Run Ricky Run

November 26, 2002 2:43 PM

Run Ricky Run. Ricky Williams, running-back for the Miami Dolphins, gets an A for effort for designing and maintaining his own website. He keeps a journal where he sounds off on everything from battling fame and the perks that come with it, to meeting his idol (Jim Brown). He even talks about money problems, just on a much larger scale then you or I would have.
posted by Starchile (15 comments total)

I think that is really neat. Professional athletes are turned into such tremendous icons by the media, it is neat to see one of them revealing themself a little less....hmm what is a good word... promotionally? Anyways it is neat to see that Ricky is opening himself to his fans, I'd like to ask Aaron Brooks why he decided to screw me over this week and only put up four fantasy football points, and if Aaron Brooks was Ricky Williams then I could do that, and he'd answer me honestly and straightforwardly.
posted by Mushkelley at 3:02 PM on November 26, 2002

That is marvelous.
posted by gleuschk at 3:12 PM on November 26, 2002

That's totally cool.

Also I didn't know that that whiner Nancy Kerrigan was a photographer now.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 3:16 PM on November 26, 2002

Nifty. I don't think I have much in common with Ricky Williams, but I think it's cool when celebrities make themselves accessible without the filtering of their publicity machines.
posted by RylandDotNet at 3:33 PM on November 26, 2002

I went to the grocery store before the game to get fruit and people were crazy around me. A guy apologized to me for not knowing who I was. Is that something someone has to apologize for? I didn't know who he was, either, but I didn't feel like I had to apologize for it.

Great link. Thanks!
posted by Marquis at 3:37 PM on November 26, 2002

Seeing him with pictures of his kids and his dogs just made me like him a million times more than I used to.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:39 PM on November 26, 2002

Honestly I guess I held stereotypes about athletes stronger than I thought, because against my better judgment it just blows me away that the guy could be this candid and human off the field. Not to mention making his own web site as opposed to paying one of you web guys to do it. Rad.
posted by Hildago at 3:47 PM on November 26, 2002

...Unless this is some sort of publicity thing and his agent is just paying some college shlub to do it so that he looks good.
posted by Hildago at 4:02 PM on November 26, 2002

I like the recent posts about how Jim Brown is like a Yoda to the young padawan Ricky, about how to find the true tao of football.


I will say that I think I can have social influence the way Jim Brown does someday, but I've got a lot of learning to do before that. You don't want to be a role model for people unless you have conviction about what you believe, and conviction is built over time and experiences and I don't have enough of those yet. I can't go into a school or prison and talk to kids unless I know exactly who I am and what I want to say. I think Jim can help me a lot with that. He really gets me. We are so much alike. He told me the other day "You are no mystery to me. I knew you from the time we met."


That's got TV Sports Movie of the Week written all over it. Heck, Jim Brown's even an actor, although I'd probably get ol' James Earl Jones/Morgan Freeman to do it.

*starts typing up a screenplay*
posted by Stan Chin at 4:55 PM on November 26, 2002

It's a different 'football', but the Crystal Palace midfielder Aki Riihilahti writes a funny, off-beat journal on his site. Being a native Finn, his is English is a bit fractured, but he's great guy. Not the brightest blogger you can find, but he likes to think about stuff. Like the psychology of watching sports or compiling statistics about the amount of work done during the season.
And after three lost games in a row, there's an item titled "I had to write something" which reads like it had been written by a five-year-old and deals with stepping on dog poo in a park. I refuse to believe that he has a PR advisor.
posted by ikalliom at 5:27 PM on November 26, 2002

Totally proud to claim the same school as Ricky. Hook them Aggies this Friday!
posted by alumshubby at 5:46 PM on November 26, 2002

Great link, thanks. I'm sure he still has to be very careful about what he posts, given all the politics involved in being a pro-sports player, but it's still far more interesting than 90% of what the supposed football "experts" have to say about the game.
posted by boltman at 8:28 PM on November 26, 2002

Cool link. This just remains you that athletes aren't really just the new gods of our age. They're just guys with a job, and a wife and a mortage living life...
posted by PenDevil at 12:16 AM on November 27, 2002

The more I hear about the personality of this guy, the more I respect him as a person who attempts to be honest with himself.

And he has the makings of being one of the greats....kinda reminds me of a more gregarious Barry Sanders.
posted by Dagobert at 3:40 AM on November 27, 2002

Gregarious? Well, now that he's on Paxil... Is blogging a side effect?

Seriously, I've been a Ricky Williams fan for years, since he was blocking for Priest Holmes at Texas. The only trouble he ever seemed to get into was vehicular (ran a stop sign in college, got caught doing 120 in a 65 through Louisiana, got pulled over in Miami and had his car searched because he has dreads and was pumping reggae (all the dogs found was Chinese food)). This is a good kid with his heart in the right place.
posted by shecky57 at 5:45 AM on November 27, 2002