As news continues to emerge surrounding the Miami Dolphins, their pro-bowl athlete Richie Incognito and second year player Jonathan Martin, those who surround sports play a game of jumping back and forth to decide whose side they’re on. Last week, without any details or context, Martin was demonized as a weak athlete who didn’t appreciate the lottery ticket he was given, and now this week with a bit of context to the situation, the perception is quickly becoming that Martin was a victim to the torturous actions of a teammate and an organization that displayed absolutely no control over the culture of their team and work environment.
There are several points that should be emphasized from the get-go here to provide some of that context.
- Richie Incognito, voted as one of the dirtiest players in the NFL, was elected by his team as a member of the six-man Leadership Council of the Miami Dolphins. He was elevated to a leadership status by his peers.
- The Miami Dolphins released three press releases on the day they indefinitely suspended Incognito. The first one was a staunch defense of their pro-bowler, the second one indicating they were taking the allegations seriously and the third one, after hearing a voice mail message that Incognito left for Martin last season, that they were suspending Incognito.
- It’s been reported that Jonathan Martin, after leaving the cafeteria and before leaving the team, went to management and reported what was happening. It appears this fell upon deaf ears, also supported by the subsequent press releases issued by the team.
- Jonathan Martin went to Stanford University, comes from a family that for generations went to Harvard University and largely had a reputation of needing to be toughened up and was given a nickname by his teammates as “Big Weirdo.”
TMZ has recently released a video of Richie Incognito at a pool hall in Fort Lauderdale walking around with his shirt off, hurling a racial slur as his teammate Mike Pouncey, presumably arrived at the pool hall. Richie Incognito, a white athlete, out in public surrounded by African-American teammates, seems to be quite comfortable using racial epitaphs. It speaks to a culture and a position of dominance that Incognito has and was leveraging over his teammates.
In continuing to paint this culture that Dolphins teammates had to operate within, the treatment of rookies is problematic, to say the least. In a league of n0n-guaranteed contracts and with rookie minimums set at $400,000, there are reports from the Miami Herald of figures in the excess of six figures of what rookies were being forced to pay for meals, trips and gifts for their veteran teammates. When speaking of actual take home income, the six figure amounts being reported account for more than half of the player’s salary for the season.
Now any team in any professional sporting environment has some sort of rookie ritual. It would be common place for a team dinner while on a road trip to have the rookies cover the bill. Most teams often divide up the bill amongst the teammates with those making more money covering a larger percentage. Attempts are made to make the ritual as fair as possible for all involved.
Incognito on ESPN Radio in Miami just last season was interviewed by Dan Le Batard and when asked about any gifts that then rookie quarterback, Ryan Tannehill, had purchased for his offensive line, Incognito had said that he was going out to buy new jet-skis for the starting offensive linemen. Le Batard seemed taken aback by this statement and echoed that often the rookies themselves determine the gift and purchase it for the teammates as a gesture of good will. Incognito, undeterred, basically said the money is being spent and they were going to get what they want.
Now as an isolated incident, onlookers can offer the benefit of the doubt and see some level of reason here and possibly try to justify. However, in hindsight and as more information begins to trickle out as to what this work environment is and was like, it becomes apparent that this is more than an issue with this year’s team.
The NFL has a culture of preying on the weak, preying on the young and trying to toughen up rookies on this naive, alpha male bravado of what a football player should act like.
Accounts are out there like Tyron Smith, from the Dallas Cowboys, who has his parents showing up at their practice facilities demanding money from their son. These athletes who overcome so much and finally reach the top of the mountain in their professional career, only to be surrounded by leaches who try to suck as much from them as they can. In the case of Jonathan Martin, those leaches were his teammates and the people in roles to do something about it, seemed to have turned a blind eye.
In the off-season his teammates were going on a trip to Las Vegas, a trip that Martin did not wish to attend. He was still forced to pay $15,000 for the trip and his teammates, despite the fact that he was not attending himself.
Last week when the story broke of Martin leaving the team and nobody knowing where he was, it quickly became a story of an immature, soft, weak athlete who couldn’t cut it. A lunch room prank where nobody wanted to sit with him resulted in him essentially quitting. The judgment was quick and swift, the sympathy was fleeting and the empathy was non-existent. An athlete who went to Stanford University, who was in his second year in the NFL, decided that walking away was the ideal option. An option he had to know would open him to intense, unapologetic rage from the Dolphins and football fandom. Yet it was still the option he chose. It was what he still decided that this is what was best for him.
As we examine the actions of Richie Incognito and we see how comfortable he was in the decisions he was making, it paints a clear picture that he was merely acting within the culture of the workplace. The taunts that were hurled towards Jonathan Martin were not merely behind closed doors away from the eyes and ears of the many. It was done in the open, it was done on national radio, it was done on Twitter, for everyone to see and hear.
And yet nobody saw it, or heard it.
In the recorded voicemail that has been leaked from Incognito to Martin, a few noteworthy snippets:
- Incognito threatened to harm Martin physically and also threatened to slap his mother
- Incognito threatened to defacate in the mouth of Martin
- Incognito used racial slurs towards his African-American teammate
With full knowledge that what he was saying was being recorded, he still comfortably said it.
While the NFL is struggling to keep their workforce out of the ICU and on the playing field, while head injuries dominate the narrative of the sport, a culture of preying on athletes emotionally, physically and psychologically seems to be happening before our eyes and ears. This is not a job of the fans to police, it is up to the coordinators, coaches, general managers, team presidents, owners, etc., of each of these teams to address the culture of each team and ensure that their players are being looked after.
While these players are being paid amounts of money that the average person can never anticipate seeing on a weekly pay cheque, the athletes know they are only ever one injury or one bad season away from that income being removed. They are not playing with guaranteed contracts. It would be nice to think that for the short amount of time they are making this money, it wasn’t their teammates that were siphoning it away from them.
Richie Incognito, much like the New Orleans Saints became the face of the Bounty Gate Scandal, will become the face of this in the NFL. Something that each team and many of their players will quietly acknowledge is an ongoing problem within their locker rooms. But why does it always have to take someone breaking before something can be done? Why is it that a player has to quit a team, enter into a rehabilitation facility to try to repair the harm that’s been done, become a nation punch-line for a week, all before the people closest to the problem can hear or see what’s happening?
Fans care about winning. Are we being naive to expect that teams should care about more?
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