And the NFL are really BIG ASSHOLES about it....


http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1879539

Before there was Ricky Williams, there was Shawn King.

"It wasn't so much that I just had to have marijuana," King said. "It was just that I didn't want to be tied down, man."

Tied down by the NFL's rules against smoking pot, that is.

"I'm not gonna say it helped me, but it definitely didn't hurt me," said King, who sometimes lit up on the morning of games. "By the time you warm up, and you're in all those pads, and in all that heat in the pre-game [warm-ups], and you've jumped in the Jacuzzi two or three times, your high is gone. You're just thinking about football or what you're going to do after the game, or whatever. I had some of my best games when I smoked beforehand."

King is a free man now. Free of the expectations of the NFL, from which he retired in 2000 after six seasons with the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts as a promising defensive end. Free of the "pee guy," as he calls him, who 10 times a month showed up to collect his urine -- at the stadium, at his home, even on a cruise ship. Free of the lie he felt compelled to perpetuate, that the pursuit of happiness, for him, ran through the NFL.....