IT'S HIS PREROGATIVE TO CALL CAREER QUITS

For all we know, Ricky Williams may be in Tibet, visiting the Dalai Lama,
receiving total consciousness and doing some caddieing. Big hitter, the
Lama. Long. Or maybe Williams is across a Himalaya in India, talking
transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the fool on the hill,
day after day. Or maybe he's rolling out of a smoke-filled van in parts
unknown, getting an attack of the munchies, ordering pizza, learning about
Cuba and pounding a football cleat against his skull.

So Ricky Williams loves "Caddyshack," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and
the Beatles and he may be about to become the 21st century's Jack Kerouac,
doing some traveling, doing some pot, doing what he wants to do, seeing
things he hasn't seen.

You know, enlightening himself. He's a member of The Beaten Generation.

Williams has said he wants to spend some time in Asia. A heck of a lot
nicer than a South Florida training camp in August, I guess.

All I know is that, at 27 years of age, Williams, one of the finest running
backs in football, has retired from the NFL's Miami Dolphins. And if you
listen to his critics, you'd think he might have planned the attack on
Pearl Harbor.

If Williams is tired of getting his brains beaten in, if his heart no
longer is in the game and he wants to retire, OK by me. The former Patrick
Henry High star doesn't even need a reason. "I'm retiring" is good enough.

I just read a column in which he was called a quitter, that you don't do
this to people.

Sure, as if the NFL always has treated players on the square. Asinine.

The only thing wrong with this photograph, other than Williams'
acknowledged fondness for the weed -- even if he didn't retire, he was
going to face a suspension for testing positive -- is the timing of his
retirement. By leaving the game on the eve of training camp, he blindsided
the Dolphins, who had treated him well.

But that's how it goes. Williams made a lot of money playing football. The
sport was good to him, but he was good for it. He isn't the first athlete
- -- or great running back -- to retire at the top of his game, nor is he
going to be the last.

Barry Sanders did it. So did Robert Smith. So did Jim Brown, the greatest
athlete of the 20th century. Brown left the Cleveland Browns to become an
actor. Good money, and he didn't have Sam Huff pounding on him in "The
Dirty Dozen."

Brown applauds Williams' decision, because he knows it was what he wanted
to do.

"Ricky is an intelligent person who reads a lot and studies cultures,
studies people and has a desire to be in something other than sports,"
Brown told the New York Daily News. "People don't understand that."

Right. People don't understand, because Williams is an athlete. If Williams
had been working as a top executive for IBM and retired at 27, somebody
might have taken him to Starbucks for a farewell frappuccino and muffin.

But when an athlete retires before somebody else's clock says he should,
it's such a terrible thing. It can't be understood. It's a wonderful life.
There's so much fame if you're great -- in many cases, even if you're not
great.

But if you fall out of love with it, or if you never really loved it at all
and it just was something you could do better than most people in the
world, there's nothing wrong in leaving it when you've had enough.

NFL love, as we have seen, can be unrequited.

Williams is not a deserter. He acknowledges that the would-be drug
suspension played a minor part in his decision, but he was finished. It
happens. I've seen Little League heroes burned out by the time they got to
high school.

Nobody thought Sanders would remain retired, except Sanders, who has been
away long enough now to be believed. He was so close to the all-time
rushing record. How could he do that?

Easy. He just did. He felt like it.

As Brown, who was 30 when he retired, says when asked why he got out so
young: "I'd had enough. I did what I wanted to do and that was it.

"There's no logical reason to tell someone to play a game they don't want
to play anymore."

A perfect answer.

Some athletes can't retire. Emmitt Smith can't. If he doesn't want to, and
employers still request his services, nothing wrong with that, either. His
business. If you don't want to watch him run anymore -- and I don't care to
- -- that's what remotes are for.

We are free to do that, you see? Just as Ricky Williams is free to retire.
That's a pretty good thing.

Williams always has been different. I don't know what kind of drum beat
bangs in his head, nor do I really care. He hasn't been a bad guy. When he
played, he played hard. He won a Heisman Trophy. He led the NFL in rushing.
Guess he's done enough.

I have been around great football players who couldn't give it up and were
dumped when they deserved ceremony for their service. Somehow, I find that
much worse than leaving a game when you've had your fill of it, when you've
made enough money, when you've decided you want to do something other than
wake up Monday mornings with your body crying for help.

Ricky Williams didn't want that anymore. He changed his major. Good for him.