Don’t get too warm yet. He won’t get punted for legal reasons, I’ll guess. I think he is on the last year of his contract. My guess is the Dolphins suspend him without pay (if they can) pending a review, and he doesn’t get another contract. Although, I have this funny feeling that if Incognito is perceived to be a good player and teammate (and he was voted as one of the teams three team union reps, or something like that) by the people in the Dolphin organization, he will be back. That makes me sick, but the NFL puts up with a lot of defective people. Incognito has 9 years in the league, so he isn’t exactly a young guy anymore. If he isn’t signed, I wouldn’t be saddened or surprised. The guy I’m real curious about is Martin, and what happens to him. Seems like people are looking at him like a cop who testified against another cop. The idea of protecting the (NFL) shield seems real here. NFL people wanted this to be kept and managed in-house, within the Dolphin organization. Now that it’s out, it can go anywhere.
Martin’s reputation is taking a huge hit, which is kind of sad. He must have felt tormented by Incognito to leave the team and turn him in. I don’t understand how people could call him soft. Sometimes, people can be pushed over the edge, and it would seem Incognito did just that.
I doubt he is one of the most despicable people in the country… Jeez, here comes the hyperbole. Hell, the country celebrated Ray Lewis last year, and I think most people believe that if he didn’t actually kill someone, then he covered up the murder to help out whoever he could that night.
He’s a tool, and a jackass, but hazing a football player isn’t getting you past all the other scumbags in this world (and this country).
Your sense is wrong. In no way do I think this is Martin’s fault.
What I’m saying is that we (the public) can’t decide what is and isn’t normal in the context of an NFL locker room.
Personally, I think the concept of hazing is wrong and should never be tolerated, in the NFL, a fraternity, or a high school band. It shouldn’t be permitted anywhere.
Where you got the idea I think this is partly Martin’s fault is beyond me. When I said paying $15k for a trip is a joke, I didn’t mean it was funny. Substitute the word “bullshit” for joke to get my feelings on the topic. I thought i was pretty clear, but perhaps I wasn’t.
I don’t think hazing is anything more than an excuse to treat other people badly… Making them do things you would never want to do yourself. If a football team makes its rookies put on a talent show, as i’ve heard some of them do, well, that’s one thing… Getting up in front of the team to sing or dance or play guitar or whatever… That’s fun. But that’s as far as it should go in my opinion. Someone should never be put in a position where they have to do something that cannot be filmed and shown on regular TV, and they shouldn’t be forced to pay bills for others either. Like i said, a meal is one thing. A few thousand dollars, or say, even $10k for a first round pick who got a $6 million signing bonus is probably ok with the rookie. But since i don’t have an idea of what a normal limit is, remove anything having to do with money. Remove hazing all together.
What apparently happened with the Las Vegas trip was several members of the team were going on a group trip last summer. Martin apparently felt he was pressured to contribute to the cost of the team trip even though he had decided not to go.
Apparently this is an existing form of hazing. A group of veteran players will do something like arrange a team meal at a fancy restaurant or a team trip to a strip club and then have the rookie players pay the bill.
Because in a couple of places you this sounded bad for Incognito and then hedged - because what Incognito did isn’t so bad if hazing in locker rooms is common, because maybe Martin shouldn’t be complaining about the trip if other players paid up, because lots of white guys call their teammates half-niggers or something, etc. I agree there’s a certain amount of tolerance for hazing in sports, but that’s really not relevant. Stories about rookie hazing (bad haircuts, making them dress in drag) are pretty common and it’s usually viewed as harmless by all involved. Compare that to this and it’s easy to see a difference. Players don’t normally abandon teams because they’re being treated badly in the locker room, and you get the sense Dolphins management let it go or didn’t pay attention.
If that’s not what you’re saying, then fine. But this doesn’t just look bad and it’s not something that can be explained away by locker room cultural relativism. One player may be a supreme asshole here, but I don’t think this is entirely about one guy.
No question. But they haven’t cut him, which leads me to believe that there is something else going on. So, they’ve suspended him. Anyone know if it is with ir without pay? The Dolphins will pay him what they feel they owe him and not a penny more. If being suspended means he gets no pay, he gets no pay. But the Dolphins won’t pay him if they don’t have to.
My guess is the Dolphins feel that they might be liable in some way because they fostered the environment. That’s why they haven’t cut him outright. People are talking about the Dolphins HR department, like this is a normal company and the locker room is a normal work place. It’s not, and we are kidding ourselves to think otherwise.
