Mike Celizic

Bill Parcells has a lot of problems. That tends to be the case when you’re taking over a football team that’s riding the crest of a 1-15 season. But of the many things the new Dolphins’ grand poobah, Jason Taylor is not one.

Jason Taylor is the best thing the Dolphins have going for them. He’s the 2006 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, a six-time Pro Bowl selection, a fitness freak, a dedicated teammate. He’s also a national phenomenon, one of the last hoofers standing on the primetime reality hit, “Dancing with the Stars.”

Millions of people who wouldn’t know Taylor and the Dolphins from Hootie and the Blowfish have been watching the hunky football player strutting — and also foxtrotting, tangoing, and sambaing — his stuff every week for months now. Each week, they’ve learned a bit more about the Dolphins and football and the NFL. Come fall, a lot of them are going to tune into the team’s games and check their scores and read the stories about them, just to see what that big, handsome galoot is up to in his day job.

You’d think the Tuna would be planting a big wet one on Taylor’s forehead in gratitude for making his moribund football team a subject of national discussion and interest. You’d think Parcells would take into consideration the years of dedication and loyalty Taylor has shown to the franchise over more than a decade of pedal-to-the-metal service and forgive him for missing a week of voluntary team workouts.

This isn’t a rookie or a player returning from injury or an underachieving veteran skipping camp because he just doesn’t want to. This is the pride of a franchise that has damned little of that commodity doing something he’s dreamed about and doing it in the offseason, on his own time. This is a man who’s always been on top of his game and is likely to remain there, because that’s who he is and what he’s about.

None of it seems to matter. Reading the reports out of Miami, you get the idea that to the Tuna, who isn’t snarling to the media these days, Taylor is a self-absorbed sissy boy who’d rather prance around a stage in tight outfits doing the freaking mambo than join his sweaty fellows in the weight room for workouts that are called voluntary only because the labor agreement says that’s what the team has to call them.

Having known Parcells for quite some time, his reaction isn’t surprising. He’s a firm believer in dedication to the team, even if he has to check his employee I.D. to remember which particular team he’s currently working for. And he doesn’t like frivolity, whether in season or out.

It’s a sound philosophy in most cases. The more a team hangs together and works out together during the offseason, the stronger it’s likely to be once the season begins. And the more the members of the team eat, think, talk and sleep football, the better.

Special feature When athletes and celebs get together A look at the many links between sports and Hollywood stars. NBCSports.com

But there are exceptions, and they’re almost invariably for veteran players who have proven that they will also show up on time and in peak condition. Even then, you make the exception for something that means a great deal to that player.

And to Taylor, “Dancing” is more than something to feed his ego. It’s a gateway to the rest of his life.

That’s something we tend to forget — that football is a job and a career but not life itself. Taylor is 34 and wants to retire while he can still walk. And then he wants to pursue his long-term goal of becoming a big-time actor. He told ESPN last week that a decade hence he wants to be known more for his work in Hollywood than for a football career that is borderline Hall of Fame.

“Dancing” is a way to get his foot in the show-biz door, a way to get his name out there, to put his performing chops on trial with millions of people sitting at home in judgment. And the show has done that, putting clips of his act on the morning news shows and the tabloid shows, introducing his profile and his muscles to millions who had never heard his name before.

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