A Football Life Ricky Williams

people in San Diego will have one image of me people in Texas have an image of me people in New Orleans have an image of me people in Miami have an image of me people will bounce or more people in Toronto and most of them are different people always try to put me in a box and if I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this they don't know where to put me it used to be irritating just because someone can meet you before they would get a chance to get to know you they'll go find someone else's story about about Who I am and for me personally I just always think it's more interesting to get to know the person themselves [Music] [Music] convinced me that life is a team game [Music] [Music] Texas is a place where football stars can become rock stars in the 1940s SM use dope Walker was so popular that Dallas is Cotton Bowl was expanded to accommodate the crowds who came to watch him play and three decades later Earl Campbell nicknamed the Tyler rose after his East Texas hometown went from local Europe to longhorn legend like Doak Walker Campbell was a running back who not only achieved greatness but also inspired when I came on my recruiting trip to Texas I was up in the just we had this room called the Tea Room we had all these pictures of all Americans all around and right outside the Tea Room was a case with Earl Campbell's Heisman Trophy when I walked by the trophy I looked at it and it kind of got the sense that if I go to school here I could probably get one of those my freshman year you know we had to pick an email address and that was 1995 before email was like it is now and I was thinking my first email address I'm like what am I going to choose and so I picked heisman at you Texas dot edu and you know then I start playing and I kind of forget about all that stuff my freshman year we played Texas A&M in College Station had wrecking crew defense number one defense in the nation [Applause] [Music] it was really my coming-out party and for over hundred 60 yards and it really set the tempo for the rest of my career and my initiation to being like unofficial Texan [Music] [Applause] [Music] Ricky Williams switched back to his high school number 34 a tribute to his two sport idol bo Jackson 6-nothing on the run by Ricky Williams whose scholarship is being paid for by the Philadelphia Phillies he is already signing the baseball contract and so because he's a professional in baseball the Phillies pay for the scholarship and they say come on back man you can do better in baseball Ricky spent four summers in the Phillies minor league system where his success paled in comparison to what he was accomplishing in football after his third year in Austin he was nineteen hundred yards away from Toni Dorsett's major college career rushing record and he won the Doak Walker Award as the nation's best running back don't sat down and we just started talking I didn't have the experience of an older white guy especially coming in and just having a conversation to having that much ease with me and and I blew me away my image of what football was supposed to be or what football could be really matched what don't was and what I wanted to be bigger than just the game of football but to use that as a platform to to do something even greater I would like to share with you a message we got today the University of Texas Ricky Williams the news of the death of doc Walker has saddened me greatly I will be wearing Doakes number on my helmet in honor of him this weekend my season through his memory you know we were playing Oklahoma our annual game in the Cotton Bowl and you know the saying is the Cotton Bowl is the house that don't build and so I just thought it would be a great way to honor him what he meant to me what he meant to the game of football by wearing his number and the house that he built and after the game I gave the game ball and my jersey to his fan [Music] [Applause] but if it's a farmer's well I mean that'd be great to win it out lean on 50-year anniversary and I I'm sure we were watching to accept it I'm extremely proud of me but I think the main thing that I want to do is win the Doak Walker again because he told me that he wanted me to be the first one to win it twice and I'd be something great that I could do for him in his family Ricky Williams as a boy didn't dream of playing in the NFL he dreamed of playing college football you know more than anything Ricky wants to be talked about the same way people talk about Doak Walker well he's well on his way because Ricky Williams represents everything that is good about college football [Music] during his senior year pursuit of Dorsett's rushing record ricky became not just the most-watched college football player of the season but also one of the most celebrated of all time but I think that's the first friend you know I thought an arrival I was looking at my little son [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] what's driven me so much of my life is to work to be the best so I looked at the more attention I got I've just meant to be the best [Music] Ricky Williams from the virtual Heisman and his email address to the real one in his hands from winning his first Doak Walker to winning his second the next year Ricky had run his way to the top of the charts a place where the view is great but the shelter is gone and after all Iseman trophy it just was okay I'm supposed to go to the phones so that's that's what I did I didn't really have any expectations that didn't really understand how things work another native of San Diego California and from the University of Texas please welcome Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams one of the worst days in my life I thought I deserved to be the first pick especially after the kind of career I had and then you know as Jeff started to go on I wasn't even the first running back with the fourth choice in this draft the Indianapolis Colts select Edgerrin James but actually trade made it better because that's it's the cool story I mean people are still talking about about the trade the trade was for the fifth pick of the 