Run Ricky Run

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpH-GyNLCGY

Ricky has had a challenging career in the NFL, to say the least. But he has always been true to himself, and will forever be a great Longhorn. Congratulations to him on this accomplishment, and I wish him the best in everything he does.

My best memory of Ricky was during the 1995 or 1996 Hex Rally. The team walked through the crowd up to the South Mall steps. I was near the area where the team was walking through and high fiving the crowd. I worked my way to the aisle and gave Ricky five along with many other Texas Longhorns that night.

Easily one of if not the oddest, strangest, most unique NFL careers I can recall. Amazingly it seems as if Ricky fell back in love with the game and has had some very solid years here at the end when most backs would be slowing down.

How many on that list are hall of famers? Will Ricky be a hall of famer?

Congratulations Ricky and continued best wishes on your journey.

Memory one:
The record breaking run against the ags. Hello Heisman. A remarkable ending to an incredible Longhorn career.

Memory two:
Ricky in street clothes outside DKR with other players. Easy to see the man among boys.

How many on that list are hall of famers? Will Ricky be a hall of famer?

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/rush_yds_career.htm

By my count, 11 HOFers, 2 players still active, and 4 retired but not yet eligible out of the 25 ahead of Ricky on the list.

So I would say no, not a hall of famer.

If he had put up the same numbers without the off the field issues and being out of the league for a couple of years, then I’d think he’d have a decent chance of making the HOF. You could argue that he was the best RB in the league for the better part of 3 different seasons, 2 of which I believe were derailed by injuries. He had one full season when he was easily the best.

My best memory was when he crushed Rice as a senior.

1st UT game I took my wife to.

As a result, the budget for football tickets/travel is unlimited.

Hook ’em

Congrats to Ricky,
He was paid to run the rock and he did every year as an NFL RB. Did it well every year in the NFL. So glad he stayed for his senior year at UT.

I went to his heirs man ceremony in new York and cheered. Always will be my favorite longhorn

I like that guy. Always have.

10,000 yards. great to hear.

congrats to ricky. you da man, man. one of the best running backs i ever saw. power, vision, balance, speed. i don’t think of ricky that i don’t remember those tiptoe runs right up a sideline with him extending the ball into the end zone while his body was flying over the pylon out of bounds. pure athlete and just a great running back and a great guy to boot.

proud of you, man.

One of my favorite memories of Ricky was an off the field encounter when he was with the Saints. He had a hurt ankle and was traveling through the New Orleans Airport. I happened to be there when he was checking for his flight and offerred him a candy of all things; a gesture to wish him well. His congenial response and down to earth view of life was compelling. A wonderful football player and very interesting human being. Congrats Ricky, and Hook ’em forever.

One of my favorite Horns.

Is he done after this year, or does he go another one (or two)?

My favorite has always been the run that broke the record, for lots of reasons other than the record. His performance at Nebraska was off the charts, as well.

You could tell Ricky wanted the run where the record fell to be something special. He obviously knew the record was broken early in the run, but made an outstanding effort to get into the end zone. The very definition of someone who would not be denied.

And, of course, it was against the Aggies, so it felt even better.

I’ll start with his tackle of a Nebraska defender who had just picked off The Major.

If it was the second game in ’99, it could have been Ralph Brown, who knew a thing or two about jumping routes vs. Texas.

I remember tooling down MoPac in those years and looking over to see Ricky in a big black Hummer. Good times.

The years he took off have allowed him to stay in the league longer than most backs.

Congratulations, Ricky. Thank you for being a Longhorn.

I haven’t looked up the numbers, but Ricky always seemed to just bring it against the Aggies. For a guy who didn’t grow up in the state and with the rivalry, he seemed to know that was a great way to ingratiate himself with the fans or something.

Watching Ricky as a kid made me a Longhorn fan 4-life ….much respect

There are 3 special memories of Ricky for me.
The first is his freshman debut vs Hawaii. I just remember him having a 50 yard burst of a run in the first half and just jumping off the TV screen, looking every bit like the can’t miss prospect we signed out of Cali. What’s interesting is that I don’t recall there being all that much hype about him during recruiting, I’m guessing mainly because he wasn’t from Texas and therefore wasn’t known about by most Horn fans. So, seeing his talent displayed that night was an exciting sign, albeit unexpected for many people, of many more things to come.
The second memory is when he danced all over the A&M defense in the 1995 game at College Station. Here was a true frosh from the West Coast who had no clue about the intensity of the UT-A&M rivalry and he (as well as James Brown) simply walked into that beehive and calmly ended the aggy’s thirty-whatever game home winning streak and won us the final SWC championship.
The third memory, of course, is Ricky breaking the record against the ags in 98. I was at that game and it was just a surreal, almost fairy tale-like, atmosphere, I guess because everyone knew that history was going to be being made and there was nothing anyone, including the aggies (who had a very good team that year), could do to stop it.

Congrats to Ricky on reaching the 10,000 yard mark!

Ricky against the Aggys:

1995:
24-163 2 TDs

1996:
22-145- 1 TD

1997:
33-183 2 TDs

1998:
44-259 1 TD

Ricky owned the Aggys.

In all fairness, however, it was Ricky’s fumbles that nearly gave the Aggys the win in 1998. We dominated the game and had 483 yards of total offense to their 173 yards. The Aggys had -7 yards rushing and 8 first downs and nearly won the game due to costly turnovers by us.

A girlfriend my freshman year roomed with one of the athletic trainers. I was lucky enough to get a football signed by Ricky. It is on my bookshelf now.

