Do ya thang, is all I got to say
NFL dropout Ricky Williams chilling in Sierra
He's been found studying the healing arts
- 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.
