This article isn’t very clear. From what I can glean, Richie Incognito’s teammates wanted him to pony up fifteen large for a Vegas trip he never went on. Some infighting occurred amongst he and his team, and Incognito said some less-than-nice stuff in voicemails. Doesn’t indefinite suspension seem kind of harsh?
What am I missing?
It isn’t Incognito who was asked to pony up $15000, it was Jonathan Martin, who was then subject to the abuse from Incognito.
No. Richie Incognito was the guy who wanted Jonathon Martin to pony up $15000 for a trip to Vegas that Martin wasn’t going to attend. There’s a certain amount of hazing, etc. that veterans do to young players (such as buying breakfasts or dinners), but it seems to me that giving a vet $15,000 to go to Vegas without you seems more like extortion than hazing.
I think using the N word and threatening to kill a family member is a bit more than just “less than nice”.
Richie Incognito is a complete and utter douche. He’s a cheap shot player, a bully, and a complete and utter asswipe. I’m kinda hoping for a fast moving bus rather than an indefinite suspension is what he gets hit with.
My understanding is Martin paid $15K for a trip he didn’t attend, fearing further reprisals from Incognito who’d been bullying him for some time.
Here’s one of the voicemail messages Incognito left Martin. Warning for the easily offended, it’s a tad harsh…
“Hey, wassup, you half n----- piece of s—. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. [I want to] s— in your f—ing mouth. [I’m going to] slap your f—ing mouth.” “[I’m going to] slap your real mother across the face [laughter].” “F— you, you’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.”
Incognito has long been known as a dirty player and an enormous jerk. This could be a career ender.
I’ve asked a couple of friends that played in the NFL. Their opinion; they say this is “rare”, fueled by alcohol and steroid abuse in someone with insecurity and maturity issues.
Wow, thank you. Good riddance.
Yeah. You don’t have to have played in the league to know that the guy who takes hazing JUST a bit too seriously has some serious inferiority/insecurity/maturity issues. It applies to sports teams, fraternities, the workplace, etc.
Incognito has a long history of this kind of crap- he’s been booted from two college teams, which tells you a lot.
Sadly, a lot of players inside and outside the Miami locker room are siding with Incognito, partly because Jonathan Martin has a reputation (fairly or unfairly) for being “soft.” There’s a widespread perception that you’re supposed to man up and either endure abuse or fight back. Martin is likely to be regarded as a whiner and tattletale in many quarters.
Why would players side with Incognito on this? Look what happened to Riley Cooper when he said racial slurs outside of a team event.
When I read about the threats and extortion, I’m not thinking “Martin should fight back”, but “the police should be involved”. Come to think of it, why aren’t they involved? Is this really something for the Dolphins to handle internally?
According to reports, Miami’s veterans were making some pretty serious financial demands of the rookie players. I’m sure a little of this kind of thing is expected, but it sounds like things in this locker room were totally out of control.
Yup- this is a guy who was widely known to be a shitbag.
They’re not siding with Incognito as such. They’re against Martin and against letting the public know about this kind of bullying. You know how some people are: anyone who bucks the system or doesn’t go along with the existing culture, no matter how unpleasant that culture is, is a tattletale, a whiner, a wuss. You can find that kind of thing among some jocks but also in all kinds of other screwed up subcultures like, say, university marching bands.
So was there one time at band camp?
It warms my heart that Dolphins have taken action on this. PTI guys said this means Incognito will never play for the Dolphins again.
What was Martin supposed to do? Give this guy the ass-whuppin he deserves? Well, no. 1) That ain’t way we are supposed to deal with problems in the workplace. 2) This guy is a roided-up violent freak thug. 3) If he DID give him the ass-whuppin he deserved, then he could arrrested for battery and then sued.
Seriously, they should announce that he has been released and that this ain’t the kind of guy they want in their organization. I would like to see them take it a step further and tell him ‘Beat it, dirtbag. Clean out your locker and get the fuck out of our facility. SECURITY!! Help him find his locker!’
