Bengals Cornerback Adam Jones To Participate In Panel Discussions At NFL Rookie Symposium

Every year the NFL holds a rookie symposium with all drafted players, an orientation of sorts with former and active players, combined with league personnel and trained professionals enlightening rookies on how to conduct themselves in the NFL. From the NFL Player Engagement site:

The program provides an orientation to life in the NFL including social responsibility, professional development, community engagement, league policies, workplace conduct, and media relations. In addition, it offers educational life-skills workshops on topics ranging from substance abuse, sex education, domestic violence, DUI, gambling, personal finance, associations, and family issues. These sessions help young players to recognize the off-the-field challenges that life as a professional football player may bring while also teaching them how to handle these challenges successfully.

The symposium will be held this year in Aurora, Ohio from June 24-30. Bengals cornerback Adam Jones is one of the active player that will speak with the league's rookies (we're assuming that Goodell has already strapped Justin Blackmon to a front row seat). From Geoff Hobson with Bengals.com:

Jones said he'll participate in a panel discussion every day of the event, June 25-28, and is already preparing what he'll say.

"The message is, this is not a joke. At the end of the day you have to treat it like a business," he said. "And you're a business owner and every decision you make is a reflection of you."

We assume that Jones' participation will be met with ridicule from most NFL observers and fans. However Jones has also faced some of the more extreme discipline from the league for his actions over the past five years. We're not sure if the players will really take what Jones has to say to heart, but we suppose he does have some experience on the issue of player discipline and the ideals of (lack of) professionalism.

Anyway. We had figured last year that they'd just have Herm Edwards run the entire event every year by himself.