This Austin American-Stateman article reports on the latest undertakings of former University of Texas Heisman Trophy and NFL running back Ricky Williams. The quixotic Mr. Williams — who retired from the NFL earlier this year at the relatively young age of 27 — is now training to be a faith healer:

Williams has turned up about as far from professional football as you can get, as a student of the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. In the Sierra foothills, no less.
“I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate,” he said, “and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.”

Williams is now a month into 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. He’s renting a one-bedroom cottage in nearby Nevada City.

Reluctant at first to talk, [Williams] soon started describing his old life in football and his new life in holistic healing.
“Ayurveda deals with using your environment to put yourself in balance,” he said. “I’ve realized, both on a psychological and physical level, that the things we do in football don’t bring more harmony to your life. They just bring more disharmony.”

Is he happier now that he’s removed from the game?
“I’m closer to being happy. I’m doing things that make me happy,” Williams said. “In football I loved to practice and I loved to play, but I hated to be in meetings, hated to talk to the media, hated to have cameras in my face, hated to sign autographs. I hated to do all those things.”

But then Ricky — how do you explain this?
Earth to Ricky, over and out.