Thanks Ricky!

Hook ’em!

So uthookem you are saying he signed off on her as well, right ;-) Ricky was an amazing GOD with women on campus - my favorite memory is walking into his dorm and see him sitting there with five hot women draped all over him!

Parlin,

Ricky was in the NFL in 1999.

1. Met him on 6th street summer between freshman and soph year. I shook his hand and said, “Watch your knees!” Like a tard. I remember his dreads just getting started, and he didn’t seem that big at the time.
2. The Rice Game. I was on the first row at the goal line where he scored 3 of his 20 touchdowns that day. Dragging 5 rice defenders with him on one of those. Wow. Crowd chanting RICK-Y, RICK-Y.
3. Cotton Bowl vs MS State. He knocks out 2 of their DBs with concussions.

I missed out on seeing Ricky but my little sister saw him on campus walking around, and had a pennant that Ricky signed for her while my family and I were down looking at the campus when I was a high school student attending the honors weekend visit. I’m pretty sure he was a little surprised that a 12 year old girl would recognize him out of uniform.

Ricky is one of my favorite seekers of all time. And favorite horn. Congrats for all your accomplishments!

Hail Swamy Ricky!

Thanks Davy—it gets all jumbled up after awhile.

One other pretty important play I remember came at the end after he had fumbled a couple of times against the Ags late in the game where he broke the record. Our defense was gassed (and thin on talent) and Aggy had scored to go ahead with very little time left on the clock. Major gave it to ricky on a counter trey to the left and he somehow made enough yardage and got out of bounds in field goal range to set up the game winner as the clock ran out.

Ricky, agree with him or not, has lived life on his own terms and I will always be grateful to him for coming back for that senior year to help Mack “right the ship”.

Watched ESPN’s “The Marenovich Project” on the DVR just the other day. Listening to Todd Marenovich reminded me a ton of the Run Rickey Run documentary and it really sounded like two guys that had similar perspectives on football and what they viewed as their top priorities. Excellent shows both on some guys that had to face some real deamons.

My favorite Ricky memory isn’t really even my own. One of the wife’s best friends was living in Miami in the early part of the last decade. She walked into the elevator and hits the button to go up to her floor. Right before the door closes, a man grabs the door and in walks Ricky. Her friend, who is wearing at UT sweatshirt, is speechless upon realizing who it is. Ricky, ever the humble one looks up at her at the Texas sweatshirt and just quietly puts up the hook ’em. She responds (now emboldened by his politeness) with an emphatic hook ’em just before stepping off on her floor. Just a great, genuinely nice guy.

It would be great to see Ricky have a nice swan song sometime in the next couple of seasons. I think it’s unfortunate that he’s just now crossing 10Kyds., and a big part of that is how long it took for his career to get going at the pro level. Remember the futility of the Saints with Ditka at the helm, and then the Deuce McAllister pick? Those were just as destructive to his statistical legacy as the time spent away from football. But the good news is he’s a hard worker who’s playing a valuable role. I don’t like that he’s with the Ravens, but I’d be really happy to see him get a ring and another 2000yds. or more before he retires.

parlin,

Don’t get worried until you start mixing critical dates and names of loved ones and family.

burntorangehorn,

The strange thing about Ricky’s early career was the number of people involved in getting the train off the track before it every really got started to roll.

Ditka was an idiot for the entire trade my draft for one guy plan and then Ricky didn’t help himself with some of the sideshow stuff created by the choice of Master P as his agent then the wedding dress fiasco. I always found that cover really odd for a guy suffering from social anxiety. From the people I know that battle it the very last thing they want to do is bring attention to themselves. I understand why SI did it, Ditka is an idiot, and I think that is an example of the people around him should have been protecting him instead of that crap.

I was a lowly student dicking around in the stands with my now wife and a couple of buddies at DKRMS on a gray winter day between semesters back in late 1994 or early 1995 at the time that the recruits were being toured around the stadium and recall seeing Ricky Williams name up on the scoreboard. There was not much going on around campus and we went to the stadium that day hoping to get on the turf to play some frisbee back when you could do that type of thing and instead got to sit and observe the recruiting entourage for a few minutes, which I thought was pretty cool but not much more than that.

A month or two after that, I recall an Allstate insurance agent out on Burnet Road that I bought an auto policy from with a fax subscription to Jerry Scarborough’s service hyping up the fullback recruit from San Diego as a likely an impact player at linebacker (our defenses were putrid back then) to look out for in the next season. That was the year that aggy only got to take like 8 players due to probation. The old Longhorn insurance agent was adamant that that was the beginning of the turnaround for us as it related to aggy – I wasn’t so sure having personally witnessed the 1994 thrashing, but I did allow the seed of hope to germinate just a little bit.

Shortly thereafter, I recall being really bummed out when Priest Holmes, coming off a break out performance in the Sun Bowl against North Carolina that I was in the stands for, tore up his knee in the spring of 1995. Then came the 1995 season and it was poetry in motion with Ricky at fullback and Shon Mitchell at tailback. Shon then gets dinged in 1996 and opens up more carries for Ricky along with some snaps at tailback. Ricky then switches to tailback full time in 1997 and really starts racking up the yards in an otherwise horrible season setting up the fairy tale Heisman and record run in 1998.

I had no idea I was looking at Longhorn royalty on that gray winter day in DKRMS. Ricky is still my favorite Longhorn and I cannot see anyone ever taking his place as far as that goes.

One last comment. People forget what a stellar blocker Ricky was at UT, not only as a FB but as a TB.