THE LATEST TEMPTATION OF RICKY

Dolphins running back Ricky Williams admits that he was tempted to smoke marijuana during the team’s bye week. "[T]here was definitely an urge,” Williams said. “But I just thought about what I have to lose and it was easy. The urge didn’t last very long.” Williams said that the temptation arose from the team’s time off. “It’s greater because, like, Thursday, coach told us we had Friday off, so automatically your mind, which is so constrained since training camp began -- every day is a grind, it’s a grind, it’s a grind -- and then Coach says ‘you’re free.’ And the mind says, ‘I’m free, what can I do?’” Williams explained that, instead of smoking pot, he meditated. “I realize that I really enjoy meditating and when I can go home and sit in my room and meditate, I can get the same feeling,” Williams said. (In an unrelated note, Randy Moss has just taken up meditating.) Williams should have all the incentive he needs to avoid smoking, given the number of times that he is tested as a six-years-and-counting member of the league’s substance-abuse program. If he smokes, and if he doesn’t own a Whizzinator, he’ll undoubtedly be caught, and his NFL career undoubtedly will end. And when his NFL career ends, it sounds like Ricky will replace meditation with inhalation. “I’d be lying if I said I’m never going to do it again after I’m done,” he said.