Author Notes about this Blog (NFL Locker Rooms follows this paragraph)
This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok. Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited. I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life. Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.
NFL Locker Rooms (After this, enough is enough about this topic)
I reckon an NFL locker room, of all professional sports, is the most stressful. Just the number of players on a team (over 50) and the number of coaches involved (17 or more) and the nature of practice makes team unity, in the ideal sense, rather elusive. Then add the constant turnover of teammates. Then add the kind of possible severe physical injury every time most players step onto the field---game or practice. I guess we can eliminate the punter in this category. Then add the print and TV/radio media mob, all looking for a story and/or character evaluation. Then add the macho image expected with football.
In light of the Incognito/Martin soap opera the NFL will likely be forced to instill some parameters for the locker room atmosphere. When I hear players defend the current atmosphere as unique to 'football culture' it seems a bit outrageous. They don't live off in a vacuum somewhere, and like the rest of us, our national 'culture' expects us to have have certain behavioral standards. Threatening to kill someone, or use ethnic slanders, or binge drinking, or physical assaults as part of life off the field is not acceptable for most civilized citizens. Professional football is big, but not so big they can live off in a separate culture mentality. Those players defending such a locker room atmosphere are pretty dense or maybe just stupid. One said in all seriousness that Martin is 270 lbs and perfectly capable of physically defending himself. Really? Well suppose someone on the team is 160 lbs? I know a lot of huge guys who are 'gentle giants', not inclined at all to use their size to settle disputes or get their way of any kind. To me they are a lot tougher than the cowards who use their size to intimidate or assault others simply because of their size.
For a start, maybe the NFL should start by demanding their players act like adults, not let some of them act like licensed thugs, part of some kind of social gang. What other adult profession throws buckets of gaterade on someone to celebrate an achievement? What other profession has sophomoric institutional hazing of the crudest and silliest nature? What other profession dumps bottles of liquor over each other's head to celebrate an achievement? What other profession sends other employees emails so crude and low-life? My heavens, the employees at McDonalds manage a more civilized interaction with each other than some NFL players. Of course not all players are into the 'Incognito culture' aspect of the locker room. It is not like teams do not often know of this kind of personal behavior. Incognito has a public trail of crude behavior since high school. This tolerance is remnant of the long ago Lombardi philosophy that "Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing". Back then I thought that quote was neat. It is not neat, it is pitifully wrong. What other adult professionals trash talk each other at work like some football players do during a game? This is how one might talk at age 15 on a pick up game in the shadier part of town. How much more sophomoric could this trash talk possibly be?
Why does professional football tolerate any of this adolescent and anti social behavior from any player, on or off the field? Players make a lot of money and the least that can be demanded of them is to behave toward their teammates and others in social settings with a modicum of civilized adult behavior. I suppose many of these players have been coddled and exempted from behavior for which the rests of us would be punished. They are a part of our culture. No group can go off and claim their own independent culture. That needs to stop. Most of us don't begrudge pro football players a high salary (up to a point) but to get that high salary a semblance of adult behavior, along with performance on the field should be demanded.
It is true that the NFL inherits the outcome of permissive behavior for many star football players that has existed since junior or senior high school. Thus, any real solution has to start back then. While this may be true, it is not clear how much this can be changed. Young star athletes in sports like football and basketball represent a gold mine for these programs in high school, college, and the pros. Football and basketball coaches for college teams are paid millions of dollars a year to make sure this young talent drifts to their programs. For most of these young stars, friends are defined by who has their back, or who can make life more exciting and pleasant for them. Most young adolescents have to work for friendships, while these young stars can sit back and pick and choose. Little real contentment ever comes from unearned benefits of any kind. That is just the nature of contentment. It has to be earned. And many of these young athletic stars will have no need to earn friends until after their athletic career is ended. Then the party is over. He who is satisfied with little is more content than he who has more and wants more. Addictions of most any sort are not conducive to achieving much contentment.
Professional football is a business and all about money. That is the nature of the beast. Thus, locker room behavior has to be run like any other aspect of football---with rules, close supervision, and monetary penalties. It is rather naive to think every aspect of football can be run like a tight ship and then leave the locker room a player's turf for whatever 'culture' that develops amongst the many 'cliques' within such a huge pool of players. Of course it is unnerving to think adults cannot manage their own social relationships within the locker room. Clearly, at some social level, many of these 'adult' players are not really adults in any social sense. Professional football cannot put these players under all the pressures inherent in their current operation and not expect some pretty weird social emotions to emerge in a 'free' locker room atmosphere. The locker room probably can be kept under control. What can be done to protect the rest of the public from those players who let loose in off the field social settings is a bigger quandary.
