(FORTUNE Magazine) – Former All-Pro Miami Dolphin linebacker Nicholas Buoniconti, 51, who in 1989 quit after four years as president of UST, the tobacco company, is back on the corporate playing field. He has signed on as chief operating officer of Columbia Laboratories, a pharmaceutical startup in Hollywood, Florida, that specializes in women's health care products. The new job is a far cry from attending rodeos and pitching chewing tobacco and snuff. The ex-jock now attends gynecological conventions and discusses such topics as long-lasting spermicide. Says he: ''If the person I'm talking to isn't embarrassed, I'm not either.'' Buoniconti, who retired from pro ball in 1976, will continue as a host of HBO's Inside the NFL, which he's done for 13 years. But his top priority is fund raising for the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, which he co-founded. The group looks for ways to treat spinal injury, something that afflicts his younger son, Marc, 25. He was paralyzed in a 1985 football game at the Citadel. Says Dad of the glimmer of medical hope in research by the Miami foundation: ''I've been in three Super Bowls, but nothing compares to last year's announcement that adult human nerve cells could be regenerated.'' That would mean that quadriplegics like Marc might be able to regain use of their limbs.