Ex-NFL linebacker, Disney Sports exec Reggie Williams fighting to save his leg

[oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]Ex-NFL linebacker, Disney Sports exec Reggie Williams fighting to save his leg[/b][/size]
[size=3][b]Battling infection takes ex-NFL star to New York[/b][/size]
David Whitley | Sentinel Staff Writer
June 22, 2008


[b]Under wraps
The infection[/b]
Former NFL linebacker and Disney's Wide World of Sports executive Reggie Williams suffers from osteomyelitis, a bone infection caused by bacteria. Doctors do not know where the bacteria came from but suspect the silver from wisdom tooth surgery 20 years earlier might have gotten into Williams' bloodstream. The bacteria generally attack a vulnerable part of the body. Williams had double knee-replacement surgery, and his right knee developed an infection.


[b]The symptoms[/b]

Osteomyelitis causes severe pain and swelling, and in extreme cases, a cavity can develop in the affected area.


[b]The treatment[/b]

Williams' severe case was treated with heavy doses of intravenous antibiotics. Doctors say they think the bacteria has been killed and last week grafted Williams' calf muscle into the cavity.




NEW YORK - Reggie Williams got in his car two months ago and headed north. He said goodbye to the swans and almost nobody else.

He'd come to know them on his walks around Lake Eola. They'd take his mind off the pain as he circled the lake. Now the gnawing in his right knee had become too much.

Williams packed his Lexus with a few clothes and an iPod loaded with 18,226 songs. He did not know when he'd get back to Orlando, but the ex- NFL linebacker was certain of one thing.

"This was all or nothing," Williams said.

"This journey," he said, "has gotten to the point where the circumstances are very rare."

It began more than 30 years and untold football collisions ago. Long before the Cincinnati Bengals team doctor told Williams about an experimental surgery that might tack another year onto his career.

There was one catch.

"You'll probably need a knee replacement some day," the doctor said.

Some day doesn't register when you can't see past Sunday. Few players were as consumed with the game as Williams.

On sub-zero days at Riverfront Stadium, he literally could stare his goose bumps into submission. Here was a man who overcame deafness. He made the great Michigan coach Bo Schembechler eat his words.

He became a Cincinnati councilman, and Desmond Tutu himself credited Williams with helping end apartheid in South Africa.

If he tried hard enough, there was nothing he couldn't do.

Until now.


[b]'Hurts worse than it looks'[/b]

"Welcome to my million-dollar view," Williams said.

He is sitting on his bed at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. Williams can gaze out over the East River and watch the morning break each day.

He also can look down at his right leg. It's a view that most would pay a million dollars not to see.

It is slit open like the belly of a fish that's been filleted. And that's on a good day.

On bad days, the knee bloats to the size of a watermelon and looks more like the worst corned beef sandwich ever made. It is pocked with yellowish blisters that migrate like caterpillars. Bacteria have eaten a crevice deep enough to see bone.


"I wish it was just another Hollywood makeup job," Williams said. "The reality is it hurts worse than it looks."

He's had six surgical procedures in two months. The goal is to kill the bacteria and get his knee healthy enough for another artificial replacement.

If that fails, the 53-year-old Williams will become one of football's ultimate cautionary tales.

He played 14 standout seasons in the pros. He was the NFL's Man of the Year. He still looks like a linebacker from the waist up.

From the waist down, he looks like an escapee from Dr. Frankenstein's lab.

Was it worth it?

"I've always been able to look over the current adversity to the next golden opportunity," Williams said. "But this one is different."

He paused for a second.

"This is where all the marbles will be played."

Sometimes where there's a will, there's not a way.


[b]Willing his way to top[/b]

To understand how he ended up here, you have to realize how Williams started. He was born with a hearing impairment that wasn't diagnosed until he was in third grade.

"People thought I was dumb," he said.

He was shy, had a speech impediment and caught plenty of ridicule from his Flint, Mich., schoolmates. Radiation treatment helped restore his hearing. Williams devoted himself to therapy and learned how to talk.

The struggle gave him a soft spot for needy children and a philosophy to succeed. There was nothing he couldn't accomplish if he put his mind to it.

"I dare you to hit me. I DARE YOU TO HIT ME!"

