Mario Lemieux's premature retirment was fueled by injury trouble and frustration with the NHL game.

Michael Jordan initially retired at the age of 30. Having just come off a trifecta of championship victories with the Chicago Bulls Jordan decided to give baseball a shot and with that he signed a minor league deal with the Chicago White Sox. The baseball experiment proved to be a Bennifer act of poor judgment and 'His Airness' returned to the hard court a year and a half later. This was just the beginning of Jordan's strange fascination with retirement as he ended up retiring on two more occasions. Still his first retirement came as a big shock because he was so dominant at the time. Despite leading the league in scoring and netting 50 goals in the 96-97 season Mario Lemieux walked away from the game at the age of 31, which is typically the time in a hockey player's career where they are at their best. The chronic back problems, the toll of battling cancer and frustration with the deteriorating product of the NHL provided Lemieux with enough reasons to walk away from the game. He returned three and a half years later with a renewed love of the game and quickly regained his dominating touch garnering 76 points in 43 games. Injuries have once again caught up to the Magnificent One but his pure joy for the game remains even if it's stifled by the NHL's defensive era. Barry Sanders is another example of a star that retired in his prime although unlike Lemieux and Jordan, Sanders never returned to the gridiron, citing unhappiness with the direction the Detroit Lions' management were taking. He opted to end his career and despite constant rumours surrounding his eminent return Sanders chose to forego any chance of grabbing the all-time rushing yardage title away from Emmitt Smith. Rather than yardage Sanders opted for mileage away from the game.

While other sports have had their share of noteworthy retirements nothing compares to boxing. The sport has single handily redefined the dictionary meaning:

Retire: To give up one's job until a big PPV fight is attained.
Retiring: Threat used to enter into negotiations for a big PPV fight.

Boxers like Larry Holmes, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran have proven with their countless comebacks that boxing has no real retirement. So long as there's an opponent a boxer is always game. Heck, George Foreman won the heavyweight title at age 46 but that's a rare exception. Boxing on the whole is not a sport that masks age well, the mandatory weigh-in is always a great way to gauge how desperate the older fighter is for money; the larger the waistline, the greater the debt. Fighting well past your prime is the equivalent of wearing an old university jacket (the ones complete with major and graduation year) into your 30's. People look twice at you and all say the same thing, "It's so sad to see a guy trying to cling to his youth".

Like boxing, golf has no true retirement. After all, golf is the game people play when they retire from their jobs. They even created another tour just to house a place of competition for all those players over 50. Bowling has also created a tour to prolong and cherish the athletic achievements of bowlers. (And yes, just in case you didn't guess, that is sarcasm) Is a senior tour even needed in bowling? Does the athleticism or lack there of a bowler diminish that greatly? To paraphrase Jim Rome: something that you can drink beer and eat Nachos while playing automatically disqualifies it from being called a sport.

	It appears that Ricky wants to distance himself from everything associated with football including his trademark hair.

Getting back to Ricky Williams, his retirement is full of questions including his motivation for wanting to leave the game. There are two pieces of insight that perhaps explain the thought process of the enigmatic running back. First, Williams has an openly admitted fondness for marijuana, a banned drug by the NFL. Days prior to his retirement Williams tested positive for marijuana, his third such positive test which carries with it an automatic 4-game suspension. Williams had an interesting response when asked by the Miami Herald about the failed drug test, "I didn't quit football because I failed a drug test. I failed a drug test because I was ready to quit football." Perhaps the greatest insight into Ricky's retirement comes from a 2002 case study written about Ricky's affliction with social anxiety disorder and the prescription drugs he took to quell the problem. Social anxiety disorder is the fear of social situations and the interaction with other people that can automatically bring on feelings of self-consciousness, judgment, evaluation, and inferiority. Think back to when Williams was part of the Saints and how he often conducted an interview with a helmet on; that was a direct reaction to social anxiety disorder. Here is a sampling of Ricky's responses from the case study:

On Social Anxiety Disorder: When you're a public figure, people really do recognize you, people really are going to talk to you and look at you….And it's kind of funny how before, I would play football and I would almost be afraid of success because it would mean more attention.

On going to Miami: I think the fact that Miami is a bigger city and everyone in Miami isn't a Dolphins fan and I mean, really sports fans, it helps me too that everywhere I go people don't recognize me and it's a not a situation where no matter where I go or what I do I have to talk to people about football or my personal life.

On whether he ever contemplated quitting football: I was supposed to go back to New Orleans the middle of March to start working out with my team and everyone on the team was there except for me, so my coach called me and said we want you back here. While I was talking to him I almost told him I didn't want to play football anymore. We were talking and I realized in the conversation that having to go back to New Orleans and deal with those situations wasn't worth however much money I was getting paid. I'd rather just go back to school, finish school and just become a teacher. Kids are OK, they're not too judgmental so I can deal with them.

So maybe we shouldn't have been so surprised at Ricky's premature retirement because in 2002 the answers and motivation for wanting to leave football were all there.