Okay, I have to admit… the more I learn about this case, the less I actually seem to know.
NOTHING here is making sense. To be sure, Incognito has a long history of being a jerk, and he MAY well be the sole bad guy here. But there are so many angles coming out to this story that I’m getting confused.
There are reports now that…
At the very end of Incognito’s vile, racist phone message, he signed off with a friendly, nonchalant, “Call me later,” as if the whole thing had been a goof. And Martin, apparently, DID call him back!
Incognito and Martin HAD been acting like pals on a regular basis!
Martin is alleged to have PLAYED the taped phone message to teammates in the locker room, and to have laughed about it along with teammates.
I no longer pretend to have any clue what’s going on. This is just WEIRD, and I will no longer attempt to piece together the truth, mcuh less offer any speculation about what went on.
He “has no dog in the fight” but he played with Incognito since his college days, considers him a friend, and thought Martin was standoffish from the beginning. I guess he has a shark in that fight, instead.
Yeah, it happens. You get hazed and are told to shrug it off. Doesn’t make it any more excusable. We teach kids (and adults, apparently) that this sort of behavior isn’t appropriate. Just because the victim is able to deal with it most times doesn’t make it any better.
I think that the people blaming the victim for not being tough enough to stand up to Incognito are going to have to eat their words if (as I suspect) that Martin was physically treatened by Incognito and felt like he was in physical danger. Moreso if the locker room knew about that and was backing Incognito.
It’s one thing to stand up to a bully. It’s quite another if you know you’re going to have your ass severely beating - maybe by multiple people.
Martin’s lawyer has released a statement David Cornwell's statement regarding Jonathan Martin - ProFootballTalk which clears a lot of things up for me and sadly makes a lot of sense. When you’re bullied, you try anything to make it stop, including trying to befriend the bullies, because they wouldn’td do that to a friend, right? Except bullies don’t have friends, they have pets. And this just reinforces to them the idea that they own you, and you’re theirs to do with as they wish.
The piece does have some information that could be relevant if it’s true, like his assertion that of course Dolphins coaches [del]ordered the code red[/del] knew how other players were treating Martin and encouraged them to toughen him up (I believe that) and the story about Martin being asked to pay for the Vegas trip only after he’d already agreed to go and then canceled after the arrangements had been made. But the rest of it is a sad and predictable litany of excuses and justifications for bullying. It’s almost like a checklist. “He was standoffish and soft?” We know how this works, dipshit: people get bullied because they don’t fit in. That he really didn’t fit in is not the point.“Incognito is not a racist?” I don’t give a fuck. “We do pranks like this all the time?” You know, I figured that out!
And then there’s “Martin should’ve kept it in the locker room - code of the schoolyard.” In an ideal world I agree that’s how this kind of thing would be handled. The problem is that Murtha has already told us why that didn’t happen: he says in no uncertain terms that the coaches knew how Martin was being treated and endorsed it in principle because they wanted to toughen him up. Of course that makes the coaches sound an awful lot like bullies themselves. So in Martin’s shoes I would have had no confidence that that would have been effective and I probably would’ve believed it was going to make things worse because if I go to them, I’m confirming their view that I’m a whiner and I’m soft. Incognito is one of the leaders of the team and apparently a popular guy, and we’ve already seen that some players see Martin as a standoffish softie who can’t take a little razzing, so in the locker room and on the coaching staff, he wasn’t going to find a lot of defenders.
I think a key factor here is that Martin didn’t come from a typical football background. His parents have an Ivy League background and he went to Stanford. A more typical player comes from a poorer background and goes to a football school.
So Martin stood out on the team. Other players simply accepted the football culture and Martin didn’t. And by standing apart he became the focus of additional bullying by the players and coaches who wanted him to “get with the program”.
I found the LA Times article with Cam Cleeland’s accountvery interesting. It may indicate the the NFL is going to have a bigger problem than we thought with hazing, now that there is a light being shone on it.
Let’s not overplay this. Coaches may have told Incognito to “toughen him up”, but I haven’t heard anyone say coaches told him “call him racial slurs and threaten to kill his mother”. Sure the coaches are to blame for putting an bullying asshole like Incognito on the “character council” and having him toughen up Martin, but I don’t think they wanted him to go clearly over the line as he did.
That could be a factor here but I’m hesitant to treat it as really significant without more evidence. It fits a little too neatly into a stereotyped narrative about smart and sensitive guy vs. dumb teammate. Just by way of context, and I know nothing about their backgrounds, but there are about 20 Stanford players in the NFL. If Martin’s background is significant I think it may only be in context of this team and this locker room with this coaching staff.
That’s always how this stuff goes, isn’t it? They knew what Incognito is like, they told him to get Martin to toughen up, they didn’t tell him what to do or not to and didn’t care as long as he got results, and not surprisingly he went too far. And I think the coaches had at least some idea what was going on. Its’ just a total failure by the people in charge of the team.
I think the players put him on that council, but I could be wrong.
Not to get all lawyerly, but it’s the difference between intentional acts (intending Incognito to do the things he did) and wanton reckless acts (knowing what kind of subhuman piece of garbage Incognito is and telling him to “toughen him up.”) Not that there’s a huge difference, and both are totally blameworthy for the coaches, but one is worse than the other.
I agree there’s a difference. But Tom Tildrum just said Incognito was acting at the coaches’ instructions, not that they specifically told him to threaten Martin and start tossing racial slurs around.
Although I don’t know if it’s fair to say Stanford is “not a football school” given that they’ve got a good shot at being in the BCS title game and have many top NFL players now.
There may be something to this, but surprisingly the offensive line is precisely the place you tend to find highly intelligent pro football players. The Wunderlic scores suggest that, as a whole, offensive linemen are at LEAST as smart as quarterbacks, and often smarter.
These are huge, strong guys who have to engage in violence as a daily part of their jobs… but contrary to widespread belief, offensive linemen are NOT generally brainless apes. There are a LOT of cerebral “Jonathan Martins” on NFL offensive lines
I also didn’t tell the arsonist to burn my house down when I gave him permission to play with my lighter. What crack was the coach smoking when he gave the job to toughen up Martin to, of all people, Incognito? Al Davis would be proud of the Miami Dolphin coaches and players - that’s not a good thing.