That's what Williams screamed at the line of scrimmage. The worse he hurt, the louder he became.

"You use injuries to propel you, to be even more aggressive," he said. "And in my role as a linebacker, it was even more so. It was all about inflicting damage."

After being told he was dumb for so long, he wanted to show the world how smart and tough he was. He wanted to go to the big state school. Schembechler scouted him and declared, "You're not good enough to play for Michigan."

Williams took an academic scholarship to Dartmouth and quickly fell in love with the Ivy League atmosphere.

"He was a guy who looked like a football player," said Rick Gerardi, another linebacker on the team.

Williams made his reputation leaping over linemen and collapsing plays like a comet hitting the earth. He carried it over to the NFL, where the AstroTurf at Riverfront Stadium might have been one of the hardest surfaces on the planet.

As bad as it was, Williams said the Bengals' practice field was worse. Williams learned how to approach such things as a child during a visit to the doctor.

The doctor got out a shot, and Williams flinched at the thought of the impending pain.

"Instead of running from it," the doctor said, "run to it."

Instead of driving to practice, Williams would run the 2 miles from his house to the Bengals' facility.

"I got used to the pain, then I'd practice, then I'd play," he said. "You're trying to patch up all the injuries and get to the next game, and you get amnesia."


[b]Playing in pain has price[/b]

He hobbled into a game at Cleveland in 1980. The Browns may not have known Williams had torn knee cartilage going in, but they knew he was having a hard time covering tailback Greg Pruitt.

They threw a swing pass for a big gain. On the next play, they tried it again.

"I was so mad. They ran the same play!" Williams said. "I jumped it."

He intercepted the pass and took off, but Pruitt caught him and latched on to his right knee.

"He twisted it," Williams said.

Was that the beginning of the end?

There were so many plays to choose from, Williams can't be sure. Whatever the cause, by 1987 something had to be done.

The team doctor told Williams about a procedure that involved drilling into the bone. The tiny fractures cause cartilage to develop.

It's now called microfracture surgery and is fairly common. Back then, it was new and didn't have a name.

"The doctor said I'd get another year," Williams said. "I got three."

The doctor also warned him he might eventually need a new knee.

"You're a little cavalier about it," Williams said. "You're saying, 'Yeah, yeah,' but you just assume somebody will figure it out and there will be a solution."

That's how players are conditioned to think. Then the solutions never come, and they end up before Congress testifying that the NFL and players' union have abandoned them.


[b]Williams touches many lives[/b]

Williams has no complaints about the medical treatment he received over the years. He stayed close to the NFL after retiring in 1989, working two years as vice president/general manager for the New Jersey Knights of the World League of American Football.

He could have stayed in Cincinnati, where he'd become a civic institution. When he got to town in 1976, he had a small Superman insignia tattooed to his right forearm.

It wasn't to impress adults. It was to make kids feel more comfortable when he visited them in hospitals.

"It's funny how Superman will bring a smile to any kid," Williams said.

He was Sports Illustrated's Co-Sportsman of the Year in 1987. Williams was also the only city councilman in America who spent weekends chasing John Elway.

He spearheaded an effort to get the city's pension fund to divest the stock in all companies that did business with South Africa. It mattered because Cincinnati had a large group of South African and German immigrants. The segregationist Boer government slowly started to dismantle. Tutu toured the United States shortly afterward and made a point to go to Cincinnati.

"He said the legislation from 'Zinzinnati' was the straw the broke the camel's back," Williams said.

There was only one thing wrong with the city. Williams didn't want to be thought of as a football guy living off the past.


[b]New opportunity, but more pain[/b]

After the WLAF folded in 1993, Williams worked for the NFL and started Youth Education Town. The program to help at-risk kids became part of every Super Bowl week.

The first one was in Los Angeles shortly after the Rodney King riots. While he was in town, Williams met Disney Chairman Michael Eisner. He was exploring sports opportunities for the company and asked Williams to join him.

What quickly evolved was Disney's Wide World of Sports. It would be a place where kids could compete and chase their dreams. The concept enthralled him, and moving to Orlando had an unforeseen side benefit.

"Everybody complains about the heat and humidity," Williams said. "I loved it."

He couldn't walk more than two blocks in New York without having to sit down. Florida's sauna conditions were soothing, but his legs still began to bow.