1999 draft it belonged to Washington but to get it Saints head coach Mike Ditka agreed to give up the six picks he had in that year's draft plus the Saints first and third-round picks in 2000 from that point on and didn't seem like a big deal between us but the media made a big deal about it they were going to do a cover story on the trade we were in the limo on our way to the photo shoot coach Ditka says I don't know how they got you to do this he said I never would have done it but he said you know let's make this work it never crossed my mind that it was a big deal I was maybe too young or too naive to know the difference but I thought it was just something that would be funny and interesting the focus on Ricky Williams only gained intensity for a rash of preseason injuries he suffered for his new habit of wearing his helmet during interviews and perhaps most of all for his incentive-based rookie contract there's a rick reilly Kalinin Sports Illustrated this week saying that Ricky was due by the Saints what the hell is rick reilly know about anything just because you got a pen and a pencil a typewriter gives you a picture and that's what about things in life the story goes I hired a rapper to do my contract which isn't true I hired no limits porch which was owned by a rapper Master P he owned the agency but there is actually a board-certified agent Leland Hardy who negotiated my contract realized that they've got a once-in-a-lifetime back and Ricky wins the contract that he negotiated for me what it made me the highest-paid rookie in the history of the NFL and I said no to that and I said give me all that you can give me right now let me earn the rest I'd always hear fans say that athletes were overpaid and all we care about is the money until I saw a perfect opportunity to show people that not all athletes are like that I consider it a signing bonus for what I did in college you said if I don't do well in pro I don't deserve to make any money so when coach did your play they got paid for what they got paid for what they say how they play that's where I want to be with me I can look back at it now is definitely like a initiation into into adulthood [Music] almost overnight and the NFL was put on a pedestal and I was supposed to be like this icon or this image of what a professional athlete was supposed to be and I felt like I just got stuck trying to be someone else I forgot who I actually was with everything that went on my rookie year expectations the contract dealings injuries would you put on there today the relationship I had with coach Ditka is the one thing that I think helped me get through it nobody wants to play more than him believe me as much as I want him to play he wants to play more and it's not about incentives it's about honor I mean he could tell that I was walking around and I wasn't I wasn't very happy so he calls me into his office and the one thing I remember him saying was that I was too young doing what I love and making a bunch of money I have no reason to not be the happiest person on the planet I remembered the Carolina game we had a pass where the full-back messed up and I picked up the linebacker they were not the Saints out get blocked by Ricky Williams that time and after that play coach Ditka said I was a hell of a play son if you keep playing like that you'll play this game for a long time and that was the greatest compliment I've ever I've ever received that someone saw more than just my running ability but saw my football intelligence in my toughness and just appreciated who I was in the football player good job Rach good job he was fired after after that season and I think because I was married to coach Ditka and a new guy came in you know the running it didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked it to go and then to make it worse the new regime didn't have a first round pick and they didn't have really any picks from the previous year because it was by the end of his third season in New Orleans Rickey had rushed for more than three thousand yards and scored 18 touchdowns he was demonstrating great value and the Saints found a way to cash in on here to announce that the trade has been to play with the Northern Saints for Ricky Williams this is not a trade for a player that were hoping to get one or two years on with the change of scenery and how we're gonna utilize them we feel his best years are ahead of them Miami sent New Orleans to first-round draft picks in exchange for Ricky Williams in 2002 his first season with the dolphins Ricky started 16 games rushed for a league-leading 1853 yards scored 17 touchdowns and was named a first-team all-pro [Music] [Music] [Music] Miami was a rebirth but it was also where Ricky's labor pains started coming to life [Music] [Applause] I would see you doing interviews and you'd have your helmet on you'd be looking down you wouldn't have eye contact at that point in time the media we put in their microphones and their cameras in my face and I didn't feel comfortable so I felt like wearing a helmet kind of put some distance between me and the media it hurt your career didn't end well at the time it did hurt my career but I'd like it lam now and without going through those things I wouldn't be where I am now 2003 season was a rough season we want 10 games in Miami didn't make the playoffs I got really beat up I led the NFL in carries and my body was falling apart so I kind of told myself when the season's over I need to take a trip so I you know literally spun a globe close my eyes put my finger down and it was Melbourne Australia when I went to Melbourne it happened to be the Australian Open going on Maria Sharapova was just a kid it was like her first big tournament and her agent recognized me and gave me a pass and I got to say with the families and take pictures it was really really awesome travelled around Australia I was there for about two months ended up cutting my hair I was over there just was ready for for a change and when I came back I was at our our banquet our football banquet and team doctor was there and he had done surgery on me and we were friends you know