http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1173397/index.htmNew York Jets fullback Tony Richardson is almost 39 and still playing in the NFL, but that's only part of his incredible story. After 4 years as a starter at Auburn, he wasn't even drafted by an NFL team. 17 years later he is still in the league, but that also is only a small part of the story about the NFL's Best Man.
Edit to add: This is a very long article. Page 4 is the part about all his charity work.
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Richardson has also worked to help himself. The NFL has offered four elite entrepreneurship programs to players—one at Stanford, one at Harvard, one at the Wharton School and one at the Kellogg School of Management—and Richardson has attended them all. He received a bachelor's degree in education and a master's in business while playing in the NFL. The latter, from Webster University, was an especially proud moment because Ben Richardson was there, finally, to see his son receive a diploma. "I don't think I've ever been around a player," his old coach Dick Vermeil said after that, "who worked harder to be a better man."
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The Jets, like the Vikings and Chiefs before, try not to bother Football's Best Man with every charity request they get. This is why: He will never say no. He might say he has a conflict (probably another charity event). But no? Never. It's hard to imagine that any NFL player has made more charity appearances than Richardson. The number is well over 1,000; the people he has worked with figure it's probably more than 1,500. In Kansas City, when he was younger, he would always make more than 100 a year. He has cut back, but only because people have tried to protect him by asking him less.
Richardson, through the Dictionary Project, has raised enough money to deliver more than 130,000 dictionaries to more than 1,500 schools. (He himself has donated more than $1 million to the cause.) He has been heavily involved in Punt, Pass & Kick for the Special Olympics. But those are his programs; what makes him different is that he is there for everyone else's. "If something is important to my teammate, then it has to be important to me," Richardson says, and that's that.
The Richardson stories are legendary: The day after he played in the 2005 Pro Bowl, he flew from Hawaii to Sri Lanka to distribute food to tsunami victims. One year, when Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez was holding his annual Christmas shopping program for kids, Richardson flew across the country (from another charity event) to be there before it ended. "I'm sorry I'm late," he told the kids when he arrived.
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