The right one went faster than the left. That led to lower back pain, upper back pain and headaches, which led to Vioxx, Bextra and other anti-inflammatory drugs, which led to high blood pressure and internal organ havoc.

"The greatest analgesic was the job," Williams said. "I loved the mission."

He spent years at the "Happiest Place on Earth" trying not to look miserable. The mask came off when he got home.

"I quit trying to be stoic," Williams said. "It was one of the casualties of the situation."

He ended up getting a divorce. He moved to a condo in Thornton Park. The cozy downtown neighborhood was perfect for a guy who could barely get around.

There were plenty of restaurants close enough to crawl to. When Williams would show up, the managers had a bag of ice waiting for his knees.

"Plus there was the walk around Lake Eola," Williams said. "I can't tell you how many times I walked around it, seeing the swans in my more optimistic rehab days."

Those were in 2005, after he finally had both knees replaced. For the first time in 25 years, he was not in pain.

"It wasn't just the knee, everything relaxes. The jaw, the face muscles. People were coming up and telling me, 'You look great,' " Williams said. "I could not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, I could see it was all worth it."

It lasted about a week.


[b]Osteomyelitis attacks knee[/b]

Williams got sick the night before the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit. By March, his right knee had started to explode. He had a bone infection known as osteomyelitis.

Bacteria enter the bloodstream and usually attack a weakened part of the body. Doctors theorize that bacteria came from the silver from wisdom tooth surgery Williams had 20 years earlier. They'll never know for sure, but the results were obvious.

Williams had to have his artificial knee removed to clean the infection. It was replaced four months later, but the infection returned. Williams was relegated to working at home, but by last summer, the strain was too much.

He decided to retire and make getting healthy his full-time job. He'd been working with doctors in New York. They decided on a new approach to the osteomyelitis.

"It's kill, kill, kill," Williams said. "That's the kind of doctor I want."

The final showdown began April 15. Williams thought he should leave a day or two earlier in case he decided to get his car retrofitted for a driver with one leg.

He ended up leaving it at friend's house outside the city. He got a ride into the hospital in Manhattan, where his knee implant was removed.

He was supposed to be there six days. He ended up staying 23 as the infection raged.

Williams took pictures with his cell phone but sent them to only a couple of people. In one, the doctor is actually sticking his finger into Williams' knee and touching his femur. Williams hadn't even told his parents, ex-wife or three sons the full reason he was going to New York.

"I didn't want them to feel my pain," he said.


[b]Knee showing progress[/b]

Thankfully they weren't there the morning of May 2. Williams looked down and there was a five-inch geyser of blood spurting from his knee. He screamed for help. Nurses ran in and tried to pack his knee with gauze. Two orderlies came with a speed stretcher to rush him to an operating room.

They stopped to figure out how to get a 235-pound man onto the rickety device. Williams grabbed the bar above his bed and hoisted himself on.

He was suffering an arterial pseudoaneurysm. It seems a vessel might have been nicked during an earlier surgery. The bleeding was brought under control, but Williams' room needed a lot of work.

"It looked just like a scene from ER," a doctor said.

When he's not in the hospital, he stays at a nearby apartment. He sleeps on a mattress on the floor since he can't climb to the bedroom loft.

Two tubes run from his knee to a vacuum device. It keeps the blood and other fluids from building up and allows Williams to grab his crutches and go on a daily walk. It's an unusual sight, even for New York City.

A physical therapist in a white lab coat holds the vacuum and trails Williams as he walks down the sidewalk. He gets strange looks and always returns them with a hello. On a recent afternoon, he stopped to chat up a young woman, and his crutch slipped on a metal grate.

"That was a great lesson for me," he said when he got back to his room. "Patience has never been my hallmark, but now I have to just concentrate on taking one step at time."

There has been progress. The barrage of antibiotics appears to have killed the osteomyelitis. The cavity it left behind was filled last week when doctors transplanted most of Williams' calf muscle.

If the tissue takes and the infection doesn't return, another artificial knee will be installed in six weeks. That would be surgery number . . .

"I've lost track," Williams said. "Look, I haven't been stoic through this whole thing. I don't want to give the impression I haven't cried or haven't been lonely."

Which brings him back to the original question.

