"You can be president and rule the world if only 51% of the people like you, so I'm cool with not everybody bein' down with me."

I got no problems sharing my past with you. You ask the right questions and I'll tell you straight-up, point-blank about how I had aunts and uncles addicted to crack. About how as a kid on food stamps, I never could celebrate Christmas or birthdays with gifts, except every once in a while when my uncle would show up with a bike or an Atari. About how that uncle was a drug dealer and my main male role model, but then he went to jail and my Christmas went to jail with him.

I know this looks and sounds bad for the image of the NFL, but I ain't apologizin' for it. Because you know when it looks and sounds good? When I'm talkin' to some bad-ass kids about how they can be better. I ain't tellin' 'em about something I read in no book or saw in no video. They want a baller, not a spokesman, and I can tell 'em I lived this stuff. Best believe, they'll listen when I say what it feels like to come home and see the other uncle who committed suicide in the backyard.

I ain't changin' for nobody. The ad people want to clean up my grammar, my speech, my look, my image, but I got a saying: "It's real easy to be me; it's too hard to be someone else." If I'm shootin' dice, you get me. If I'm in a press conference, you get me. I'm a baller, man, pure and simple. Some companies don't want that, I guess. Maybe that's why I led the league in rushing last year but didn't have a sneaker contract.

Lose the dreads. Lose the gold teeth. That's what I get a lot. Man, I know the hardest guys in the world go before a judge in suit and tie, head shaved, but the NFL shouldn't be like jail. I ain't on trial. Everyone has a different flavor. The league ain't a straight-up square. You can be president and rule the world if only 51% of the people like you, so I'm cool with not everybody bein' down with me.

But best believe I'm doin' it my way, dawg. My way has always worked. My way is what got me here, not those ad people. I don't come from the air-conditioned place where people make marketing campaigns. Nobody can be Michael Jordan again, so we should stop tryin'. He maxed that out. It's okay to be different. Kids love different. If I keep ballin', I know people will accept my kind of different. Eric Dickerson and Walter Payton wore Jheri curls, you know what I'm sayin'?

To read the rest of the story, get the September 4 issue of ESPN The Magazine. To reply to Edgerrin's article, click here.