  urlLink Herald.com | 07/26/2004 | NFL star Williams heeds heart, not wishes of crowd Yeah for Ricky Williams. You've now left the rat race and entered onto the fasttrack. I've listened and read about this story all day. People are criticizing him and everything else. But I applaud him for realizing that in his case, football was a mean to an end, rather than an end in itself.
I really think it's wrong for people to judge him the way they have. He's just like the rest of us, only with celebrity status. He got tired of his job and realized it was time for him to move on. There are those that say, but he's only played for 5 years. Well I retired for the first time after only working for 5 years too. At that point in my life I realized I had been living my life to satisfy everyone else, but myself. Unfortunately, after a year and a half, I had to go back to work, because my finances were running low. However, none of my friends didn't have 1.5 year vacation like I did. They were still grinding away at jobs they didn't neccessarily enjoy.
So I don't blame the guy for retiring. I wish him well. To be honest with you, people really don't learn to live until they start living according to their own desires. Good luck Ricky, and one day I hope I to rejoin you and thousands of others, who've decided they've had enough and took an early... 