Was the journey worth it?

"If this was just and only about football," Williams said, "it probably would not have been."

He wouldn't trade his right leg for a Super Bowl ring. But without football, he wouldn't have gone to Dartmouth, helped thousands of kids, been a city councilman, helped start Disney's Wide World of Sports.

In three weeks, Williams will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He will be the first living African-American from an Ivy League school to make it.

Not bad for a dumb kid from Flint.

All the story really needs is a happy ending.

"I'm not expecting to ever go dancing with the stars," Williams said.

Walking with the swans would be more than enough.


[i]David Whitley can be reached at dwhitley@orlandosentinel.com. [/i][/quote]



[url="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/community/news/southofdowntown/orl-williams2208jun22,0,1003024.story?page=1"]http://www.orlandosentinel.com/community/n...24.story?page=1[/url]

[WhoDeyThink]

That fucking sucks

[BengalBacker]

Damn. I wish him the best.

[MaineBengal]

Damn. That does suck.

#57 was my all-time favorite Bengal for many years..... here's hoping for better health for him.

[|Bengal Migration|]

The game his knee gave out was @ Cleveland. Then he gets an infection. Go figure.

That's one tough sob. Simply amazing. I sure hope he's getting good news in 6 weeks.

[ChicagoBengal]

That just kills me.

I've mentioned a few times that I had the opportunity to shoot baskets (well, mostly miss baskets) with Reggie when I was 11 or 12 in his driveway. Such a class guy then and now.

[mongo]

I remember him speaking at my school back when he was a Bengal. Not a very good motivational speech, but a good guy.

[Chris Henrys Dealer]

Our former o-lineman Brian DeMarco virtually can't walk either. A damn shame. (There was an article about him a while back, about how the NFLPA has really fucked over some it's players...the mediocre ones...who make up the bulk of membership, but don't get the press)

[|Montana Bengal|]

The place I work at does quite a bit of work and research with biofilms and this sounds quite a bit like they could be really complicating the problem.

[oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]Fighting off his biggest block[/b][/size]
[size=3][b]Once a hard-charging Bengals LB, Williams now in battle just to walk[/b][/size]
By Ryan Ernst • rernst@enquirer.com • July 13, 2008


In two days, Reggie Williams will drop his crutches and ease into the passenger seat of his Lexus, embarking on a journey as life-affirming as it will be painful. It will begin in Midtown Manhattan and end with his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind.


The former Bengals linebacker will have 707 miles over which to ride shotgun and stare down at his right leg. The limb has been so ravaged by football, surgery and infections that this might be Williams' last road trip with it. He'll have 707 miles to be grateful.

That's the plan, at least.

"I'm going to get there," Williams said of Saturday's ceremony. "What an inspiring event. The timing couldn't be better - to be inspired during a time of adversity."

This isn't the story of just another broken-down NFL player, although his physical struggles are similar. Williams, 53, isn't disillusioned or destitute or grandstanding for the league to change its ways regarding compensation for former players. Of course, Williams never was a typical football player.

The Bengals' media guide from 1989, his 14th and final NFL season, explains part of Williams' persona. One-third of his team bio contained playing information; the rest listed philanthropic endeavors and honors, including the 1986 NFL Man of the Year award and the 1987 Sports Illustrated Co-Sportsman of the Year award.

"He was always such a bigger-than-football kind of guy," said former Bengals teammate Cris Collinsworth. "... He wasn't just going to hang in the locker room and shoot the bull. He was always on to something else - community service or a meeting of some sort. He understood, before most of us did, that there was going to be a life after football."

[b]A devastating ailment[/b]

That life after football has been quite a ride, taking Williams from the NFL to the Cincinnati City Council to a vice presidency with Disney and now to the College Football Hall of Fame, with myriad humanitarian endeavors in between.

But health problems care little about titles or money or humanitarian efforts.

Williams, who already had undergone double-knee replacement surgery, developed a bone infection called osteomyelitis in his right knee in early 2006. The condition occurs when bacteria in the bloodstream attack a vulnerable part of the body, and Williams' doctors think the bacteria could have come from silver used in a dental procedure 20 years earlier, though they can't be certain.

Williams dealt with the pain for a year, then moved to New York for treatment, which also proved painful.