he'd seen me all the time and I walk up to him and say hey doc and he looks at me like are you any eyes if I was a new player and I was like it's Ricky it was a wake-up call for me I realized that most people didn't really see me or know me it was more the image for me and I don't blame people I'm here an icon that's part of it because of his dreadlocks the NFL had in 2003 been forced to declare that it's legal to tackle a player by the hair a verdict that became known as the Ricky Williams it wasn't the only area of the rules with which Ricky intersected in Miami in December of 2003 he failed his second NFL drug test the result was not made public at the time though it came at a time of self-examination for Ricky so I started to look at and I said okay I led the NFL in attempts the past two years and they really didn't go out and get a quarterback to help me so I knew it's gonna be all on me again I could see thy by mortality as a football player that I'm not gonna be able to do this much longer and just became obvious to me that playing football for me it's not gonna be fun not something I'm gonna enjoy and it's time for for me to do something different so I was so excited I got home and I started calling all my closest friends and I told him how excited I was about retiring and all of them were like are you crazy what are you doing and so after you know a couple days of it you're crazy what you're doing I started to modify my plan to okay well maybe I'll just play one more season and then I'll ride off into the sunset and one of the things I told myself is if I fail another drug test I'll retire this year instead of waiting one more year and everyone I think can relate to this underneath if there's something in your heart that you really don't want to do you're gonna find a way to get out of it prior to the start of the 2004 season Ricky failed a third drug test one week before the start of training camp he retired from the NFL and left the United States the Dolphins claimed he was in breach of contract and began legal proceedings to make Ricky repay them more than eight million dollars people that know me know that I'm crazy a little bit and I really didn't care that's what I said but I when I left I was in Australia and I was like well if they were the money and they can come find me in India or wherever I am then good for them I mean I had made peace with living being a nomad rest of my life after the 2003 season Ricky Williams felt it was time to walk away from the game but he didn't do it not until he failed a third NFL drug test then retired one week before the start of training camp 2004 the valuable lesson that I learned from all that is that the pain of any punishment that anyone anyone can dole out on me is nothing compared to the pain of choosing against myself well I chose against myself by not by not retiring when I knew I was doing the first time the first time and literally like I'm still recovering from the pain of what going about it that way cost I mean everywhere I go people hear Ricky Williams and the next thing they think is marijuana or wasted town like he loves pot more than those football I quit so that I could go smoke weed that's in the obituary yeah yeah at this point it would be yeah but you're not pissed about it well I don't have time to change it and usually when you get pissed about something you eliminating your ability to change it I got suspended I think two or three times for doing drugs no clap and it's easier to talk about these things now because it's legal in a couple of states and people are talking about it but one thing I want to go on record the same I never once said that people should smoke or that it's good or anything yeah I just didn't comment on it did you smoke by the Texas no not today the phone over the years it's been kind of peeling off like the stigma because otherwise I'd be stuck judging myself for the promoter life and when I got to the point where okay it's something that I chose and it actually it got me in a lot of trouble but it actually also allowed me to do the things that I really wanted to do and people like to say that I retired and I went and I smoke pot all the time yeah I smoked a little pot when I retired but I ended up literally like the opposite situation where I was at a yoga ashram where I wasn't eating meat wasn't even having coffee or tea or caffeine or anything or a spicy food or anything when I retired I felt like I lived more in three months than I did the previous 27 years of my life just because my experience was so rich because I was doing all these different things and again not condoning it I'm just looking at what actually occurred what actually occurred is I got a year off to travel the world found meditation I found yoga I found healing and as you inhale reach forward and I don't think I would have found it if I hadn't taken that year I just saw that I love to help people as much or more than I then I enjoy playing football and looking at it in that perspective going back to play football made perfect sense you can look at it as right the wrong but it was more about building something from where I was and not even talking about the public but just inside of me like what is my self-image and Who am I and so it was more of like an inner journey for me of looking where am I going and what I board I'd like to create and so I saw Wow going back to play football it gives me the resources it gives me the recognition it gives me the things that I'm gonna need to build the life that I'd like to have they didn't come back as you needed money I didn't come back because I needed money no the story that the way that I heard was I came back because I old the Dolphins the eight million dollars but the judgment for the money was just to make a statement I didn't think they'd ever come out for the money and so when I came back it just disappeared so the resolution was I finished my contract so disappeared in July 2005 Rickey returned to the Dolphins served his four-game suspension from his failed drug tests then took the field under new Dolphins coach Nick Saban what I like the bottom is