They want to proceed carefully because the NFLPA will be looking into this case, too. According to this story, Incognito’s entire salary is guaranteed and the Dolphins really can’t withhold it, but they don’t want him back either. And perhaps worst of all, Dolphins coaches asked him to try to toughen Martin up. So maybe the team has good reason to feel responsible.
No, I never hedged. I just don’t understand what it was like in that Dolphins locker room, or how a guy like Incognito could feel like that behavior was acceptable. This isn’t just steroids, or 'roid rage, or whatever. This isn’t even about an immature guy who is behaving badly to make himself feel better, although this probably has some element of truth to it. And I don’t even think it is a white guy picking on a black guy. Maybe it is a stupid guy picking on a smart guy (Martin graduated from Stanford, and his parents are both Harvsrd graduates). Maybe most guys in the dressing room relate to incognito and not to Martin on a cerebral level.
If black players are sticking up for Incognito, and they are, that tells me something. It tells me that he was and is more liked in that locker room than Martin, and his actions were more or less approved of by the other players. Why? I have no idea. Maybe they all disliked Martin for some reason. I keep hearing the players think of him as “soft” but I don’t know why or what that exactly means to a football player. I know nothing about Martin, but he’s not to blame for being who he is, or not wanting to be extorted for $15k. Especially since he’s not a rookie, but I wouldn’t blame a rookie for saying “no” to that cash request either.
I think that hazing within the Dolphins has been out if control for a while and everyone who has gone through it kept their mouth shut because once their year was up, it was their turn to partake in the hazing. And maybe the hazing ramped up every year, which would make some sense… Guys probably want to make people suffer more than they had to. But something else is going on with Martin, because he’s not a rookie, so by the rules of hazing as i understand them, he’s off the hook. So clearly, something else is going on, and the other Dolphins either knew about it or suspected it. Martin left the team because IMO, He didn’t feel like he had any support from anyone on the team and probably within the organization. That’s bad.
It’s also bad that Martin is looked at like a weak person, or partially to blame here. But to me, after I read the text of that voice message, i would think that players would have either said nothing or come out against Incognito. I haven’t heard one player stick up for Martin publicly. Why is that? Are they afraid that Incognito would go after them next, or would the locker room go after the next player that opens their mouth in anyway to expose the out of hand hazing?
That’s why this story is so interesting to me. I don’t care what anyone says, the person that was hazed was the victim here, and Martin should be back on the team playing. In fact, he should have never left. But I don’t think he felt he had a choice.
This reminds me a little of that high school case (either football or band, I don’t remember) where new members were being tea-bagged by the old members. One kid told his parents, they sued the school district, and the kid that opened up the can of worms was ostracized for it. The kids that did the tea-bagging and the coaches were punished, and guess who the town was angry with? The kid who didn’t like someone else’s balls in his face and didn’t think it was funny.
Good for him for not putting up with it, and good for Martin too. Martin will pay, though. The Dolphins can’t have him in their locker room again, and i doubt he would be accepted back in, unless there are other things out there that Incognito did that no one else knew about. Unless he can get the team to feel some sympathy for him, he will look like a snitch who couldn’t take the abuse that was dished out to everyone else. I don’t agree with this, by the way, but it seems as if this is where this is going. He’s not back yet. Why?
We shouldn’t be surprised if the victim in this case is the one who pays a big price for basically “whistleblowing” on the Dolphins. He could get blackballed from the league.
It does tell you a lot about how players look at this kind of behavior. A lot of them have already gone through it and as such they’re not going to criticize it or let someone else off easy. More than anything, though, I think it speaks to how strongly players believe that things in the locker room should stay in the locker room. If you make anything public, no matter how bad it is, you’re a snitch. But I don’t know that the Dolphins are done with Martin here. I don’t know the particulars of his contract - he was a second round pick and is in year two of a four-year deal - and it seems to me that they want him back. Here’s some more about the way the Dolphins’ veterans were taking advantage of the rookies with the expensive dinner thing. The story also says Incognito mistreated other players.
Good link, Marley. That story has a lot of information in It that we’ve been talking about. I hadn’t seen it. That part about the coaches telling him to toughen Martin up is bad news for the Dolphins coaches and their organization.
