Vice Sports Q&A: Ricky Williams

Welcome to VICE Sports Q&A, where we'll talk to authors, directors, and other interesting people about interesting sports things. Think of it as a podcast, only with words on a screen instead of noises in your earbuds. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Ricky Williams finished his NFL career with more than 10,000 rushing yards, which is good for 29th in league history. It's a testament to what an unusual and interesting player he was that Williams is remembered less for how he played than for how he was: for his unpredictable off-field behavior, his introspective nature, and his interests outside of football.

Williams retired in 2004, when he was 27, returned a year later and then was suspended for the 2006 season when he violated the NFL's substance abuse policy for the fourth time. After returning from his ban, Williams played five more seasons before retiring for good following the 2011 season.

Williams is now working toward completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1998, and is planning on pursuing a PhD in psychology. He also works as an analyst for the ESPN-owned Longhorn Network.

Williams spoke with VICE Sports last week. He was in New York getting honored for his induction in the National Football Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame.

VICE Sports: How is it going for you being back at Texas?

Ricky Williams: It's great. I love being back in Austin and finally getting my bachelors degree and working with the team.

What motivated you to go back to school?

My mom. [laughs] I was just looking at my life and asking myself what I wanted to do. I found that I have more opportunities with a college degree.

And why psychology?

My whole life, I've always been curious of what lies underneath the surface. It's just who I am. To be able to further that, with information and with knowledge, has been a great experience.

Were you interested in that as an undergrad?

I don't think I even really knew what psychology was when I was an undergrad. I took an Intro to Psych [course] and I loved it, but I never considered a future in psychology until I started playing in the NFL and started to experience real life and realize how much of what was under the surface was controlling my life. It became, really, a search to heal and transform my whole life. I realized that I was really good at it, so I decided to pursue it as a career.

When you were at Texas, did you think deeply about these type of things?

Everything at Texas was relatively easy. It was so easy. Football reigns king, so as long as I was successful on the football field, those things didn't matter so much. I was so busy with school and football and with chasing girls that I didn't have much time for anything else.

Was there a moment when that changed—when you entered the real world in the NFL, and things got less easy, that you started to think of things outside of football?

For sure. When you get to the NFL, you have more free time. You have the offseason, where you don't have class and you have a lot of money. Everything in life becomes bigger, more exaggerated. It was difficult to miss in the NFL. There were so many things going on.

I've always had a desire to do things the right way. When I realized in the NFL, with all of these competing pressures, that the right way started to become ambiguous and a little bit blurred, I realized that there's things going on under the surface that would help improve the quality of my life. When you grow up, at least for me, thinking the goal in life was to become rich and famous and to achieve fame and wealth, [and you achieve it], you realize, OK, I still have to live my life. It freed up a lot of energy to pursue things that I was truly interested in.

Was there any one moment that sticks out in terms of when that realization came about?

I think it's just a process of my rookie year, dealing with adversity that I'd never dealt with before—getting hurt in the preseason and then missing four games and the team being really bad. All the things that I had built my life on had started to crumble. I realized that I needed to do something different.

Looking back now, are you happy that you played my football?

Yeah. My thing in life is, it's all about achievement. It's one thing on the football field, but to achieve as a human being and to grow and evolve as a human being is the most important thing in life. I think playing football allowed me to evolve very quickly. The intensity of the experiences I went through forced me to reach for inner reserves. I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world because of what I've been through. I have this courage going through life that I know I'm going to be all right no matter what happens.

How do you feel now, physically and mentally? Do you feel like you're in good shape?

I do. I've made it a priority to take care of myself physically and mentally and spiritually. It's been paying off.

What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish in the field of in psychology?

I think most people in the field of psychology want to help people. The field has been rooted kind of in a deficit mentality—there's something wrong with people and psychology's there to fix them. The way I look at is, we all have potential. For me, the goal of psychology is to give people tools to reach their full potential. That's what I would like to do, spend the rest of my life doing.

Do you have any interest in coaching college football or doing anything in football?

That's where most of my experience and expertise is in, so if the right job or the right opportunity opened up, I would love to. One of the things that I would like to do is consult with football teams. I think the coaches are trying to get the full potential out of their athletes. I think sometimes the nature of coaching, especially in big college football, is to get results on the field. But I think ultimately coaches owe it to their players to help them develop off the field also. I'd like to help create programs to help their student athletes thrive not only as football players but as men.

When you get kids in college, [they]'re still sheltered from the real world. If you can build a solid foundation, [so] that they don't have to experience problems later—and when things do come up, they don't frame them as problems, they frame them as challenges and have the resources and tools to deal with them.

When you go back to Texas, do fans remember you as a football player? Are you mobbed on campus?

They remember me, [but] I'm not mobbed at all. Lucky for me, after I left, Texas had a tremendous amount of success. It's not just me. I'm almost forgotten in a sense. My team is forgotten, but the fact that I won the Heisman trophy has allowed me to make a mark. We've had so many great teams and great players on defense and offense. I think of [former Texas quarterbacks] Vince [Young] and Colt [McCoy]. I'm just one of the guys.

You've talked about your social anxiety disorder in the past. Now you're on television and you seem comfortable in interviews. How did you get there?

I realized that the way that I look at the world tends to be deeper than what most people are comfortable hearing. For me, earlier in my life, I found it better just to keep my mouth shut. As I've gotten more maturity and earned more respect from people, I've felt more comfortable just speaking what's on my mind, and not worrying what people think about it.