Soon-to-be former Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Richie Incognito, a veteran with a long rap sheet, hazed Jonathan Martin, a second-year pro from Stanford, repeatedly since he joined the team. Martin comes from a rich family and is African-American. Incognito is white, and the n-word is involved in the story.
Class, race, bullying and the culture of football; the Incognito-Martin saga hits too many hot topics to cover in one column (and many have written up their opinions on each), but the most personally disappointing side of Incognito's senseless bullying and hazing of Martin is what it says about the state of our football culture.
Football, at its core, is the ultimate team game. Eleven men must execute their assignments perfectly for a successful play-it's based on a reliance on your teammates and out of that reliance comes a sense of respect. Execution is how you win games, and if one teammate is struggling to execute, shaming them is no way to change their behavior on the field.
Every football team develops its own culture based on the team's leadership. It has been reported the Dolphins front office and coaching staff, requested Incognito try to toughen Martin up. This happens all the time. Hopefully, what doesn't happen all the time is that the toughening up reaches the level of abuse and barbarism to which Incognito took things.
And if it does, that's an indictment on the culture of the game of football, which cannot sustain too many hits to it's culture given the current fear surrounding the long-term effects of concussions.
Sports take their cues from the professionals. Coaches at all levels steal not only the professionals' on-field strategies, but also their team-building, culture-creating strategies. Those cues must move away from barbarism, and instead focus on the type of men football can produce. Men who care about the guy next to them in whatever context, know the importance of hard work, and live their lives with integrity. Football cannot survive if team-sponsored, player-accepted bullying is seen as the norm, but it can if there's an emphasis on what football can do for our society.
None of the pundits who have weighed in on this topic can truly understand what the dynamic was between Incognito and Martin, or what the exact dynamic in the Dolphins locker room is. But the best assumption when you look at what's been made public is that Martin was trying to fit in to the meathead norm culture of NFL offensive linemen despite the fact that he's a Stanford graduate with two successful lawyers for parents. At some point, the shameful bullying culture got to Martin's head, and he couldn't take it anymore.
It's easy to say: "this is just the NFL's culture." These guys are warriors. Get tough or get out.
Easy, but also idiotically barbaric and a slap in the face to what football should truly be about-football is about a brotherhood. Tearing down a brother in attempt to build him up is a faulty strategy and often the results are the complete reverse of what the bully is going for. Don't believe me? Look at the numbers.
The Miami Dolphins' offensive line, which clearly embraced a meathead, faux-macho, bully accepting culture, is the worst in the NFL. They've given up the most sacks (37), and they're near the bottom in total rushing yards (25th in the league).
There are many ways to run a football team. Tony Dungy emphasizes love and respect. Pete Carroll emphasizes having a fun environment, which also harbors respect between players and coaches. The old-school style is also still quite prevalent in pro-football, and teams have great success when their head coaches are screamers.
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It's not my favorite style, but it's a viable one because it causes players to band together and work hard to shut the crazy coach up, or make him happy. But when that screamer style trickles down to player on player action, it can paralyze a team.
The bullying culture is not essential to winning football games. In fact, it distracts from that goal. Accepting such a culture is the antithesis of a winning culture. And learning to win the right way should be the goal of every football coach and player from pee-wee to the NFL.
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