Delvin Williams was an All-State football player in high school, got a football scholarship to the University of Kansas, made All-American, was All-Pro running back for the Miami Dolphins and a star of the San Francisco 49ers, It was every little boy’s dream come true.

But Delvin found a dark side to the dream. “Overnight, some athletes literally go from scholarship to millionaire,” Delvin explains. “There was no guidance, nobody to tell a kid how he was supposed to handle all that.” He saw how other players handled fame and he did what they did, got into partying with a vengeance and a heavy involvement with drugs and alcohol.

Williams got himself straightened out eventually, but he worried about young players coming on the scene as he had, with all the wrong role models. So when he left football, instead of using his fame to land a cushy job, he teamed up with fellow former 49er Larry Schreiber to form National Sports Career Management, a non-profit group (also non-paying—Williams didn’t draw a salary) assisting young athletes in coping with the pressures of a successful athletic career. NSCM helped them handle their income, teaching financial planning and helping them get ready for the transition from athletics to other careers (it’s important to know there’s life after football). They started a summer camp for kids who seemed headed into pro athletics and pushed the kids to hit the books so they’d have some balance in their lives and a good chance at post-athletics careers. And they spent a lot of time on drug abuse prevention, helping those who’d been caught up, educating those not yet involved.

Today, the emphasis is all on young people. NSCM has become Pros for Kids and Williams is speaking in schools, to state agencies, at workshops, wherever he can get his message across. “The important thing in working in prevention,” he says, “is that the results aren’t always immediate. You have to plant seeds and then water and nurture those seeds.” He knows that when he works with a hundred kids, he might help only three or four, and even with them he may not see immediate results. But he says that if you reach even one, it’s worth it.

Update:

In 2009 Williams was inducted into the African American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame. He organized a consortium of community, private and public sector organizations to create an employment clearinghouse called Jobs for Youth. Williams has also served on the boards of several organizations in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Alameda counties. He founded the Athletes Reengagement Alliance, and is completing a book about his experience.

Keep up with his work at http://athletesreengagement.org/