With the Pro Bowl set to honor him this weekend, Bengals linebacker Reggie Williams culminates an exhaustive career of community service with the NFL's Man of the Year award. Other honors are headed his way in the next year when he'll be named one of Sports Illustrated's Sports Persons of the Year and feted at a White House dinner with President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan. He'll also be appointed a Cincinnati City Councilman. But now Williams, heading into his 12th season as the franchise's most productive linebacker in history, savors the coveted league-wide honor after finishing second in the balloting two years ago and joins quarterback Ken Anderson as Bengals that have won it.
"Being selected Man of the Year in the National Football League is a great honor and I am deeply appreciative," Williams says. "The greater the honor, the broader the platform for community service. This should help our efforts to improve the lifestyle of a wider spectrum of society." Williams has already used proceeds from other awards to help establish the Reggie Williams Scholarship Fund, which annually selects students from Cincinnati's nine public high schools to help fund post-graduate education. Williams, who wins a scholarship to Dartmouth while growing up in Flint, Mich., also has done work for the National Association of Speech and Hearing, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, United Way, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, Teen Challenge, and Athletes in Action.
