You recall those effective fundraising commercials for the United Negro College Fund, I trust, and the not-so-subtle message that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

	Phillips

There is, to be sure, a physical corollary. While brawn isn't nearly as significant as brain power, and muscle will always rate well below gray matter in humankind's big picture, to consciously fritter away God-given physical prowess is no less an affront than permitting a brain to atrophy through wanton idleness.

And when it comes to frivolously squandering talent, we were all reminded this weekend, there are few athletes who can compare with that misguided soul Lawrence Phillips.

The real-life caricature for all those NFL scouts who ever suggested that you can measure a player's height and weight and 40 time, but not his heart, Phillips walked out on another opportunity to salvage a career that has become the equivalent of a toxic waste dump. In case you missed it, Phillips quit the Montreal Alouettes, charging the management of the CFL franchise had somehow misrepresented its intentions for him.

Better the former NFL first-round draft choice had cited the Canadian government for its reluctance to enact stiffer border guidelines -- rather than the Alouettes organization and a plan to use him this week on kickoff returns -- as a convenient excuse for bolting back to his Miami home. Had he publicly announced he feared terrorists were still pouring across the border and into America unfettered, he might at least have attracted some splinter group to commiserate with him, to view him as an estimable whistle-blower.

But instead, the erstwhile running back took the easy, and familiar, way out. He ranted about how he is better than the other three tailbacks on the Alouettes roster, about how all-time CFL star Mike Pringle "isn't of my caliber," about how coach Don Matthews was screwing with his master plan for a comeback.

And then, having decided he wanted no part of actually proving any of this on the field, Phillips once again cemented his reputation as a quitter by, well, quitting.

This time, we're betting, football has quit on Phillips as well.

Having run through an alphabet's soup of leagues -- the NFL, NFLEL, AFL, CFL and probably a few others we have missed -- it is probably time to proclaim his dead-end career DOA. Maybe there is some well-intentioned social worker out there moonlighting as a football general manager, the breathing embodiment of the reality there is indeed a sucker born every minute, who will be too tempted by Phillips to ignore him.

But we doubt it.

With his latest chickenfeathers chicken-out, Phillips has seemingly detonated bridges at every level of the game, blown to smithereens all routes back to the big-time. If in this era of the remake, some Hollywood producer decides to cinematically revisit the events of the River Kwai, then he need look no further than Lawrence Phillips as his star.

Commence the casting call, we recommend, in the football gutters.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course, with Phillips a wash-out at 27, an age when he should have been an annual Pro Bowl selection. As a kid, victimized by an upbringing that shouldn't be wished on any youngster, Phillips managed to beat the odds. He was a gridiron phenomenon and, although a social cripple, his prowess earned him entry to the University of Nebraska, via a football scholarship.

It was in college where he dragged his former girlfriend down three flights of stairs, then smashed her head into a mailbox. And it was at Nebraska where then-coach Tom Osborne suspended him, then welcomed him back to the team, beginning that dangerous cycle of misplaced tolerance and blindness to culpability that evolved into Phillips' biggest crutch.

Rams coach Dick Vermeil wept openly the day he finally released Phillips, who logged more arrests than accrued seasons during his brief tenure in St. Louis, but then again the NFL's version of Father Flanagan can cry on demand. Three times Phillips has been cut by NFL teams, twice for insubordination, and his only hint of success came while playing in the NFL Europe League, where his talents pegged him as overqualified.

But every time Phillips whiffed on an opportunity, some coach or general manager gave him another chance, and soon learned the folly of their ways. Off the field, Phillips is the recidivist who simply can't make good. That fatal flaw, not surprisingly, has rendered his on-field talents useless.

The always-able and ever-witty Rams public relations director, Rick Smith, liked to refer to Phillips as "Larry" during the player's stint in St. Louis. It was Smith being Smith, a tad irreverent, a lot unimpressed with Lawrence on a whole. It was as if Smith suggested there was an alter-ego that invaded Phillips' being, the evil twin whose persona overcame whatever good remained, the Mr. Hyde who knocked the runner's brilliance into hiding.

Turns out, though, that Larry Phillips and Lawrence Phillips were one and the same. And whatever that turns out to be for the future, well, it won't include a football career. Every mercenary reaches the point in his career where he's not worth paying a plug nickel since his skills have eroded. In the case of Phillips, the ultimate solider of misfortune, most of the wounds were self-inflicted. The $43,000 base salary for which he signed to play with the Montreal Alouettes might be the biggest windfall he sees in a while.

Of course, this is a man who must reside in a house without mirrors, who is capable of always locating someone else to blame for his plight. Speaking characteristically out of both sides of his mouth this week, Phillips first noted he never wanted anything handed to him by Alouettes management, then ripped the head coach and general manager for not immediately elevating him to the top of the depth chart.

Maybe there's poetic justice in the fact Phillips quit again on the same day Mike Tyson, another flawed bully who crashed and burned his talents, took it on the chin again. For at least a brief snippet of time, Tyson showed a little remorse. It is a commodity that Phillips, who is pitiful but not to be pitied, never has demonstrated during his football career.

Given his delusion, it shouldn't be surprising to know that Phillips still wants to play, is out there seeking whatever easy mark he can find to sign him to a contract.

"I'll play anywhere, but I just want to play without all the crap," Phillips said.

Sorry, Larry, but you long ago made that impossible.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.