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Title: “Dreadlocks to Ditka--Ricky Williams.”

Author: Steve Richardson. Price: $14.95.

Publisher: Sports Publishing Inc.

It has come to this? Biographies of 22-year-olds?

You’d best pass on this one. You could just as well use a microfilm reader, reading Texas Longhorn game stories from the Dallas Morning News from the last several football seasons.

Because once you’ve skimmed through the tedium of one game account after another in this book, clear through Williams’ Heisman season last year, there isn’t much. And of course, Williams has nothing to say.

There is one nugget, though, from a chapter describing how Texas recruited Williams from San Diego’s Patrick Henry High. Allen Wallace, editor and publisher of Super Prep Magazine, wonders if John Robinson’s fate might have been changed had Williams gone to USC.

“USC was trying to establish itself, and it was a blow to a lot of fans when he [Williams] chose Texas,” Wallace says.

“But in some ways it was a wake-up call. John Robinson . . . was known as a running backs coach and he couldn’t establish the running game. They are still trying to. Who knows, if Ricky had said yes, life might have been different for Robinson.”

Then there’s the conversation Williams had with old San Diego friend and ex-USC lineman Darrell Russell in 1997, when Williams was seeking advice on whether to remain at Texas for his senior season. Russell had left for the NFL after his junior season.

Russell told him: “You have all that money, but it’s real lonely.”