One thing that jumped out at me was that little ferret Adam Schefter feeling the need to tweet that phone message. Why? It was posted all over the internet. I hate that guy. He’s as big an ass as there is in NFL reporting.
But he’s not the story. Just my personal outrage for Schefter being himself, i guess.
ETA: i hope the Dolphins do take Martin back. But would he want to play there now?
What’s with the Schefter hate? I don’t have a problem with him, outside of his working for the Booyahs. And I kinda liked that he pissed off Incognito enough for Incognito to mouth off about wanting to fight him.
I don’t know. And I don’t want to hijack this thread with Schefter hate. But he just rubs me the wrong way. I think it has something to do with the fact that whenever his name is spoken on ESPN, it is “ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter” said… , like he is the god of NFL contacts and information. I realize it is irrational. But I can’t help not liking the guy.
One thing I wasn’t sure of though… were Incognito’s tweets directly related to those Schefter tweets, or were there other Schefter tweets? Because he was saying he was being slandered, when all that was being quoted was the text of the voice mail message. Something didn’t make sense to me there.
I don’t think he was. I believe the Miami Herald broke the story. In any event, it doesn’t matter. Any number of people could have tweeted the text of that VM. I don’t think it should have been tweeted at all, since it is in the public domain everywhere.
Just thank god for ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter. Where would we be without him? Oh yeah. The same place, with the same info.
But again, I recognize my dislike for him is irrational. Wait… do you like everyone? Well, koom-bye-ya to you, then!
That’s kind of self-contradictory. And he’s a reporter. He shouldn’t not share information just because his readers might’ve seen it somewhere else.
Back to Martin: I think he doesn’t want to go back to the Dolphins unless there are big changes. Since Incognito was a team leader and the coaches never stepped in he obviously felt management had no problem and wouldn’t help him (while snitching would have hurt him). He’s right to insist that they give him a reason to believe things are really going to change.
I see your point. At first glance, It just seemed to me to be an over-the-top attempt at sensationalizing the event even more that it has already been. However, after thinking about this, I’m inclined to agree with you. I think the reason it annoyed me so much is because of who sent the tweets, not what was tweeted. So if this was tweeted by another sportswriter who I like and/or respect, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me. That’s not really fair to Schefter. My dislike of him clouded my opinion on this.
I was thinking about this today, and I don’t see how Martin can go back to the Dolphins easily. And not because he isn’t a good player (I honestly have no idea if he is any good or not… My perspective on talented o-linemen is skewed because I root for the Steelers). What’s worse, though, is he may not be welcome to any other locker room because of how he is viewed among the other players. He could be a real disruptive locker room influence among players who think he “snitched”.
I feel bad for the guy… The Dolphins might be the only team he can play for when he comes back. And that has to feel like a very negative place for him.
It’s going to be weird no matter what. Here’s an ESPN story that quotes a couple of Dolphins players saying they like Incognito and don’t consider him a racist, which is so far afield from the point that I’m rolling my eyes. Even if you have no problem with black people, you’re still an asshole if you chuck racial slurs at a guy and threaten him. I guess it’s sad but not surprising that Incognito is popular with the team and Martin isn’t- otherwise this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
I’m having trouble with the assertion that just because it is the NFL that the rules are different for them. If everyone in the NFL is an asshole, that doesn’t make it okay.
Looks like a clear cut case of a hostile work environment to me. If management actually asked for it then thats even worse.
While I don’t think the rules are entirely different for them, I can see the argument that it’s not unlike a drill sergeant giving some new recruits the business.
But there are several differences in these cases. Even in the military, racist slurs and death threats aren’t tolerated.
And even if the intent were to make Martin a better player, where was that part of the exercise?
The idea behind berating recruits is that you do it more or less equally. And then you proceed to teach them the ropes and have them improve. It’s team building through shared misery. Emphasis shared. It can be a bonding experience to go through the same things.
But here, they singled Martin out. They broke him down but never built him back up. After you knock a guy down a few pegs, you show him how to get up and reach higher and then maybe share a drink about it later. Where was that? And there were numerous failures in veteran leadership and coaching to allow it to continue in this fashion. From what we can tell, nobody else in that locker room stepped in to say things were getting out of hand, and that’s not excusable in any context.
And it becomes a lawsuit, and it goes to trial, and plaintiff’s lawyers get Philbin on the stand, and get him to admit he called a Code Red, and he’ll bluster how we need him on that wall.
