Miami Dolphins V.P. of football operations Bill Parcells famously declared not long after getting the job that he doesn’t want any “thugs or hoodlums” on the team.

But, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel points out, Parcells’ team has recently signed a guy who pleaded guilty to criminal charges while in college.  Twice.

Specifically, one of the team’s undrafted free agents is Selwyn Lymon, a Purdue receiver who was arrested as part of the incident that resulted in charges being filed against linebacker Stanford Keglar, a draft pick of the Tennessee Titans.  In connection with that incident, Lymon emerged with a stab wound in his chest.  He later entered guilty pleas on charges of disorderly conduct, false informing, and minor consumption of alcohol. 

Then, in November 2007, Lymon was kicked off the team after being arrested for drunk driving.  He later pleaded guilty to that charge, too.

“It’s all on an individual basis,” G.M. Jeff Ireland said last month in connection with the decision to sign receiver David Kircus, who beat the beans out of some guy last year, supposedly in self-defense.  ”Sometimes those second chances are important because now the kid has something to play for.  It is kind of his last chance.”

But Lymon already had his second chance.  He wasn’t kicked off the Boilermakers’ team after hitting the misdemeanor trifecta.  He was booted only after he thereafter drank a few Boilermakers (or some other beverage) and drove his car.

The problem here, as we see it, is that too many NFL teams are willing to bring to the communities in which they play their home games guys who have shown that they can’t comply with the rules of society, and then hope that they’ll change because their careers are now riding on it.  But some of them can’t or won’t change.  And so they eventually get in trouble again, and are cut.  (Unless they’re really good players.)

Thus, it’s only a matter of time before Lymon or Koren Robinson or Jared Allen or someone else with a history of drinking and driving kills someone whose only crime was choosing to live his or her life in or around a city that hosts a pro football team.