The Incognito Report
Following are some observations regarding sport locker-rooms generated by some comments made by those athletes and others who defended Incognito.
I can think of no other group of professionals who require such an atmosphere to succeed in their profession. It is not clear why an adult professional football player, often married with kids, cannot succeed on the field if they are required to respect others in the locker room (If I can't call Honschnivel a 'sissy cunt' in the locker room how can I be expected to tackle well out on the field?). I would reckon that this makes such an athlete 'soft', 'weak', or whatever, if they need this privilege to succeed on the field.
"This Incognito locker room atmosphere is best handled individually. After all, Martin is like 6'3 and weighs 300 lbs" (A teammate of Martin). And what, pray tell, does a player do who is one of the smallest on the team. I guess bulk up.
If how a player performs on the field is what really counts, just where does this 'soft' personality play a role? When some of these neanderthal-ish players try to justify their crude and sophomoric behavior as helping teammates to toughen up, it is not clear why any teammate with characteristics like "sensitive", "quiet", wrong race, wrong religion, wrong sexual orientation, shy, introverted, considerate of others, and so on have to act and talk like some adolescent gang member on a neighborhood pick-up team, if they are performing well on the field.
"These kind of problems should stay in the locker room and never be exposed". Really, are there any limits to this? I know the football owners are above the law via Congressional decree, but does this extend to the behavior of individual football players? I mean this worked so well in this case. Martin was being advised by his parents to just adjust and be more like them so he could fit in, just give back as well as take it. I think it should be reversed and to avoid being suspended from football, those who feel this deep need to communicate in this fashion to other teammates, at least certain other teammates----well, maybe they need to understand they better suck it up, fake it and just be like those who communicate with respect to others on the team. These same 'real men' manage to mouth the right words in press conferences instead of the kind of words they use in emails or locker room situations. So they need just extend their pretensions.
"This is just the way football locker rooms are". I am sure Payton Manning, Adrian Peterson, Terrell Owens, and other's of similar position on the ladder are spoken to this way all the time. Sure they are. How is it that they are at the top of their profession without communicating to other teammates this way? And if they were 'soft' when growing up and were talked to that way in order to make them better football players, then why don't they communicate with young 'soft' players in this manner? Maybe they should be fined for not helping these younger teammates become better players.
If one player is wandering around the practice field and locker room calling another player his "bitch" or another player's sister the team fuck hole, how is this best handled? Does the winner of a brutal fight win the right to call the other one his 'bitch'? Or does the object of all this bullying find some other player to make his 'bitch'? Or does he need to adopt the same communication skills to fit in? Or does he just ignore it and endure it as part of football?
"It is up to the locker room leaders to handle these situations.". Well, Incognito was the locker room leader for his group.
If this kind of locker room behavior is needed and ok in an adult professional football locker room, then why is it not needed and taught by coaches in high school and college? Certainly if this is needed and proper for the 'culture', then a good high school or college coach will not just hope the locker room has this proper culture, but would teach players how to communicate with 'soft' players--maybe even identify which players are soft (the 'bitches') and need this kind of crude communication from others.
There is no need to elaborate on all this any further. Ethics, respect, tolerance, diversity, and personal space are proper ingredients for any work place. Period.
Any highly paid 'professionals' in any career, if they are to be called professionals, cannot behave in any other way. http://www.nbcsports.com/football/nfl/pft-live-how-will-nfl-move-forward-after-martinincognito
Martin, given his personality, was defenseless. He shouldn't have had to be defenseless. Locker room atmospheres will now change. And they will change especially because this behavior will no longer be trusted to remain in the locker room. People like Martin will probably perform even better since all this stressful baggage he had to endure will be gone.
The report concluded: "Ted Wells’ report recommends that the NFL create “new workplace conduct rules and guidelines that will help ensure that players respect each other as professionals and people.” Look for the league to quickly focus on these big-picture realities, finding a way to craft new policies, to teach them to players, and to hold them responsible for complying."
Maybe next we can do away with the crudest of trash talk on the field and in the bleachers. Any fan who gets within hearing distance of a player on the field and calls the player all kinds of racial, sexual, mother/sister stuff, etc.----well, if caught by security they should be banned from the stadium. And if the fan sneaks in and gets caught again using such foul stuff in public he should be given jail time.
On the same day this Incognito report came out, the salary of Commissioner of the NFL came out. He is hired by the owners to represent the interests of football--- players and owners. Of course he is, I am just mistaken. He is not hired to represent the owners and protect their financial windfall every year. His mandate is to protect the sanctity of football. It was announced that he made $44 million dollars this past year. The year before the lock-out he made 11 million dollars. The highest paid player makes 22 million dollars. While in the rest of the country the worker's wages have been going down and the 1%ers have been keeping pace with the wage of the Commissioner---in the NFL, the workers (players) also keep pace with the 1%er's. You see, there is no bottom line in the NFL, the sky is the limit just like with CEO's. The only argument at the contract talks is what percent of the sky-is-the-limit budget will management get and what percent will the players get. It is a win-win situation if one discounts the fans, taxpayers, and cities who foot the bill.
The hard part is figuring out which role all the participants here play. I guess we, the public, are the sugar daddies; the owners are the pimps, the players are the often pampered spoiled brats, crude foul mouthed gangbangers, smooth talking diva's, sullen antisocial social nuisances, or admirable grateful winners of life's lottery. I suspect the latter are in a decent majority. My favorite view of the pimps is watching the TV station camera pan them in their skyboxes, most of them old enough to be dead from the neck up, and listen to the media commentators gush all about them less the NFL choose a different network to televise the games. Despite all this, football is still fun to watch, an American addiction at this point; and we, like Martin, just take it as the price to pay to be a part of it all. Martin at least walked away. If he is soft, then maybe the rest of us are mush, or in the language of that adorable molder of 'real men'---Incognito, we are the cunt-holes being gang banged by the pimps.