At its worst, his leg looked like a boa constrictor that swallowed a boulder - and then exploded. At times Williams could look down through a fleshy crevice and see what little bone he had left in his swollen knee. Blood and infectious puss bubbled to the surface. The pictures are too gruesome to print.

Doctors eventually cleared out the infection, replaced the gaping hole with part of his calf muscle, and sewed him up. By August, they hope to re-implant his prosthetic knee so he can walk again.

That's the best-case scenario. The worst case?

"Losing my leg," Williams said. "That's the whole fight. But the game hasn't even started yet. Everything is to make it heal, to re-implant the knee. That's when the game starts. That's kickoff."

[b]Still, the clock already has started. Williams, who estimates his medical bills are nearing $500,000, has COBRA medical coverage - enacted after he left Disney to focus on his knee - through November. He has applied for disability with the NFL, but he says the Bengals have denied any responsibility for his injuries.

Bengals owner Mike Brown, in a statement, said a joint committee between the NFL and NFL Players Association made the decision to deny Williams disability, not the Bengals.

"Reggie is one of our Bengals heroes," Brown's statement read. "He was a great player for us for a long time, and I consider him not only a significant part of our history, but also a personal friend."

Williams said he hasn't heard from Brown, a fellow Dartmouth alum, throughout his ordeal.

"Unfortunately, I'm being treated like any other player that ever played for the Bengals," he said. "... Maybe the team can walk away from that, but I can't walk, let alone walk away."

An NFLPA representative did not return a request for comment.

Williams says his feelings toward the Bengals and the NFL are more disappointment than bitterness.[/b] He says his fight is more about principle than money, and though he doesn't mind voicing his opinion on the subject, he much rather would talk about his impending hall of fame induction and the possibility of an able-bodied future, sprawled out before him like 707 miles of open road.

[b]Tough-minded approach[/b]

Williams got his start as a bigger-than-football figure at Dartmouth, the Ivy League school he refers to as his "beautiful hamlet, an escape."

"In a snapshot, I saw American society at Dartmouth," said Williams, who grew up in the blue-collar town of Flint, Mich. "I saw the sons and daughters of the most affluent families in America, the most well-connected political families in America. And I had a chance to compete with them on equal footing and hold my own."

And that, according to classmates, attracted students to the physical specimen of a linebacker.

"He was obviously one of the highest recruits they had ever had, but he related to others extraordinarily well," said Dartmouth classmate and friend Grayland Crisp, who will chauffeur Williams to South Bend. "He was always admired for his natural leadership - by example and by what he had to say. He always had that presence. He was someone that others looked up to."

In 1975, his senior season, Williams became the most recent Ivy Leaguer to earn first-team All-America status.

The Bengals selected him in the third round of the NFL Draft, and he earned a starting spot at right outside linebacker - a position he wouldn't relinquish until his retirement in 1989.

As a pro, Williams built his reputation on toughness and intensity. He refused to tape his ankles. He played through knee injuries. He shunned air conditioning during 100-degree days at training camp.

"Before my first preseason game in Cincinnati, I remember Reggie beating up the bathroom," said former Bengals receiver Mike Martin. "He was just beating it up - yelling, hitting things, throwing stuff. I just said, 'Wow, this is what they do in the NFL.' The other guys said, 'That's just Reggie.' "

[b]Major player on, off field[/b]

During his 14 seasons with the Bengals, Williams made a place for himself in the team's record books - he ranks second in games played, third in seasons played and third in consecutive games played - and in the hearts of fans. Last season, when the Bengals held online voting for their 40th anniversary team, Williams was the top vote-getter at linebacker and the sixth-most popular choice overall.

That popularity and his sparkling off-the-field résumé interested the local Charter Party, which appointed him to City Council in 1988. He practiced in the morning and then attended Council meetings.

Williams quickly found out that both vocations required toughness.

Shortly after his appointment, news outlets reported he never had registered to vote. Later, an Enquirer story revealed he had financial interests in apartheid South Africa, a Council practice he spoke out against. Williams immediately dropped the stock he says he unknowingly owned and helped force Cincinnati to do the same.

"That became a seminal moment," Williams said. "I was getting rocked and having to get out of the huddle and make a play."

