Pacman Jones will speak to NFL rookies at symposium despite recent arrest

Adam 'Pacman' Jones will speak at the NFL Rookie Symposium despite a recent arrest. (Photo by Tyler Barrick/Getty Images)

Adam "Pacman" Jones will speak at the NFL's Rookie Symposium later this month, despite a recent arrest for assault.

NFL Vice President of Player Engagement Troy Vincent told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Sunday that Jones remains on the list of scheduled speakers, mostly because Jones's talk last year about the realistic challenges many rookies face resonated with the crowd.

“You are not going to trick an athlete. They know when it is dressed up and not real,” Vincent told the paper. “When you can sit among your peers and just talk about your life, someone is learning from that. They can look at him and see themselves from the way they look to where they have originated.”

The rookie symposium is scheduled to take place from June 23-29 in Aurora, Ohio.

Jones has pleaded not guilty to an assault charge after police said he hit a 34-year-old woman at a downtown Cincinnati nightclub in early June. A police report lists the injury as a minor one. Jones's agent, Peter Schaffer, told The Cincinnati Enquirer Jones was defending himself.

The incident is far from his first brush with the law. In January 2012, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct.

He also pleaded no contest to an equivalent of no contest to misdemeanor conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct in an incident in which a Las Vegas strip club manager was paralyzed from the waist down and a bouncer was wounded. Jones was ordered to pay $11 million in damages to two of the club's employees injured in 2007 when a gunman claiming he was doing Jones's bidding opened fire outside the club after Jones and his entourage were kicked out.