Another tumor for football
The mindset of football players, at all levels of the game, endlessly perplexes me. I would be curious to see how different the reaction would have been to this Miami Dolphins bullying story, among football insiders, if the perpetrator, Richie Incognito (left, above), had not been recorded bringing the racial element into it in a league whose roster of players is 80% African-American. If it was simply a case of rookie “hazing,” only incidents like the one in which Jonathan Martin’s offensive line mates, led by Incognito, got up as one from a lunch table when Martin sat down (classic move), I believe we’d be hearing a more full-throated defense of the veteran Incognito, as his actions supposedly represent generation after generation of "behind-closed-doors" team initiations.
Even as it stands, we’re hearing many coaches and players opine that Martin’s best course of action, rather than going public with the details and leaving the team, would have been to simply punch Incognito in the mouth, as if that behavior would have ever been tolerated by a head coach that chose Incognito specifically to serve on the team’s “leadership council.” The entire idea behind hazing, as I've always understood it, is for the lesser-tenured member of the group to be forced to tolerate whatever anti-social bullshit (up to and including racial bigotry, evidently) gets thrown in his face.
Incognito, who supposedly has a sign over his locker that reads "Richie Incognito hates two things-- paying taxes and rookies," got himself busted this time because he called Martin a “half-nigger” on a voicemail message that went public, but it wasn't because of anything else he did, I promise you that. The slurs upon sexual orientation fly just fine with most current and former footballers. The theft (basically) or extortion of $15,000 from Martin for a trip by the offensive line to Las Vegas-- minus Martin-- might also be defended by most in the fraternity.
Incognito will now be punished for the type of miscreant behavior he was rewarded for up until and including last week. By consensus league accounting, Incognito “went too far,” but the dirty little secret in this is that it's Martin that will still have the tougher time finding a job in the NFL after this incident. Despite its best efforts at public relations, the existing culture of the league in regards to concepts beyond its limited sphere like “being a man,” "acting like a man,” and keeping all of the dirty business of the sport “in-house,” is still ass-backwards. If football is now the “national sport” of the United States, consider the tag to be a damning indictment of one institution or the other, or both.
posted by CM @ 9:23 PM
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