Williams Will Not Rule Out a Return

Even as his attorney rejected a deal Thursday that would have reinstated Ricky Williams to the NFL next season, the erstwhile running back didn’t rule out an eventual return to his pro career.

“You can look inside and there are certain forces that push you,” Williams told The Times. “I’m kind of hoping they push me to play football again.”

But that will be another day. At the moment, Williams is focused on more pressing matters, specifically his future as a holistic healer. The 1998 Heisman Trophy winner who abruptly quit the Miami Dolphins shortly before training camp began, walking away from the $5 million he would have earned this season, is renting an apartment in the Sierra foothills and studying an Indian medical system known as Ayurveda.

“I always felt in my heart that I have a natural capacity to help people, and it just seemed like the natural fit,” he said. “I was looking around the country for somewhere where I could go to school, and I saw that classes started here in five days. So I jumped in the car and drove up here.”

Meanwhile, his NFL career is still a subject of fervent haggling. His attorney, David Cornwell, said Williams rejected a deal to serve a four-game drug suspension this season and return to the field next year and instead will stay retired.

“Ricky indicated to me that he is no longer interested in resuming his career at this time,” Cornwell said in a statement e-mailed to Associated Press on Thursday.

But, in a rare interview Thursday, Williams said he had not ruled out returning to football.

“I can’t shut the door on anything,” said Williams, 27, “because I haven’t found my purpose. So I’m not going to say what it is or isn’t. I can’t even say what I’m going to do tomorrow, because I know that tomorrow might not come. The only thing that I have that’s real is this moment right now.”

The Dolphins filed a lawsuit in federal court against Williams, seeking the $8.6 million an arbitrator ruled he owed the team for breaching his contract. Williams is fighting the decision.

Leigh Steinberg, Williams’ agent, said he believed his client would play again.

“Ricky still loves football, and this may just be a sabbatical,” he said.

Williams has completed 1 1/2 months of a 17-month course at the California College of Ayurveda (pronounced I-yur-vay-da) in Grass Valley, a city of 12,000 about 45 miles northeast of Sacramento. Although he wore dreadlocks a year ago and shaved his head after the season, he now has a short, thick Afro and a bushy beard.

He attends classes three days a week, studying yoga, massage, meditation, color and aroma therapies, among other disciplines. He said he’s happier now than he was during his NFL days.

“A football player is one small part of who Ricky is,” said Marc Halpern, 42, Williams’ primary teacher, and founder and director of the college, housed in a one-story building about the size of a typical strip mall. The school has three branches in California. “Ricky appears to want to explore the other parts of him, which Ayurveda teaches are infinite. And when you take that leap into the infinite possibilities, it becomes a very empowering and life-expanding opportunity.”

Williams, who two years ago was diagnosed as having social-anxiety disorder, was a spokesman for an antidepressant. He said marijuana helped him after he stopped using the antidepressant, and he failed at least two NFL drug tests.

He played three seasons for New Orleans but didn’t truly find success until the Saints traded him to Miami in 2002 in exchange for two first-round draft picks. He rushed for 3,225 in two seasons with the Dolphins, and, by all accounts, was a happy man. Fans wore his jersey -- his was the eighth-best seller in the league this off-season, according to NFLShop.com -- and honored him by wearing caps with dreadlocks dangling out the back.

In retrospect, he said he wasn’t truly happy with his life.

“When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be rich and famous,” he said. “And then when I became rich and famous, I realized that I liked the freedom but I didn’t like the fame.”

Without Williams, the Dolphins are ranked 31st in rushing offense, and, at 2-9, are guaranteed their first losing record since 1988. The turmoil caused coach Dave Wannstedt to resign last month. But Williams says he tunes out talk he’s the reason for the team’s demise.

“Everyone is going to have their opinion, so I try not to get involved,” he said. “Especially people I don’t know and who don’t know me. When I worry about what they say, I’m unhappy. When I don’t care about what they say, it’s much easier to be happy.”

Although he doesn’t own a television -- he checks the Internet to keep tabs on the sports world -- Williams still enjoys some of the trappings of his former life. He drives a Jeep he won as most valuable player of the Pro Bowl and a Hummer painted University of Texas orange in honor of his alma mater.

The 5-foot-10 Williams weighs 213 pounds, 20 pounds lighter than his playing weight with the Dolphins. He says he still feels strong, though, and the only difference he notices is his thighs aren’t as large as they were.

“I’m the same shape, just a smaller version of me,” he said.

What he has lost in size, he said, he has gained in spiritual awareness. That’s unlikely to hasten his return to the field.

“You have this duality in Ricky,” Steinberg said. “He’s such a hard-nosed football player, never missed a day of practice, played with reckless abandon, played hurt. And that side coexisted with a repressed side which was the seeker of truth and enlightenment. The repressed side came out this summer.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.