he he didn't have any preconceived notions or any judgments about me he really gave me an opportunity to show him what I was all about and I would have run through a wall wall for me he was making football look easy again like so many times before the only thing that could stop Rickey was himself [Music] and again our top story at Ricky winds has lost his appeals at the NFL and has subsequently been suspended from football for one year for allegedly violating the league's substance abuse policy the decision came down Tuesday afternoon apparently the year-long suspension is a result of a fourth violation of the substance abuse policy at this point I thought my whole football careers over and I was you know sitting there feeling sorry for myself and I realized when I look at my life I don't see it I don't see it as a tragedy and so if I keep thinking that it is and I'm not being true to myself basically I'm like I'm not going out like this Ricky sign with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts where he averaged four point eight yards per carry during an injury-riddled 2006 season [Music] midway through 2007 when his NFL suspension was over Ricky rejoined the Dolphins for a week 12 Monday night game in Pittsburgh that night he carried the ball six times tore his pectoral muscle and was lost for the rest of the season a couple weeks after that's when Bill Parcells was hired get him a pacifier or some hot chocolate to March marshmallows he walked in and he had this big binder and he just dropped it on the table he said this is our injuries that we've had all you guys that have been hurt or can't stay healthy you guys aren't gonna be here and then he started talking about the Dolphins had a lot of off-the-field problems that year and so we said you guys that are causing trouble and giving me and giving us headaches you're not gonna be here and I'm thinking okay I just came off of a year-and-a-half suspension so that's strike two after the meeting someone said Bill Parcells wants you to come up to his office to talk with him so I went up to his office thinking he was gonna tell me that you know release me and I sat down and he had a big smile on his face and he said you know he said I believe in you I know that you can play for me I told you we flip over every rock we can all right old man you're not old like a spring chicken Ricky repaid Bill Parcells trusts over the next three seasons gaining more than three thousand yards from scrimmage and scoring 21 touchdowns for some that didn't matter they'd always think of him simply as a mercurial spirit but the facts remain after 11 years in pro football Ricky Williams was still a running back whose praises were worth singing [Music] that's the reason why I went there to forward coming when I was a kid I loved that movie The Clash of the Titans the old one where he had like a mission he was going through and like his parents or the gods would give him weapons or tools to use and I feel like as I've been on my journey I found yoga which really helped me learn to relax without having to use marijuana and then I came across this energy healing and meditation practice and I was like wow this is great wherever I wasn't life something else would come along to help me go to the next step and you don't smoke pot anymore I don't smoke pot use any drugs and now I don't and again it's not because pot is bad it's it's what I was talking about it's you know I just got clear why I was smoking marijuana and then things and kind of fell into place in my life where I found different ways to get what I was getting from the marijuana clarity is a right word I was getting clarity that way it was an inferior clarity but it was more clear than I was before us it's clarity with side effects Ricky what do you think of would you think of the Marcus Aurelius talk last night talking about Marcus Aurelius philosophy after he became a free agent in 2011 Ricky Williams signed in Baltimore whereas it had everywhere on his journey enlightenment Apollo is pretty tough [Music] after rushing for more than 4,000 yards in high school and another 6500 in college Ricci became only the 26th player in history to rush for 10,000 NFL yards [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the milestone was part of one of the most significant seasons of Ricky's football life a year that ended with the last-second loss to New England in the AFC Championship we came for the exit physical as the next day to say goodbye and everyone was already excited about the next year and I'd never seen that before and so I you know it was contagious so I was getting ready I was in my mind I was thinking of my training regimen and all the things that I really wanted to do and so when I got a text message from Bill Parcells you know I shared with him how excited I was about playing football next year [Music] kind of shock for me his reply [Music] and just kind of snap me out of it and got me looking at things differently they got me looking at okay what is he talking about what other ways can I contribute the next place to use to be used for medical studies and they have a big auditorium upstairs yeah where they made autopsies in front of the medical students people have this idea of what successes in football based on stats championships but my personal idea of success is different the me success is a new adventure acquiring new knowledge to a certain extent I allowed the first half of my football career to start that part of my my growth as a human being and I've got a sense that there's a lot of things that I really would like to be doing and what am I waiting for [Music] I've heard several football players tell me the most difficult time in their life was the first year after they retired and so I knew that there was a transition coming and I had this friend called me she said I found this really cool stuff that's right up your alley and you really liked it so I called him signed up for the class the way I described the feeling of being in that first class was for the first time in my life I felt like I had permission to be myself one of the things I noticed about