When Miami Dolphins second-year offensive tackle Jonathan Martin sat down to lunch in the team cafeteria Oct. 28. his entire table of teammates got up and left. They assumed the act would be taken as an amusing prank against their rookie teammate.
Except Martin didn’t see it that way. He got up and left the facility. In the media firestorm that followed the incident, it came to light that the “amusing prank” was really the final straw in a long line of locker-room harassment and bullying.
Martin immediately left the team to seek mental health counseling. He then released a voicemail sent to him from teammate Richie Incognito that included threats and racial slurs. The voicemail earned Incognito a suspension from the team.
Incognito’s involvement is inexcusable but less important than the blatant culture of harassment and bullying within the Dolphins’ organization and, presumably, the NFL as a whole.
The NFL said it is investigating the allegations against Incognito and new allegations against Martin, namely that Martin allegedly replied to Incognito in a similar manner. It is also investigating alleged verbal abuse and workplace harassment toward Martin and other Dolphins players.
According to CBS Sports, the investigation includes many interviews to probe “broader issues besides just the inter-personal dynamics between Martin and Incognito, including the larger locker room culture there, how pervasive issues of bullying and harassment might be, and what role, if any, the coaching staff, management, and ownership may have played – implicit or complicit – in the team’s handling and control of workplace issues.”
In an interview this week with Fox Sports, Incognito claimed his and Martin’s relationship was mutually accepting of jokes that out of context caused “a lot of eyebrows to raise.” Incognito specifically referenced to a text Martin sent that claimed Martin wanted to murder his family. Martin’s lawyer tweeted the alleged text message from Martin to Incognito, referring to a popular internet meme.
Fox Sports confirmed the players exchanged more than 1,400 text messages during the past year, so it is clear the two interacted regularly. Perhaps Incognito really thought the friendship allowed racial slurs and murder threats as a joke. As he claims, Martin texted him in the past week, blaming the Dolphins organization and the culture rather than Incognito specifically.
Martin’s lawyer released a statement last week confirming instances of harassment and claiming Martin went along with the bullying because, as a rookie, he hoped it was just some sort of initiation that would eventually stop.
As Brian Phillips noted in a column for Grantland last week, the incidents of bullying in the Dolphin’s locker room point to a systematic acceptance of harassment in professional sports, especially one in which a player is chastised for openly admitting the bullying was too much.
The Miami Dolphins have stuck behind both Incognito and its system of name-calling, banter and pranks. Many in the NFL and the wider professional sports community back this stance, calling Martin “weak,” “unmanly,” unable to handle locker room culture and other derogatory names.
Instead of focusing on the absurdity of a culture that accepts rookie hazing incidents, racial slurs and threats as “locker room culture,” most of the media and the NFL focused on Martin versus Incognito. Incognito’s past is far from politically correct and his behavior is uncalled for. However, it’s important to realize his behavior is not just tolerated, but also encouraged and defended by the Miami Dolphins organization and many in professional sports.
With a culture that sets athletes on a pedestal, Americans sometimes expect too much. Athletes, in any sport, are only human. They tear ligaments, break collarbones and sometimes need counseling. Fixing what is broken does not make Martin weak – it recognizes his strength in standing up for his personal health while playing a sport that has historically high rates of mental health diagnoses in players and a disproportionate number of suicides when compared to the public at large.
Antagonizing a professional football player for seeking help is ridiculous. But more than that, an entire profession that honors bullying, harassment and “rub-some-dirt-in-it” masculinity shouldn’t have any place in society, let alone a prominent one.
The investigation is far from over, and what the NFL uncovers will likely rock more boats. Hopefully, it will also raise awareness about the absurdity of hazing, bullying and harassment as staples in NFL locker room culture.