Even under “normal” hazing, it’s rookies. Martin isn’t a rookie anymore. He endured the first year probably assuming he’d be accepted as one of the tribe when it was over, but Incognito kept being, well, himself.
It seems one’s opinion on manlinesss is coloring opinions on Martin, which is too bad. It’s also too bad that the asshole in the story is Incognito. People can spin it as an isolated problem with one of the most dipicable people in the country, and not a sytemic problem.
Yes. FTA:
Probably would have continued right along if they hadn’t killed him.
NFL caliber offensive linemen are worth almost as much as a quarterback. Incognito is pretty damn good. And this is the third NFL team he’s been kicked off of just for being an asshole. That should tell you how big an asshole he is.
As someone who got the full effect of Incognito while he was in St. Louis (38 penalties in 44 games, including a team record for unsportsmanlike conduct calls; voted “dirtiest player in the NFL”; taunted the fans when they booed him) I vote for Miami freezing him on the roster so he can’t luck into a mid-season signing with an injury-riddled team desperate for help. I’ll go along with banning him from the locker room, though.
Ummm…check my location. You think I hadn’t heard about that?
It was a joke son. Maybe in bad taste, but still a joke.
From what I’ve been hearing today, teammates are coming out and supporting Incognito, and not Martin.
I think Incognito would be welcome back before Martin, as unbelievable as that sounds, because Martin is being looked at as a snitch, not someone who has been bullied. Black players are sticking up for Incognito, so i think we have to try to understand the dropping of the “N” word as part of the acceptable locker room vocabulary, especially for someone like Incognito, who apparently has said this to other black teammates with no ill effects. That word doesn’t fly in everyday circles, but the locker room isn’t an everyday workplace. They have different rules. And in this case, it would seem, that Incognito, and not Martin is being looked at as playing within the rules, even if we think those rules are insane.
I don’t know. When I first heard this story, I saw Incognito as an asshole who deserves to get punted from the league. But the more I hear, especially from ex-players, the hazing was something most went through. If Martin was feeling a bit more hazed than most, well, he IS a second year player, so his rookie hazing should be over. So I don’t know what’s going on there. And making him pay $15,000 for a trip is a joke, unless other people were asked to and ponied up the $15k without comment and complaint, in which case, i’m not sure if we can chew Incognito up and spit him out for this. This is more of a cultural issue… An NFL and Dolphin issue, not a black/white issue. In fact, i don’t think race enters in this at all based on what I’ve heard. Mike Wallace even stuck up for Incognito.
Seems like hazing is just part of NFL life, and everyone has had to pick up a tab for an expensive meal or whatever. But there are different degrees of hazing and being an asshole. i heard one example where the rookies were forced to pay a $55k tab at a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and it was so high beause guys were getting meals to go, and buying bottles of wine to take home. That’s not right, to me anyway. If as a rookie I have to buy you a dinner, fine. But you don’t get to fill up a bag to feed your family or yourself for a week, including take out wine. No, no… Eat what you want, but I only pay for what you eat at the table.
I think Martin is done as a Dolphin. He may also be done in the league, although NFL teams will take anyone with a pulse if they can help the team win. I know the Steelers need o-linemen, and I’d take Martin. The Dolphins seem to think this a breach of team ethics or something.
Incognito may or may not be done. What may happen though, is hazing is officially mandated out of the NFL locker room. It may still go on, but if it is reported, a heavy hammer will come down. You won’t see any Tim Tebow’s walking around with a friar Ted hairdo ever again, and players won’t be taped to a goal post in front of cameras.
I’m very interested to see how this all plays out. There are a lot of things going on that we as the public don’t have a clue about.
I get the sense you’re looking for a way this can be Martin’s fault, or at least partly his fault. It isn’t. It’s possible other people went through this nonsense without complaining, but that doesn’t mean there’s a problem with Martin.
The whole “joke” is that the rookies are ordered to pay for dinner and then the veterans go all out to run up an enormous bill. It’s funny because… um… hang on, I thought I had it for a second…
I guess you could say he was posting incognito.