberg calls Williams' departure "a sabbatical.'' But Williams said, "I understand their wishful thinking. It's easy math. If I play, it puts more money in their pocket.''
Although he wouldn't rule out a return to football ("I'm not a fortune-teller''), he indicated the game was far out of his mind.
The 5-foot-10 Williams weighs 210 pounds, about 25 fewer than his playing weight. He looks healthy and happy. As part of his Ayurveda studies, he said, "I try to give foods and herbs attributes and find out which ones balance me out.''
He wore sandals, black trousers and a light blue T-shirt silk-screened with the message: "My home is in my head." His beard is somewhat scraggly. His distinctive dreadlocks have given way to a short haircut.
"I loved playing football, but the reasons I loved football were just to feed my ego," Williams said. "And any time you feed your ego, it's a one-way street. ... There were so many things I had to deal with that erased the positives I got from playing the game that it wasn't worth it. It's like eating a Big Mac and drinking a Diet Coke.''
He was evasive on the question of his drug use. A recent article in Esquire magazine by a writer who found him in Australia described him as sharing a joint that was "sturdy enough to prop open a door.'' Shortly after retiring, he told the Miami Herald that one of the many reasons he quit was that he wanted to smoke marijuana without incurring the wrath of the NFL. The Herald said he faced a four-game suspension and a $876,000 fine by the league for a third violation of its substance abuse policy. He said at the time that he used a masking agent called Extra Clean for two years in Miami to conceal his marijuana use.
NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said, "If a person in the drug program retires and then comes back in less than a calendar year, that's a violation of the drug program. It's like testing positive.'' In other words, if he had come back this year, it would have meant a fourth violation.
Williams didn't seem bothered that some fans consider him a druggie who walked out on his team.
"I try not to get too involved in what other people think about me,'' he said. As for the idea that he quit because he wanted to be free to smoke dope, he laughed. "I think it's funny,'' he said.
He said he had tested positive for drugs "at least'' three times in his career, but didn't know how many games he would have to sit out if he returned.
Is he still using drugs?
"You're assuming I used drugs. When you say drugs, what exactly do you mean?''
Drugs prohibited by the NFL.
"Well, I'm not in the NFL, so what does it matter?"
You were in the NFL.
"But I'm not now, though, and I don't like to deal in the past tense. We're standing here right now (outside the Ayurveda college). I'm a student and I'm a very good student. I'm very dedicated and I'm good at what I do."
A good student
Marc Halpern, William's primary teacher and the founder and director of the college that includes three branches in California, agreed that Williams is "a very good student.'' He wouldn't talk further about Williams' participation in the course, citing his concern for Williams' privacy.
After a year in the program, Halpern said, a student enters his clinical internship. "He'll be assigned a supervisor who will oversee the cases he's managing.''
Ayurveda, which means "science of life,'' is between 5,000 and 10,000 years old. "When you get back that far, the records are a little dusty,'' said Halpern, 42. "Herbalism is very important. Diet, yoga, meditation, aroma therapy, color therapy, massage therapy -- all of these things are important tools. But their application is based on the idea that when we're living a lifestyle that is harmonious, our bodies and minds respond by being healthy.
"Likewise, when we're living out of harmony, our bodies and minds respond with the symptoms of disease.''
Halpern said that in Ayurveda, drug use "is no different than other issues of relative disharmony within a person's life. Some individuals have a challenge with marijuana, or anger control, or drinking two pots of coffee a day. We're all trying to improve ourselves." He said Ayurveda "places no judgment on any activity.''
Without the back who led the NFL in rushing in 2002 with 1,853 yards and then piled up 1,372 last year, the Dolphins are 1-8 and tied for their worst start since 1967, when the franchise was just two years old.
Many of the players were said to be furious with Williams for leaving just as the exhibition season was about to begin.
"The ones that understand, that took time to get to know me and what I sacrificed and how I played the game, I don't need to tell them anything,'' he said. "The ones that don't know that -- I'm just sorry they didn't experience that when I was their teammate.''
He said he felt that even if he had announced his retirement before the April draft, the Dolphins "weren't going to be able to replace me."
He admitted, "The timing was bad in that it definitely hurt the morale.'' But he said Wannstedt, who resigned Nov. 9, "kind of put his head in the sand, and that kind of trickled down.'' He felt Wannstedt was overly concerned with the team's defense and didn't care that he was overburdening Williams in an offense that lacked an effective passing attack.
Although he insisted, "Money has never been an issue -- I would play for free,'' he said he was upset that the Dolphins didn't make good on what he said was a promise to him in 2002 to renegotiate after the 2003 season.
The Dolphins have sued him, demanding repayment of the $8.6 million they gave him in bonuses. He has said he's prepared to pay them back. In the meantime, he said he's supporting his three children. "I have nothing else to do with my money,'' he said.
The Dolphins hadn't made the playoffs in his first two years, and he didn't see any possibility that would change in Year 3, he said. He felt they would overburden him again, especially when Chris Foerster took over as offensive coordinator this year.
In spring drills, "the offense didn't make sense,'' he said. "We weren't doing anything that was productive. We couldn't get a play off in practice. It was just a really crappy situation."
All of that contributed to his retirement, he said.
"I've let a lot of things go, and obviously football is one of them,'' he said. "I think the hardest thing to let go is your self-image. That's what I'm working on now."
Williams, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1998 at the University of Texas, said for the last 15 years he has viewed himself "the way everybody else views me in terms of things a football player should be, things that a black person should be, things that a 27-year-old should be. You need to really let go of all those things and dig into yourself and find out who you really are."
He's renting a one-bedroom cottage in nearby Nevada City. A couple of months earlier, he was planning to buy a 165-acre farm in Australia. Those plans have been shelved.
"As human beings we have a tendency when we like something to tie it up and make sure it's there for a long time. I've been working on being able to let things go. I don't think I ever want to buy property again.''
He seems to have overcome his social anxiety disorder. "I don't know what it was," he said. "I definitely have come out of my shell a lot more. When you question who you are, you can't be proud of who you are. Now that I'm trying to peel off those layers and really understand who I am, I don't have anything to be shy about.''
Kind words for Norv Turner
He isn't shy about expressing his admiration for Raiders coach Norv Turner, who was his offensive coordinator with the Dolphins. "I think Norv and I are on the right rhythm, so it was nice to play for Norv.''
If he did come back, would he like to play for Turner's Raiders, who have had their own struggles this year? "That's just speculation, just more talk, more rumors,'' he said.
However, it was while watching the Raiders' game against Tampa Bay on Sept. 26, on an airport TV in Bangkok, as he prepared to fly to India, that Williams briefly second-guessed his decision to quit. It prompted him to call a friend in Miami and tell her he wanted to come back. She told him about the $8.6 million that the Dolphins wanted from him.
He returned to the United States and tried to figure out, with Steinberg, how he could be reinstated. But then he thought about his life's goals and decided his fire for football had gone out. "I decided I don't want to do this. It's not worth it.''
Is he happier now that he's removed from the game?
"I'm closer to being happy. I'm doing things that make me happy," Williams said. "In football I loved to practice and I loved to play, but I hated to be in meetings, hated to talk to the media, hated to have cameras in my face, hated to sign autographs. I hated to do all those things.''
So ... I say good for Ricky - but I think he shoud he pay back any money due to the Dolphins and he might want to think about an apology to the team. I thinks it good that hes doing what makes him happy though.