Williams had other contentious moments on Council. He supported the polarizing exhibit by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as the controversial rap group N.W.A when it came to town. He ntroduced legislation that would have changed the name of Pete Rose Way after the Reds legend was convicted of tax evasion. He once told a fellow Councilman to "go to hell" during a debate.

Despite his lack of political polish, fellow Council members called Williams a man of principle following his 1990 resignation.

"While controversial and aggressive, no one ever questioned his integrity or his conviction and passion about what he was doing," Councilman Nick Vehr told The Enquirer at the time.

Williams followed his political career by returning to football. He was the general manager of a World League of American Football franchise and served as the NFL's community relations director for Super Bowl XXVII. During that time, he developed the league's first Youth Education Town, a center for kids that's now established in every Super Bowl host city.

Williams spent more than a decade developing Disney's Wide World of Sports as a vice president with the company. Sports Illustrated in 2003 named him one of the 101 most influential minority figures in sports.

Now Williams is in the fight of his life to save his leg, but he's facing the challenge the way he has faced every other challenge in his life - positively.

"This is the beginning of a new path," Williams said. "Ever since my last surgery, I've forced myself to think nothing but positive thoughts. Considering everything I've been through, I feel fortunate."[/quote]



[url="http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080713/SPT/807130440/1062/SPT&referrer=NEWSFRONTCAROUSEL"]http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...WSFRONTCAROUSEL[/url]

[oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]EX-BENGAL WILLIAMS CAN’T WALK[/b][/size]
Posted by Michael David Smith on July 13, 2008, 10:00 a.m. EDT

For 14 years, Reggie Williams was one of the NFL’s most respected players. Williams played for the Bengals from 1976 to 1989, and while he was highly regarded for his on-field abilities, he was even more respected for his off-field activities.

For his plethora of philanthropic activities, Williams was named NFL Man of the Year in 1986 and one of Sports Illustrated’s Sportsmen of the Year in 1987.

But while Williams should be one of the examples of everything that’s right about the NFL, he’s actually an example of something that’s wrong about the NFL: The way so many retired players leave the game permanently disabled.

Williams has had knee injuries so severe that he is now unable to walk without crutches. He says he has $500,000 in medical bills, and he’s been denied disability.

“Unfortunately, I’m being treated like any other player that ever played for the Bengals,” Williams tells Ryan Ernst of the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Maybe the team can walk away from that, but I can’t walk, let alone walk away.”

Williams said that he has never heard a word from Bengals owner Mike Brown. Brown released a statement to the Enquirer saying, “Reggie is one of our Bengals heroes. He was a great player for us for a long time, and I consider him not only a significant part of our history, but also a personal friend.”

The NFL Players’ Association, which steadfastly insists that its sole responsibility is the welfare of active players, declined to comment to the Enquirer.[/quote]



[url="http://www.profootballtalk.com/2008/07/13/ex-bengal-williams-cant-walk/"]http://www.profootballtalk.com/2008/07/13/...iams-cant-walk/[/url]

[|Bengal Migration|]

Shouldn't have had that knee surgery done in Cleveland.


:ninja::ninja::ninja::ninja:

(someone had to say it, i wasn't the only one thinking it)

hopefully the latest round of surgeries will put an end to his troubles. what a fucking shame.

[oldschooler]

[quote][size=5][b]A man not to be denied[/b][/size]
[size=3][b]Williams overcomes adversity[/b][/size]

By BRUCE MARSHALL
Tribune Staff Writer

The good news is Reggie Williams, an All-American linebacker during his football playing days at Dartmouth College, will be attending the enshrinement ceremony at the College Football Hall of Fame this weekend.

The bad news is not all of Williams will make the ceremony.

"This will be my first time in South Bend without my knee," said Williams. "It's getting better, but the doctor has put in a concrete spacer where my knee was, so I can't put any pressure on my leg. I have to stay off of it completely."


Three years as an All-Ivy League performer at Dartmouth (1973-75) and 14 years as an undersized -- 6-foot-1, 225-pound -- linebacker for the Cincinnati Bengals have taken their toll on Williams' knees. Both have been replaced, the left once, successfully; the right twice, unsuccessfully.