about myself is if I'm around people and I think that they won't understand me and I won't say anything it's like access showed up the perfect time to really help my transition it all retired and February and I was teaching classes in April when if you look at most of our definitions of ourselves it's based on something that's wrong with us there's really just using everything I had learned along that journey to help other people which for me was was perfect among everything else he'd gathered over the years Ricky had also picked up a camera a tool that one year after his retirement gave him a front row seat at a Clash of the Titans I mean it was really fitting closure to be able to shoot the Super Bowl in in New Orleans I remember you know the line to get into the stadium and the police officers the security guards people walking you know hey baby's good to have you back and just really really showed a lot of love and I felt I felt very good and [Music] I was happy for them because I knew how hard they work I knew how much they wanted I knew how much they deserved it in when the game was over and they want I was happy for them and there wasn't one ounce of regret or anything I got so much joy just being able to share and they're truly after retiring from the NFL Ricky Williams moved back to Austin Texas with his wife Kristen and their three children in the evenings he played flag football in the park by day the rookie who had once felt uncomfortable being interviewed without his helmet on got a job as a studio analyst for Texas Longhorns teams talk about this is a play we're gonna call still he wanted more football coming in here a great game you know one hand you know I told myself I'd never become a coach just seemed too stereotypical and at the same time I realized that I love the game of football I love inspiring people and it just seemed like the perfect fit I could go into coaching especially at the collegiate level and really enjoy myself and really affect a change in a lot of young men's lives ricky applied for an internship program run by the NFL Players Association for former players interested in a career in coaching as part of the application process he needed three letters of recommendation which he received from one of his Texas coaches Mack Brown Jeff Ireland a GM during Ricky's time in Miami and one of Ricky's former NFL coaches no longer in the NFL [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] dan it ricky was accepted into the coaching program and in the summer of 2013 began mentoring the running backs he grata at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio Texas federal now a pleasure but if you attack him he's gotta back up a little bit he helped the five year old football program to its first ever winning record and when the season was over was invited to be the defensive coordinator of a fledgling Chinese football team preparing for the first games it would ever play outside of China ask him again we had these kids for four weeks total there four weeks of football and then they're playing an international tournament I mean that's four weeks and most of these kids had never even seen a football game so the thought process was when we were in during training camp and in Shanghai every day I would show on a couple of NFL's greatest hundred players just doesn't get his sense of of what the game was about and the way the game should be played let's go to me I said okay a successful trip is if they get back on the plane and they still want to play football because I knew it's gonna be difficult I knew they were going to be out experience out sighs how physicalize how everything ready yeah you know play today right okay good what I loved about our kids they had this pride and they just kept on kept on bugging China played four games during his first appearance at the World University Games surrendering 197 points in scoring zero [Music] but it didn't matter the kids [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] at one time the only people with images of Ricky Williams were in San Diego then also in Texas New Orleans and on across the u.s. right now people all over the globe have images of him and though his journey is far from over there is at least one conclusion it is already revealed whether you're an artist an athlete or a king if not before you're comfortable in your own skin can you truly feel at home in the world everywhere you go there's a different relationship that exists and depending on you know their fondest memory of you most people hold on so tightly to the founders memory they don't usually let you be anything greater than that that's one of the things that I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career and what I learned as I got older is I decide I decide what it's like for me not other people you can be whatever you'd like to be you just got to choose it minor league baseball big-time college football traveling the world you know meditating in a cave and then delay it's like all these different knees are really just me and it's been very interesting for me to find the way to see how I can bring it all to the table [Music] and not excluding when I was a football player but actually allowing that to be a part of who I am and ever since I've looked at it that way my life just keeps getting better and better and better [Music]

Channel: Zach Crutcher

Views: 1,083,018

Rating: 4.7970095 out of 5

Keywords: A Football Life, NFL, NFL Films, NFL Network, New Orleans Saints, Miami Dolphins, Wildcat, Nick Saban, Mike Ditka, Weed, Drugs, Traveler, Running back, NFL Draft, Texas Longhorns, Doak Walker, Earl Campbell, The Tyler Rose

Id: MTEz-OgAN88

Length: 43min 24sec (2604 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/sirius7]

I always thought the @utexas.edu address wasn't used until the Gmail switch over. I graduated '12 and remember having to change my pre-selected @mail.utexas.edu email for a custom @utexas.edu sometime between '10-'11.

[u/Dr_Findro]

I know Ricky Williams email address now

[u/PopLockNDot]

TIL we used to pick our email address

[u/pantherspride19]

Atta babe🤘🏽