{image1} I don't normally write two weeks in a row about the same topic, but I have realized that I am not yet done with the Ricky Williams story.

Actually, this isn't so much about Ricky, as it is about drugs. Or more specifically, marijuana.

Alright, let me be blunt (pardon the pun) and cut right to the point: How can a high profile NFL player quit his full time job as an pro athlete, in order to pursue a full time job as a drug user and there be no collective shock/outrage/condemnation from the sports media as a whole?

Apparently, we've come to a point, where nothing at all can shock us. We've seen a World Series cancelled in mid-season, historic franchises swiped by other cities, double-murders, the insanity of nerds picking national championship games in college football, contracts worth $200 million dollars, and agents who still say "not enough."

We've had figure skaters hire goons to cripple their opponents, tennis players who don't have to win a single tournament to be millionaires, and college coaches gone wild with co-eds, office pools, strippers and resumes. High school basketball players now look at college like a chump factory for NBA rejects, and so-called "institutions of higher learning" give test to jocks with questions like: "What color is blue?"

We have even suffered streakers and nipples at halftime of the Super Bowl. Frankly, I think we're a bit "shocked-out" at this point.

But let me repeat this, just so we are clear on the overall dynamic of this story. Ricky Williams, QUIT FOOTBALL SO HE COULD SMOKE POT WITHOUT BEING HASSLED BY THE MAN!

Holy mother-of-all WTF's, Batman! I would say I've now seen it all, but I know something even more stupid is due to come along any minute now.

Let's play a little "what if" game, and see what you think. "What if" the word "marijuana" in all of these stories about Ricky's "retirement" was replaced with "cocaine?" Do you think there would be as many people willing to back him up and say, "well, good for him!"

Go the other way on the recreational drug use spectrum and replace "getting high" with "getting sh**-faced drunk." Let's say Ricky decided to quit football, because he just wanted to travel the world and "get hammered" in as many different countries as possible?

Do you think the Dan Lebetard's of the world would say that it's great that Ricky can now spend some time "finding himself" and "expanding his horizons" while getting drunk or snorting coke? Or do you think most people would call this the most brazen act of self-destuctiveness since Shannon Doherty decided to leave 90210 to pursue a music career?

I have been watching and listening carefully to the entire range of opinions on this, and there's one little phrase I have yet to hear anyone mention.

"Rehab."

How come nobody stepped up and said: "I don't care about Ricky as a football player, I care about him as a person. He needs to get himself some professional drug counselling, and get his life together." Nobody. Not one. Yet this is exactly what people would say if Ricky wound up spaced out on coke in a boarded up house in Dade County.

The reason that marijuana has such an unchallenged free pass in the media, is the fact that the hip-hop culture has now attached itself to the sports culture like a parasite. And since media outlets like ESPN are now putting rappers (I repeat, rappers!) on SportsCenter in between highlights, they best be careful not to offend that core audience which they are pursuing.

And believe me, that core hip-hop/sports audience views smoking dope with about as much shame as talking on their cell phone at the dinner table -- which is to say, none at all. Hell, when Snoop Dogg is the featured endorser for the Nokia Sugar Bowl, you know that the two cultures have moved well past the "holding hands stage" in their relationship.

Ricky and his mouthpiece Lebetard will try to play down the drug issue, but let's not kid ourselves, it was the core of his decision to quit football. And don't try to draw the Jim Brown, Barry Sanders, Robert Smith parallels either. All three of them accomplished much more in their brief careers than Ricky (who never played in a single post-season game) and Brown and Smith have gone on to pursue much more noble goals than just finding that perfect blend of "West Coast Ganja Gold."

When I had Smith on recently to discuss his life after football, I asked him what he was doing. In addition to his book he wrote on this very subject, the former Vikings slasher eagerly touted the construction company he just purchased, as well as the software programming unit he had acquired that he says will help cut the state of California's worker's comp fraud by more than 50 percent.

Wow.

I bet in a year you could ask Ricky what he's been doing, and he'll say: "Duuuude. Saw Kravitz in Belgium.... Righteous, dude, it was awesome. Heheheh."

The whole Lebetard athlete-access-through-friendship issue in today's journalism is perhaps another column for another day (don't worry, I won't make it THREE in a row) but I did find two of the quotes from Ricky in one of his columns to be downright pathetic.

On the one hand, Lebetard says how intelligent and thoughtful he finds Ricky to be as a person. (Again, note: Nobody in the press will use this language to describe coke-heads or drunks, only pot smokers.) Then he quotes one of Ricky's insights as follows:

"You think Adam and Eve are meant to be analogies for our parents in the Bible? Parents teach you shame. My son likes to walk around naked. We're the ones teaching them that's wrong. Is it possible that whenever you have fear and anguish and shame in your heart, you are Satan, but when you have truth and love, we can all be Jesus Christ?"

OK, everybody exhale. Ahhhhhhhh ...

Now, memo to Ricky: Stop over-thinking this stuff. You teach your kids to wear clothes so they don't shit all over the house, and also because that's what civilized humans do, wear clothes. About the shame and anguish and Jesus and Satan stuff, refer to your psychologist or pastor, because that skull bong doesn't have the answers.

From where I sit, you can't call Ricky anything but a druggie and a quitter. There is no nuance to this story, there is no "yeah, but's ..."

In a twist of irony that was lost on most of the media, the same day Ricky's third failed pot test came out in the Miami Herald, one Bam Morris was released from prison in Texas. Morris, once a promising running back with the Steelers and Cowboys, had just completed a five-year sentence in state prison for getting caught with 220 pounds of Ricky's "truth weed" in his trunk.

"I hope this is a cautionary tale for others out there," Morris said upon his release.

Yeah, don't count on it. But then again Ricky Williams is a thoughtful and intelligent young man. He'll never end up like that.

And the silence was deafening.