Williams' right knee suffered from an arterial pseudoaneurysm and began spurting blood like a fountain from a vessel that may have been nicked in an earlier surgery. After the second knee replacement, osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone, set in. It's a painful condition Williams deals with constantly.

But through it all, he has kept his determination to attend the ceremonies in South Bend to honor his selection to the College Football Hall of Fame.

After being rejected by Bo Schembechler as "not good enough" to play for the University of Michigan, Williams attended Dartmouth on an academic scholarship.

"My mom and dad instilled the importance of academics," he said. "They both got their GEDs while raising us."

Growing up in Flint, Mich., Williams had no serious thoughts about a career in the NFL.

"Don't get me wrong, I loved football growing up and I had my heroes -- Gale Sayers, Jim Brown -- but it wasn't until my sophomore year at Dartmouth that I thought about going to the NFL," he said. "That's the year my teammates and coaches showed a lot of confidence in me. It gave me a tremendous self esteem I'd never had before."

Williams still holds the Dartmouth career record for solo tackles (243) and is second in overall tackles (370). He also was the Ivy League heavyweight wrestling champion in 1975.

Williams earned a degree in psychology in 3 1/2 years. Dartmouth awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1990.

He was the first African-American to be named first-team All-Ivy League three times and, in his senior year, Williams earned first-team All-American honors, becoming the first Ivy League player to gain major college All-American status.

During his sophomore year, Williams spent a semester in Mexico City studying Spanish.

"I went to Mexico as a poor communicator," Williams said. "I had a lisp because when I learned to talk as a child, I was deaf (a condition which later was corrected by radiation treatments).

"In mastering Spanish in three months, I learned the essence of language. I look at this period as my 'coming of age.' The skill set I developed in mastering a language gave me a confidence that has helped me in every aspect of my life, including football."

That confidence carried over to the NFL when Williams -- a third-round draft pick by the Bengals in 1976 -- was named to the All-Rookie team . He was selected the NFL's Man of the Year in 1986 and was Sports Illustrated Co-Sportsman of the Year in 1987.

Most of all he played 14 seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, in a sport where the average playing career is three and a half years. In 1988, Williams was appointed to an open seat on the Cincinnati City Council. In 1989, he ran and was elected to the same Council position.

He led the Bengals to the Super Bowl in January 1982 and January 1989, both ended in losses.

"I'm still passionate about football and watch all I can on TV," Williams said. "I always watch the Super Bowl with a tinge of regret because we came so close twice."

Both losses were to the San Francisco 49ers. It took a goal line stand by the 49ers to beat the Bengals the first time, 26-21. They were victimized by a Joe Montana drive that beat them, 20-16, in the last 30 seconds of the game in 1989.

"My life would have been a lot different if we'd won the Super Bowl," Williams said. "I'm an all or nothing personality and I knew that after the second loss it was time to move past football.

"I played one more year. My last game was on Monday Night Football on Christmas Eve, 1989. We came into the game 8-7 and with a win we would make the playoffs. We lost.

"I can tell you, the allure of Santa Claus took a hit that night."

In 1993, a chance meeting in Los Angeles with Disney Chairman Michael Eisner resulted in Williams being named as a vice-president of Disney's Wide World of Sports in Orlando, Fla., where he was until he retired last year to deal with his medical problems.

"Rehabilitation is taking all my energy," he said. "I'm not thinking about anything else right now, just dealing with my medical condition."

Williams is often asked the question whether playing football was worth it, considering all the current medical problems he is having.

"I spoke for the Class (inductees of 2008) at the (National Football Foundation) Awards Dinner (December, 2007) at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and said this was all worth it.

"But that was before the last six surgeries," Williams said. "What I feel now is that if it was only football success that was attained, then it was not worth it. But football gave me many things I wouldn't have had; friends from the game, an opportunity to help kids, the chance to go to Dartmouth and helping start Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex."

Williams hasn't yet written his speech for the enshrinement ceremonies, but he looks at the task as another opportunity to challenge and inspire others.

"Words are secondary to feelings and I'm still looking for the right words to express my feelings about being inducted into the Hall of Fame," he said.

When done, the speech will be good, because turning opportunities into realities is Williams' specialty.[/quote]



[url="http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080714/SPORTS10/807140372/1001/Sports"]http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs....372/1001/Sports[/url]